The Book Shopper

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.

Mini-Review: Robert Weintraub Presents The Victory Season

When & Where: Weintraub did a slide presentation for his new book, The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age at the Decatur Public Library on April 15, 2013, which was also Jackie Robinson Day and sadly, the day of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Attendence: ~ 75 people which included the final appearance of Director of the Georgia Center for the Book's Bill Starr who is stepping down as director.

Why I Went. I am currently finishing up Weintraub's book about the history of the game, which focuses specifically on the 1946 season. It was the year, many future Hall of Fame stars (Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Stan Musial ) returned to the game after service in the Armed Forces. It was also the year that Jackie Robinson played for the Montreal Royals in the Triple A International League on the brink of breaking baseball's color barrier in 1947. The season ends with a thrilling seven game World Series between the Musial's St. Louis Cardinals and Williams' Boston Red Sox. (Even though I was to find out neither Musial or Williams had a particularly good Series at the plate.)

By checking the baseball link on the side of this blog, you will know that I read a lot of baseball books especially historical ones (Stengel, The Bill James Historical Abstract, essays by Wilfred Sheed) and I will admit is that there is a lot I didn't know, which speaks well of Weintraub's thorough research. (He even interviewed Jackie Robinson's widow, Rachel Robinson). For example, I had no idea that after the defeat of Germany, the Nuremburg Hitler Youth Stadium was converted to the 50,000 seat Soldier's Field where a kind of Armed Forces World Series was held in September, 1945. In a five game series, the Overseas Invasion Service Expedition (OISE) Allstars led by Negro Leaguers Leon Day and Home Run Brown (yes, the team was integrated) defeated the all-white 71^st Division Red Circlers, representing General George Patton's Third Army, in a five game series.

Q & A. Weintraub's slide presentation lasted about 40 minutes and he covered a lot of territory, except in the book you get the complete back story of equally important figures like New York Yankees owner Larry MacPhail, Dodgers manager Leo Durocher and the millionaire Mexican magnate Jorge Pasquel who competed for American stars with his upstart Mexican League. During the Q & A, I asked Weintraub about Braves Hall of Famer Warren Spahn. Weintraub mentioned in his presentation and wrote his book that only two active major leaguers died in action during World War II – Elmer Gedeon and Harry O'Neill. A kind of amazing number, but many of the players were not at the front. One exception was Warren Spahn who was in an engineering battalion in Germany and barely avoided being killed during the bridge collapse at Remagen. Spahn attributes his war experiences to his success as the winning-est left-hander of all time. Spahn said, “After what I went through overseas, I never thought of anything I was told to do in baseball as hard work. You get over feeling like that when you spend days on end sleeping in frozen tire tracks in enemy threatened territory.”

Notable Atlanta Book Events - April 2013

Even though Atlanta is now inundated with Final Four March Madness and I can proudly wear my vintage Wichita State sweatshirt (I remember “classmates” Antoine Carr and Cliff Levingston, but my favorite whizz u player was “X”), my attentions always turn to baseball in April. Since the baseball season is plenty long, I ignor Spring training, except I usually start the season with a baseball book. Currently, I am reading Wilfrid Sheed's collection of essays Baseball and Lesser Sports (1990). Last year, I read his fine memoir, My Life as a Fan, (1993), which I wrote about in a posting called "The Joys of Losing."

Coincidently, checking through my calendar of links (see below), I noticed that another baseball writer Robert Weintraub is at the Decatur Public Library on April 15th to talk about his new book The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age. I hope Weintraub wrote that the Golden Age actually began in 1945, the last year that my Chicago Cubs were in the World Series. Little did I know in 1968 (shown here), that the Cubs -- a consensus pick for Central Division cellar-dwellers in 2013 -- would cause such a lifetime of misplaced loyalty. As Steve Goodman sang in "The Dying Cub Fan's Last Request," my hopes have been "crushed like so many paper beer cups."

The Prose on Earl Weaver

Friday's passing of Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver struck a book shopping chord with me as soon as I heard the news on sports radio. Although St. Louis Cardinal Hall-of-Famer (player and nice guy) Stan the Man Musial also died this weekend, it is a quote from the crusty Weaver, who managed the Baltimore Orioles for 17 years, that I have taped near my desk, which reads: “If you play for one run, that's all you'll get.”

No matter what is written about Weaver, it won't match the prose of Tom Boswell, a sports columnist for The Washington Post. Boswell has already written a couple of eulogy-columns about Weaver, but some of the best anecdotes about Weaver come from Boswell's two collections of pieces How Life Imitates the World Series (1982) and Why Time Begins on Opening Day (1985). I am dumbfounded that I cannot find my copy of the How Life book (did I loan it out to someone, sell it?) , but it contains many chapters about the great Oriole teams on the 70s (Brooks and Frank Robinson, Boog Powell, Mike Cuellar) that Weaver managed. The Orioles were a juggernaut and Boswell devotes many chapters to Weaver strategy (one of the first managers to platoon players based on lefty-righty matchups) and managerial style, which was described as (if I can remember correctly) “primal scream therapy.”

In the chapter “Palmer vs. Palmer” in the Opening Day book, Boswell writes about the enigmatic Baltimore Hall of Fame Pitcher (and Jockey Ad spokesperson) Jim Palmer and his long contentious relationship with the Oriole skipper – even though after baseball, Weaver and Palmer briefly shared a broadcast booth. Palmer once said that all Weaver knew about pitching was “that he couldn't hit it” – a reference to Weaver's baseball playing career, which never included a stint in the majors. Weaver thought Palmer was a hypochondriac and a whiner and said that when he wanted to talk Palmer, “I'll send (Oriole pitching coach) Ray Miller to drag him back by his diaper.”