The Book Shopper

Hot Stove League Intensifies

Usually Major League Baseball’s hot stove league is reserved for a few stories about free agents signings and time to catch up on baseball books to pass the time until Opening Day. This year there is no winter snoozing with the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox scandals about using technology to steal signs pushing baseball to the front page headlines. Three managers have been terminated, and one general manager Houston's  Jeff Luhnow was also fired.  It makes off my season anxiety concerning the fate of my adopted baseball son, Chicago Cub third baseman Kris Bryant seem trite. (I will always remember Kris' smile just before the final out of the 2016 World Series.)

Coincidently, this scandal mushroomed while I was catching up on my backlog of magazine reading which included baseball. In the July, 2019 issue of Atlantic magazine, Jack Hamilton wrote a review and thought piece on Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik’s book The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformist’s Are Using Data to Build Better Players (2019). The entire piece is available here, but two paragraphs really resonated. One concerns the general atmosphere on the Houston ball club.

I certainly don’t want to be in the position defending millionaire ballplayers, but perhaps the underlying core motivation of stealing signs via technology ( similar to using Performance Enhancing Drugs) is self-preservation --- keeping your job. The sentence about how Luhnow fostered a toxic atmosphere of winning at all costs makes me wonder whether pressure from management factored in the complicity of Houston players using technology to steal signs. In the following paragraph Hamilton suggests that one of the trends in professional baseball is that top players can be created from cheaper average players. That notion doesn’t bode well for the star players.

Another coincidence cropped up while I was reading my annual hot stove baseball book, Volume 1 of  Norman Macht’s biography, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball. As the owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics for a half a century, Mack (real name Cornelius McGillicuddy) the man with the most victories (and the most defeats) in baseball history also had visions of developing perfect ball players. In 1901, while Mack was forming the new American League, he had the hopes of prying a young promising pitcher from the National League – future Hall of Famer Christy Matthewson. Macht writes, “Mack saw this new beginning as an opportunity to fulfill his dream of taking young, intelligent athletes and teaching them, molding them into a perfect baseball machine.”

Mack's Exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame

 

Baseball's Hall of Fame Grip

Heretofore the closest I have been to the National Baseball Hall of Fame was reading Richard Ford’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Independence Day (1995).  Ford’s book is the slow-paced story of a divorced writer-turned-real estate agent who takes his estranged son to both the basketball and baseball Halls of Fame over a 4th of a July weekend.

Considering that Ford describes Cooperstown, New York as a sleepy little burg that closes after 9 p.m. with no mention of late summer crowds, I did not know what to expect.  I did have an idea of a few of the plaques that I wanted to see, but for the most part I just went with the flow and allowed the museum, the idyllic New York village (with many dining choices now),  and the Ommegang Brewery to take its hold on me.

The Plaques

The first floor atrium of that contains the plaques has a cathedral like quality where you stroll into each alcove to peruse over the immortalized players. (And I am not hyperbolizing when I use the word "cathedral" since when I was there during the opening hours a couple was getting married.) What makes the plaques especially interesting is the tight summary of each career which includes statistics and some sense of how the person played the game.

Edgar Charles (Sam) Rice

Ever since a feature article by Steve Wulf appeared Sports Illustrateds, July 19, 1993 issue, I have been intrigued by this player.  He was born Edgar Charles Rice n 1890 in Morocco, Indiana just a few miles from where I grew up in Iroquois County, Illinois. Rice was married in 1908 and he and his wife had two children and moved to Watseka, Illinois the county seat of Iroquois County.  At age 22, while away at baseball tryout in Galesburg, Edgar’s family visited his parents in Morocco and the entire family died in a killer tornado.

Understandably, Rice drifted for several years before ending up with the Washington Senators as a rookie at age 25. He remarried, but kept his previous life a secret on his way to a Hall of Fame career, which included a famous catch in the 1924 World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Take the link to the Wulf article for the complete and memorable story.

Lee Smith

Until I heard Lee Smith humble induction speech earlier this summer, I bared some resentment to Smith for giving up Steve Garvey’s home run in the 1984 National League Championship Series which eventually led to the San Diego Padres victory over my team The Chicago Cubs.  Over the years, I had softened especially after the Cubs champsionship in 2016.  Smith makes regular appearances at Wrigley Field and Cub broadcasts and he made a simple compelling argument that his lifetime saves record stood for 13 years before it  was eclipsed and he is still third on the number of saves behind Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera.  I like other Hall of Fame Cubs like Billy Williams, Ryne Sandberg, and Ferguson Jenkins, but now I can add the tall right-hander with the "bat-shattering fastball and darting slider to my list of likeable Cubs.

Connie Mack

I was even able to feed my new baseball player obsession --- Cornelius McGillicuddy (1863 -1956) aka Connie Mack. Mack won more games as a manager than anyone else and LOST more games as a manager than anyone else.  At the Willis Monie bookstore on the Main Street of Cooperstown, I picked up the Volume 3 of  Norman Macht’s biography of the player, manager and owner who had a half of a century career with the Philadelphia Athletics. My only regret is that I didn’t browse the store, but to my defense I had spent many hours power browsing The Hall of Fame. Here I am posing for a picture at the 1939 induction ceremony with Babe Ruth on my right, and Connie Mack on my left.

 

Oddities at Destination Books

Prep work continues for my pop-up booth Destination Books at the Decatur Book Festival’s Georgia Book and Paper Fair this weekend. This curation can become time-consuming when I run into book oddities that generate memories of days past. Here are some examples:

Carma: A Super-Simple Automotive Manual written by David Rosenblum. This was originally purchased in 1975 --  a time in my life when I thought I would try to maintain my own car – a 1961 Buick Electra followed by a 1973 Chevy Malibu. I was terrible at car repairs, but at least I take some solace that I soon realized I would save time and money if I just hired someone else to do the work. Still I have always valued auto maintenance, and stuck inside the book includes repair records and my Sears tire warranty. I will have this yellowing, disintegrating gem with the Courier typeface and homemade drawings of carburetors on display. But can I part with it? Probably won't have to.

Mark Bennett’s TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes (1996). Bennett has re-imagined and drawn blueprints of famous TV homes of a bygone era: Lucy and Ricky’s New York apartment and Connecticut home, The Clampetts Mansion in Beverly Hills and The Flintstones stone sided suburban ranch house to name but a few.

The Vanishing American Outhouse. Ronald S. Barlow’s 1989 paean to crescent-moon outdoor facilities will be at Destination Books for examination. No white gloves necessary.

Baseball Techniques Illustrated the 1951 instructional book by Ethan Allen and Tyler Micoleau.  This classic has all the fundamentals for any baseball player who wants to improve his or her game. The authors spend an entire chapter on situational hitting. Somebody needs to buy this book and send it to the 2019 Chicago Cubs.

Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire. This  quirky book I published myself because I wanted the format to reflect function. The book is designed for the commuter who can read the book with one hand and hold on to the “Oh-shit” straps while riding a bus or train. “In the subterranean world of mass transit there are two separate, yet equally marginalized groups: the riders who use public transportation and the city officials who routinely persecute them.” The video below explains.

 

 

 

 

My Off Season: Hot Stove Baseball Books

These months between the final game of the World Series and Opening Day can be long and cold if you don’t prepare properly. Last November, I taped the entire MLB All-Stars (sans All Star pitchers) vs Japan’s Samurai All-Stars in a six game exhibition series, which was played in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagoya in front of packed stadiums of chanting Japanese fans. Japan won the series 5 games to 1, which is no surprise since the MLB pitching staff consisted of “household” names of Scott Barlow (KC), Collin McHugh (HOU) and Kirby Yates (SD) not Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Jacob DeGrom.  Still the series had its moments like Juan Soto’s launching of a ball heading over the fences until it hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome and was caught for an out.

Hot Stove League roster talk cannot sustain an entire winter either, especially since the Manny Machado and Bryce Harper free agency stories quickly grew tiresome, “Harper visits Philadelphia, Machado visits Philadelphia. Washington reps have a nice lunch with Harper in Vegas. Machado tells White Sox to Drop Dead.” Their final destinations will be anti-climatic wherever they land. Hall of Fame talk is fun because it is debatable, but can I respect any organization like the Baseball Writers Association of America that doesn’t give Plácido Polanco more consideration than one vote?  According to one pundit, Polanco deserves better.

Last winter, I read Robert Whiting’s You’ve Got to Have Wah, the 2009 book about the history of baseball in Japan and it included how American baseball players have fared playing for teams like the Nippon Ham Fighters (what a name!) and Seibu Lions. Perhaps I was preparing myself for the MLB All-Star/Samurai Classic and didn’t realize that I established a pattern that the best time to read baseball books is in the off season.

The Minneapolis Review of Baseball

This year I dug out a book I have been  meaning to read for a longtime - Basepaths: The Best of the Minneapolis Review of Baseball Volume 1: 1981-1987 published in 1991. The MRB began as a mom and pop kind of baseball journal founded in 1980 by Steve Lehman, Ken LaZebnik and illustrator Andy Nelson who became the art director. I first heard about the magazine from an article in Sports Illustrated and followed the publication from a distance. In 1990, William C. Brown publishers bought the journal and re-imagined the publication into the now defunct Elysian Fields Quarterly, which I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about baseball statistics, but EFQ struggled as well before finally ceasing publication in 2008.

The premise of MRB was like the original The Book Shopper book (this blog’s namesake) it was a place where fans, not insiders or “experts could express their passions:

“We quickly found ourselves publishing a community of eccentric correspondents and baseball lovers: construction workers, professional poets, cab drivers, college professors, a retired diplomat and anyone else who writes well and fervently about baseball.” – Introduction to Basepaths

As one might expect (like in any collection) there is some unevenness to such an endeavor, but there more timeless baseball gems than outdated rocks. Here are a few of my favorites:

- Wayne Farr's artistic re-creation of baseball relics by "baseball’s true inventor" Leonardo da Vinci.

- "In Memorium: The Winter of 1995, Remembering Burleigh Grimes, Bill Wambsganss, Roger Maris and Bill Veeck."

- An account of the unlikely baseball record where the smae player broke up a no-hitter twice in a 1955 game between the Minneapolis Millers and the Omaha Cardinals.

- An opinion piece on the lack of left-handed catchers.

- A transcript of Ken LaZebnik’s stage play on Calvin Griffith, the longtime owner of the Minnesota Twins.

The connection between Buddhism and baseball in “The Baseball Player as Bodhisattva: An Inquiry into the National Pastime" by Matthew Goodman with art by Andy Nelson.

Interspersed within these longer pieces are shorter riffs on owner’s greed, the ridiculousness of trying to “speed up the game” and complaints about the designated hitter rule (all still relevant, no?). I especially enjoyed the poetry as well and I am not much of a poetry person. Perhaps why it worked for me is that I didn’t have to “figure out” what these poets were writing about. All things baseball. Here’s an excerpt from one of the offerings -- Red Shuttleworth’s, "A Poem to Tell You Why I Named My Son Luke Appling After the White Sox Hall of Fame Shortstop."

                 When I called Luke

to tell him the boy was born, named

for him, Luke said, “I’m thrilled.”

I told him sheepishly, I was still

teaching English at a junior college,

and he said I am glad somebody’s smart,”

taking the sting out of my

of not being part of the game.

There are four Shuttleworth poems in the collection, including a couple that transform you back the minor league life of the Durham Bulls circa 1980 when Shuttleworth was a bullpen coach. On a whim, I reached out to Red who is still writing and gives high marks to Ron Shelton’s film Bull Durham (What a relief). See the Extra Innings post script for more.

Another poem “Renewal” by Paul Weinman vividly captures that moment between winter and the first spring practice.

Each year we’d come back

and the field would still be there.

Sure, the baselines looked worn

Tired, grass turned grey. Brown.

The batter’s box, sullen.

Mound, slope-shouldered, old.

The baseball off-season is long can seem interminable but books like Basepaths with its “glory of their times” look and feel hones my appreciation of baseball history and lore. So much so that I am in no hurry for Opening Day.

Extra Innings

Appling with Shuttleworth (photo courtesy of Red Shuttleworth)

 Long after baseball, Red Shuttleworth has had a extensive writing career. To learn more about his writing, visit redshuttleworth.com

Besides Basepaths, Nelson, Lehman and LaZebnik collaborated on another favorite baseball book of mine: A is for At Bat, A Baseball Primer (1990) a series of short verse. A great way to introduce baseball to  your future slugger.

 

 

Baseball Bedtime Stories

One of the ways I have managed to keep the baseball flames lit in the off season is by revisiting Neal and Constance McCabe's Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon (1993). I took it off my baseball book shelf after a recent visit to the Joe Jackson Baseball Museum in Greenville and placed it on my nightstand.

The Conlon photograph at the top of this posting has some coincidental significance. In this 1912 game, Conlon captures the action of New York Highlander Bert Daniels as  he is being thrown out at the plate by none other than Shoeless Joe Jackson. 

The book makes for excellent bedtime reading because each photograph is accompanied by a brief biographic note of the player shown or how Conlon managed to use a heavy glass-plate camera to capture the essence of baseball from 1904 to 1934. The photos are from a distant world and they can overshadow the tight and often humorous prose of the McCabes.  

One of my favorite anecdotes is the story of Charlie Root, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs who was known for the being on the
mound when Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series. But not so fast! Look at Root's face, then read the story about Root's nickname.

 

 

 

Shoeless Joe Baseball Library

You can cross The Shoeless Joe Jackson Baseball Museum in Greenville, South Carolina off my Let's-Not-Set-the-Bar-Too-High Bucket List. (I think people put a lot of pressure on themselves with exotic Bucket Lists, which can shorten their lives...) Located in Jackson's actual home near the minor league stadium, Fluor Field, the quaint museum is pure bliss for baseball history buffs and those who believe in the magic of the motion picture Field of Dreams --- or not.

The knowledgeable and friendly curators were more than willing to field tough questions concerning Jackson's infamous nickname, his culpability in the Black Sox scandal, and the irony of having a baseball library in a player's home who could neither read or write. I could tell you what they said, but you should go and find out for yourself. Be sure and check ahead because the museum is open for a limited number of hours each week, especially in the off-season.

Shown above is just a sample of all the baseball books they have assembled at the Museum. Our guide said that they had so many book donations they had to turn some away.  It would be interesting to find out if I had some baseball books on my shelf that they didn't have such as:  Flip Flop Fly Ball or Wilfred Sheed's baseball essays, or Confessions from Left Field by Ray Mungo.

That would be a good reason to go back.

 

Celebrating This Day in Baseball History

October 4, 2017 marks the 62^nd anniversary of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series Championship in the 75 years that they played in Brooklyn.  On October 4, 1955, the Dodgers defeated the Yankees 4 games to 3, after numerous losses to the Yankees in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953.

It’s easy for me to remember this day in baseball history because my birthday is one day later. Since my parents lived in Illinois I wasn’t given a catchy name like Duke (Snider), Pee Wee (Reese), or Ebbets (Field).

This trivia is all fresh in my mind because a few weeks ago, I finished reading Roger Kahn’s baseball classic, The Boys of Summer (1971). Surprisingly, the book is more than just an account of the Brooklyn team’s glory years. Born in 1928, Kahn grew up near Ebbets Field with dreams of playing for his heroes, but settled for covering them as a sports beat writer for The New York Herald Tribune. Although the Dodgers of that era are best known for breaking the color barrier in 1947 with Jackie Robinson, they added other African-American players to their roster such as Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Junior Gilliam, and Joe Black (first black pitcher to win a World Series game in 1952). Kahn does not tiptoe around the racial issues in the Brooklyn locker room, and a significant part of the book is devoted revisiting those players years later and asking them to reflect on those golden yet turbulent times.  The controversy surrounding race and sports has not seemed to have dissipated much since then.

Anticipation

Heading into the 2017 postseason, I cannot recall so many fine baseball clubs that have a chance to win the World Series: The New York Yankees (again), the Boston Red Sox, the Houston Astros, and the Cleveland Indians. The latter two won 100 games in the American League as did the Los Angeles Dodgers, who also freaked themselves out by going 47-7 in one stretch of the season and 1 -16 in another.  The Arizona Diamondbacks, who swept L.A. twice late in the season are formidable with their relatively unknown MVP-worthy Paul Goldschmidt. Rounding out the list of teams vying for the National League pennant are the Washington Nationals and the reigning World Champion Chicago Cubs.

As a lifelong Cubs fan, I still have not grown accustomed to their World Series win last year but it is a relief to have that 108-year burden removed.  I still follow the team with the same kind of daily fervor  that Kahn writes about in The Boys of Summer.  I think of this as I share the experience with the newest member of the Cub family, my little grandson Myrick who was born last month. Whether the Cubs repeat or not, I am already celebrating.

Baseball Books of Our Eternal Youth

A few weeks ago, I was catching up with an ol' college friend Tom, who shares the same passion about baseball and more specifically, baseball books that I do. We traded reading suggestions, much like boys swapping baseball cards. He remembered I was  a Cub fan, but I did not recall that he was a follower of the Yankees. This didn't surprise me  because the Yankees were owned by CBS from 1964 to 1973 and the Game of the Week broadcast was usually a Yankees game. ( I didn't become a Cubs fan until probably the mid-60s. I remember starting to dislike the St. Louis Cardinals as early as 1967.) I guess the Yankees did dominate at this time as evidenced in this weird picture of my older brother Neil and I wearing Yankee hats.  My younger sister Kay was there too. Our family dog Pepper was looking back at our father who was resting in the shade. In distant background were the cornfields of Illinois, far from the Yankees of the Bronx. Such was influence of that franchise.

I sent Tom a link to my baseball category from the blog, and in exchange he sent me a list of his favorites. Tom who pitched in college also likes  books about pitchers such as Lefty Grove, Sandy Koufax, Christy Mathewson, and Sparky Lyle. Here's several others from Tom's list with few of my comments in parenthesis:

• Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams and One Season to Remember (2009) by John Feinstein. A book about Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina in 2007. I recall the book alternated between each pitcher as the season progressed. (I have read a few of Feinstein's books including Season on the Brink (1986), the one about Indiana University basketball coach and sociopath Bobby Knight. Tom and I were undergrads at IU when the Hoosiers won the 1976 National Championship.)
• Clearing the Bases (2002) by Allen Barra. I really enjoyed this book.  This book "answers" the great baseball questions. (Yes, one of the early practitioners-writers of looking at statistics more closely to resolve baseball debates.)
• The Boys of Summer (1972) by Roger Kahn. A book about the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1940's and 1950's. ( I am ashamed to say I haven't read it, but I need to since  I was born the day after the Dodgers won their only World Series in 1955. )
• The Glory of Their Times (1966) by Lawrence Ritter.  A book about the late 1800 and early 1900 baseball stars. ( I have it on my shelves and it deserves a re-reading. This was a book that inspired a lot of writers to find out where a lot of all time greats ended up and then interviewing them.)
• Throwback: A Big-League Catcher Tells How the Game is Really Played (2014) by Jason Kendall and Lee Judge.  This book is surprisingly good.  I always liked Jason Kendall, and this book didn't change my feelings. (The Pirates catcher with uncommon speed for a receiver always murdered the Cubs.)
• The Baseball Codes: Bean Balls, Sign Stealing and Bench Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime (2011) by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca.  A good book about the "unwritten" rules of baseball. 

I heard and read several of his choices but one of his selections intrigued me,  a series of books by Duane Decker about the Blue Sox. Tom writes:

When I was a kid, I read a series of fictional baseball books by Duane Decker.  The stories were about a team called the Blue Sox (very much like the Yankees of the 50's).  The stories ran for years and the lineup of players were consistent from book to book.  Each book was about a new player breaking into the lineup.  In fact, if you read the whole series, you can see a player break into the lineup and 10-15 books later the player has aged and will be replaced by a new player.  The books are out of print and are very expensive to purchase.  I have collected 8-9 of the books. 

Tom is not joking. Those Decker books are pricey. Get thee to the attic.

P.S. After posting, Tom sent me additional offerings. I put them in the comments.

 

 

 

 

Willie Mays in Birmingham

Currently, I am moseying through James Hirsch's fine authorized biography of baseball great Willie Mays and it has a lot of connections for me --- especially now since my younger daughter Bonnie and her husband Tim live in Birmingham.

Last year I bought Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend (2010) for $3 on a remainder table at the 2nd and Charles Bookstore in Birmingham.  I didn't read much of it at first, but enough to learn that Mays grew up in the coal and steel town of Fairfield on the outskirts of Birmingham. By the time he graduated high school in 1947, Mays was playing professionally and in 1948 played for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues. Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in baseball in 1947 and within a year, most of the franchises of the Negro Leagues were already declining in attendance. The pennant-wining 1948 Black Baron team shown above (Mays is on the top row in the middle), lost in to the Homestead (PA) Grays in the Negro League World Series. 

One of the strengths of the Hirsch's book is that he does not gloss over the racial indignities and dangers of the Jim Crow era (especially in Birmingham), but he puts into context Mays's ways of coping. Jackie Robinson publicly criticized Mays for not speaking out against racial inequality, but Hirsch explains that it didn't fit into Mays's personality and Southern upbringing. Not that Mays didn't break down barriers -- he just did it in more subtle ways.

Mays the Player

But there is a lot of baseball lore as well:

• In 1951, the rookie Mays was on deck when Bobby Thomson hit "the shot heard around the world," which gave the Giants the pennant over the Dodgers.
• In the first game of 1954 World Series,  May's famous catch of Vic Wertz's deep fly ball at the Polo Grounds was not his greatest defensive play.   "The Catch" as it is known, is considered a secondary feat compared to "The Throw."  In a August 15, 1951 game against the Dodgers  when the Giants were making their famous run for the pennant, Mays ran from left center to the almost the right field line to snare a line drive by Carl Furillo, and then doing a 180 degree with his back to home plate, whirled and threw a strike to cut down a runner trying to tag up and score from third base.  Unfortunately there is no video of "The Throw." If you decide to view the famous video of The Catch instead,  pay attention to a couple of things. One, even though it looks like a wall that Mays is heading into it is actually a short fence with a dark screen. (It always looked like a tall wall to me). Secondly, why did Mays plant his foot and throw so early? The reason: Mays knew that Larry Doby, who was on second base, could have scored on a sacrifice -- even from second base. Doby was held at third and the score remained tied. This set the tone for the Series as the Giants swept the Indians.
• Outfielder Mickey Mantle was chasing a Mays fly ball  when Mantle tore up his knee on a Yankee Stadium sprinkler head in the 1951 World Series. It was also the only time Mays played on the same field as Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, who retired after the season.
• In the winter ball after the 1954 season, Mays played centerfield for the Santurce Cangrejeros (Crabbers). The team was made up many fine players, including a 19 year old rightfielder named Roberto Clemente.  And the batboy was Future Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda.

Rickwood Classic

This book coupled with my recent trip to Birmingham for the annual Rickwood Classic, a turn-back-the-clock game where they played a Double A ball in the stadium built in 1910. (This is before they tear down 20 year old stadiums  like they do in Atlanta). This game was on my bucket list. (I have a very modest bucket list). It was fantastic to go with my daughter and her husband. As you enter the stadium you can see the black and white photographs reflecting the history of the ballpark, which was the home of the Black Barons.  And when you see the mounted photograph of young Willie Mays with his Baron teammates, you are transformed into different time. Not always good. Not all bad. But a reminder that these are the roots of arguably the best all-around player to have ever taken the field.

 

 

 

Connecting to the Hall of Fame

Last week the Baseball Hall of Fame announced enshrinement of catcher Mike Piazza and centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr., which coincided to the same time I finished reading David Halberstam's The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship (2004). Halberstam's book covers the baseball careers and continuing friendships of four Boston Red Sox players (shown here left to right):  Ted Williams (1939-1961), Dom DiMaggio (1940-1952), shortstop Johnny Pesky (1942-52),  and second baseman Bobby Doerr (1937-1951) . Williams and Doerr are in Cooperstown, but Halberstam makes a case that Dom DiMaggio belongs beside his older brother Joe DiMaggio. Dom was physically unimposing and wore eyeglasses but many consider him an equal centerfielder defensively to his famous brother Joe.  Dom DiMaggio had  a career batting average of .298.

As baseball books go, I would rate The Teammates about  a .260 hitter with just a little power (the guys were longtime friends, I get it).  The real strength of the book was Halberstam's willingness to address my question, "If these guys were so damn good, why didn't they win a championship?"

The answer is that they did almost win in 1946, but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the 7th game -- highlighted by the Enos "Country" Slaughter's mad dash to home with the winning run from first base on a long single (ruled a double).  Halberstam devotes almost an entire chapter to that series and its aftermath. That group of men did not play in the World Series again, but came very close -- losing to the New York Yankees in a one game playoff in 1949. For more specifics about 1946, check out Robert Weintraub's The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age (2013) because it was an an amazing era in baseball (my review here).  Halberstam also wrote previously about that era in the Summer of `49.

Here are a few other Hall of Fame connections that keep rolling in my mind:

1. Ken Griffey Jr. and Stan Musial, who played for the 1946 Cardinals, were both born in the town of Donora, Pennsylvania.
2. Ted Williams visited Mike Piazza and watched him hit when Piazza was 15 years old.

 

2.  Baseball writer and data guy Bill James in The New Bill James Historical Abstract (2001) rated Ken Griffey 7th in the list of all time centerfielders (Willie Mays #1, Ty Cobb #2, Mickey Mantle #3, Tris Speaker #4, Joe DiMaggio #5, Dom DiMaggio #24) and prophetically rated  Mike Piazza #5. Wrote James, "Too early to rate him with any confidence, but probably the best hitting catcher ever to play the game."  James rates Yogi Berra first (who died in 2015), and Johnny Bench second.

3. As a Cubs fan, I noticed that many baseball pundits are picking the Chicago Cubs to win it all in 2016, but  doesn't convince me as I read The Teammates. The Red Sox of the late 40s were supposed to be a dynasty as well, but it didn't happen as several of their starting pitchers went down with permanent arm injuries.  Of course I hope that the Cubs make it to the World Series, but will those young guys (Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Jason Heyward and Kyle Schwarber be friends for life like Williams, Doerr, DiMaggio and Pesky even if they don't win it all?

 For those of you who crave baseball in these football manic times, check out the blog's baseball links.