The Book Shopper

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.

 

Book vs. Baseball Dilemma (with revisions)

At the time of this posting I am still debating whether to hear the international novelist and writer Salman Rushdie's read at the Carter Center or go to Turner Field and watch American League MVP candidate Josh Donaldson (.312 avg, 38 hr, 119 rbis) crush baseballs at the expense of the woeful Atlanta Braves pitching staff. Both events are scheduled to begin on Thursday, September 17 at 7 p.m.

 

Factors to Consider

1. Rushdie will read from his new novel Two Years Eight Month and Twenty-Eight Nights. I am expecting Donaldson (@BringerofRain20) to launch baseballs in the left field seats.  Also appearing with Donaldson is fellow Toronto Blue Jay rainmakers Edwin Encarnacion (.271, 32, 99) and Jose Bautista (.252, 35, 101).
2. If Rushdie is not sold out it will be standing room only. There are ~30,000 seats available at Turner Field, which you would expect from a team that is 57-89. 
3. Braves tickets are about $20 for a terrace level seat -- the view to watch baseballs sailing into the night. Admission to Rushdie is $30 which includes a signed book. Not much of a chance for an autograph of Donaldson.
4. Parking is free at the Carter Center compared to about $15 at Turner Field, but tailgating is not frowned upon at the Ted. 

Such a decision for a baseball and book blogger. For a followup see the Postgame Postscript.

Postgame Postscript (September 19th)

I ended up going to the game, but I wasn't the only one because in between innings,  former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn were on Kiss-Cam (instead of being at The Carter Center ?!?). Their appearance went viral. They received more and louder cheers than the Braves who were shutout by the Blue Jays,  5-0.

The Blue Jay bats did not disappoint. Edwin Encarnacion hit a line drive homer to left center and Cliff Pennington a deep three-run shot to right in Toronto's four-run fourth.  It was a school night, so I wasn't there for Josh Donaldson's opposite field homer in the 9th inning.

 

 

Prepping for the Cubs Opening Day with Books

As a longtime Cub fan dating back to the Ernie Banks days*, I am often asked about my tormented relationship with the Cubs. On the precipice of the 2015 season it is a little different. Some baseball prognosticators actually think that the Cubs will make the playoffs this year with their abundance of young (unproven) talent. I think .500 ball is a more realistic outcome and this is fortified by some of my recent off-season readings, which included three books about the Cubs.

This winter I received Jimmy Greenfield's 100 Things a Cub Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die (2012), which I appropriated as a nightly bedtime story before turning off the light. In one and two page snippets, Greenfield mixes Cub history, lore, and brief bios of famous players. Some players were known for their athletic ability (Ryne Sandberg, Billy Williams and Hack Wilson) and others for their nicknames (Dave “King Kong” Kingman, Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams). I know quite a bit about the Cubs, but not everything. For example, I didn't know before Wrigley Field, that the Cubs played at the West Side Grounds between 1893 and 1915. Legend has it that the expression “way out in left field” originated at this site, because of the ballpark's left field proximity to a psychiatric ward. “As the story goes,” writes Greenfield, “ players patrolling left field could overhear patients in the ward. And so the term 'way out in left field' came to mean someone questioning your sanity.”

Greenfield references many books about the Cubs including others in my library: Wrigleyville: A Magical Historical Tour of the Chicago Cubs (1996) by Peter Golenbock and Rick Talley's The Cubs of `69: Recollections of the Team That Should Have Been (1989).

I revisited both books this winter upon the passing of Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. I liked Ernie who was on the downside of his career when I was youth, so I don't remember his National League MVP years of 1958 and 1959 and didn't realize that he was the first African-American to play for the Cubs. However, if you re-read Talley's book you realize that there was much more to Ernie than unbridled “let's play two” optimism. Even Ernie had a hard time saying good things about Cubs manager Leo Durocher who managed the Cubs during their greatest collapse (attributed mostly to Durocher playing his starters into the ground) in the summer of 1969.

I certainly remember the Cubs debacle of 1969 and it was my moment when a Cubs fan earns his or Cubby Bear stripes (my younger daughter earned hers in the 2003 Bartman game where the Cubs were five outs away from the World Series). That's what it means to be a Cubs fan – to have tremendous optimism and hope and then have it crushed like so many paper beer cups in the bleachers, paraphrasing folk singer-song writer Steve Goodman, who wrote the Cub National Anthem, A Dying Cub's Fan Last Request in 1981. (See Goodman perform it here on top a  left field rooftop before all the modernization.)

Envisioning playoff victories for the 2015 team before the first pitch of the season is a sure recipe for disappointment, and thus my prediction is simply that more Cubs fans will be likely being coming into the fold with heartaches, not celebration hangovers.

* This photo comes from a family trip in 2001. It includes my sister, daughter, niece and nephew. The Cubs lost to the Pirates that day. My first Cub game was sometime in the mid-60s when my Uncle Bill took me to a Cubs double-header. Banks hit two home runs that day.

 

Remembering the Royals

Love a place like Kansas and you can be content in a garden of raked sand,

-- Earl Thompson, A Garden of Sand

 

For the first time in three decades people are jumping on the Kansas bandwagon – or more precisely the Kansas City Royals bandwagon. My relationship with the Royals goes back a few years. In this photo circa 1983 shows my daughter Cynthia (age 14 months) wearing a mini-Royals Jersey waiting for a push from my mother. You cannot tell from this photo, but my toddler is wearing the number 5 – the uniform number of Baseball Hall of Famer George Brett. (Later, I purchased a George Brett Christmas ornament.)

It's refreshing to see the Royals and Orioles advancing in the playoffs and even though I have some affections for the Royals, I am hardly a fan (this is a long suffering Chicago Cubs-centric blog). On the other hand, I did live Wichita for several years and in orbit of Kansas City Royal fandom. Kansas City had some fine teams in the 1980s.

Solidfying the connection was my reading of the writer and baseball sabrematician Bill James who wrote prolifically about the Kansas City baseball, reminiscing back to the Kansas Athletics before they moved to Oakland in 1965.  Kansas City was awarded a new franchise in the 1969 expansion. James, now 65, is best known for his annual Baseball Abstracts, which began self publishing in late 70s.  James is largely responsible how baseball statistics have become a centerpiece of personnel and strategy decisions. (He was has three World Series rings for being an advisor to recent Boston Red Sox championship teams). I even wrote an essay about James that was published 22 years ago, making the argument that James belongs in the writer's wing of the Hall of Fame. (EFQ: Winter, 1992)

I still keep his Historical Abstracts, which look at players from past eras, on my shelf along with an autographed copy of his “best of” collection, This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones: The Best of the Bill James Baseball Abstract (1989). If the Royals end up playing the Cardinals in a repeat of the 1985 World Series, I will be sure to reread his 45 page recap and analysis of the series. The Bones book is a great refresher on those Royals teams of the 1980s, especially Brett who you can bet, cameras will undoubtedly follow for reactions shots to events on the diamond.

There were other very good players on those teams, Amos Otis, Willie Wilson, Brett Saberhagen, Frank White, and later Bo Jackson. People don't remember that Jackson was reviled for trying to play two professional sports, but James defended Jackson's "hobby" (Jackson's reference to baseball). There was also the relief pitcher with the submarine delivery, the 6'2”, 170 pound (the perfect body type for those stretch uniforms), Dan Quisenberry, who was known for his quips as much as his unusual pitching motion. Later Quisenberry published a book of verse called On Days Like This published shortly before his premature death from brain cancer in 1998. Here's one of the poems from that collection.

 

SWITCH HITTER

i miss pitching so much
don't miss it at all, sick of it

i'll miss baseball forever, an old high school flame
burnt out, want nothing to do with it

it's part of me, like an extra limb or another ear
cut it off, numbed, like it happened to someone else

gave all of me to the game: head, heart, body, soul
gave nothing to it: zero

baseball was clear, focused, true
baseball was confusion, a roller coaster, a lie

learned so much
discovered nothing

i yearn for the attention, the dance of the big game
it was p.r. events that were meaningless, roars with no passion

i want a hat that tells me who I belong to
the logos were from cities I wasn't from

the game sings its siren song for my soul
i'm a mercenary who wants peace

i don't need another word of it
i'm synonymous with it

i've seen enough, heard enough
wonder who they're playing tonight?

 

My Personal Atlanta Area Book Calendar - September, 2013

After the sweaty, inky, commercial mayhem known as the Decatur Book Festival ended, I revisited the Decatur Arts Alliance and Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur's exhibit on book art in downtown Decatur. Originally, the 47 selected works (one of the jurors was Brian Dettmer) was part of the festival, but those like me, who are adverse to crowds can get another look through September 20th at the Art Institute's Decatur location. Shown above is a hand sewn book by Candace Hicks, called Common Threads Vol. XLVI. Below right is Chris Perry's 123 Ripples: pressure.

Because I haven't had my fill of unusual books, I will probably head out to Cobb Civic Center in Marietta for the annual Georgia Antiquarian Book Association Book Festival, on Saturday, September 28th or Sunday, September 29th. I always find something interesting to read or someone interesting to talk to while there. It's worth the trip, even though I always seem to get lost as soon as get OTP.

And finally, on the Monday, September 23rd, Atlanta Braves vs Milwaukee Brewers game, it is The Book Shopper Blog Night at Turner Field. Bring any old raggedy-ass baseball book to the ticket window and you are eligible to buy a select Terrace View ticket for only $8. A few book shopper blog contributors and I will be there. I'll be easy to find.  I am the fan yelling mercilessly at Dan Uggla.

 

 

Revisiting Wilfrid Sheed's Baseball and Lesser Sports

Just like fans of professional hockey and basketball are ending their long seasons and resting their bleary, red eyes from lack of sleep, I have closed the book on Wilfrid Sheed's collection of essays Baseball and Lesser Sports, which I began several months ago (I was briefly sidetracked by another baseball book Robert Weintraub's The Victory Season). Besides I had already read Sheed's sports-related memoir, My Life as a Fan (2001) and found his prose rich and fun to read. I was confident I would return to finish it.

This collection of sports writing published in 1991, (Sheed died in 2011) spans 30 years of Sheed's sports-related essays and though he devotes much of the book to baseball figures such as Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Connie Mack, and Branch Rickey, I was equally impressed with his take on Howard Cosell, John McEnroe, Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicklaus. Most of these are names from the past, I know, but if you are familiar with them at all, Sheed will give you fresh perspectives.

One of Sheed's essays, “Sports Talk” explains the difficulties of sports writing in the modern era citing that some of the master journalists were Damon Runyon, Heywoud Broun, Ring Lardner and Red Smith. Sheed devotes separate essays to baseball Hall of Famer Smith and Ring Lardners' baseball novel You Know Me, Al, which Sheed maintains is a polished novel (though it reads like a serial) and despite Lardner's denial that he (Lardner) didn't consider himself a novelist.

 

Book Burning Iowans in Field of Dreams

After finishing Robert Weintraub's The Victory Season, (April 21 posting), I reverted back to the other baseball book I've been reading Wilfred Sheed's series of essays, Baseball and Lesser Sports (1991) which makes a good companion book to Weintraub's history of the 1946 baseball season. In addition to think pieces about Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson, Sheed scoffs at the film Field of Dreams, which is my favorite baseball movie. Here's an excerpt about the scene about the literacy of the local Iowans.

...the only other scene involving local Iowans, we find that their literacy has merely turned them into book burning fascists, whom Costner's wife Amy Madigan easily routs with a few high-spirited cliches about books and the human spirit that astoundingly haven't reached this part of the country yet (how did they find this place?). Obviously, the Costner-man subscribes to the Mark Twain ruling "Heaven for scenery. Hell for company," because the human inhabitants of this earthly paradise seem to have barely made it out of the swamp. If I was Iowa, I'd sue.

I not sure I will ever be able to watch Field of Dreams the same way again - despite all the Carl Jung overtones in the flick.