A cartoon

Couldn’t resist.

Bits and Pieces

The blog Ricklibrarian, “a review of books, websites, movies, or anything worth reviewing with comments about libraries and librarianship” reviews a few baseball titles, including Now Batting, Number …: The Mystique, Superstition, and Lore of Baseball Uniform Numbers by Jack Looney; The Teammates, by David Halberstam; and Perfect Once Removed: When Baseball Was the World to Me by Phillip Hoose, among others.

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Author Harvey Frommer’s blog, Around the Horn, features reviews of Through a Blue Lens,” a collection of the photographs of Barney Stein who “shot” the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s and 50s “and other Special Reads.”

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From Seattlehardball.com and Scout.com, this interview with Bill Nowlin, author of several Red Sox titles.

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The Biz of Baseball web site has mini-profiles of several authors, including John Thorn and Bill Gilbert, along with links to their on web presences.

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ESPN’s Jayson Stark offers columns on the game’s most overrated and underrated players as examples of his new book, The Stark Truth. (If you want an interesting way to kill some time, read his “uesless information” columns at ESPN.com.)

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Tim Kurkjian, another ESPN scribe, gets the review treatment: Baseballtoaster.com’s Bob Timmerman on Is This a Great Game, or What? 

Review: Ty and The Babe

My review of Tom Stanton’s new book appeared on Bookreporter.com. Kudos to Stanton for finding a heretofore un- (or under-) reported event in the backstory of baseball. And further credit for bucking the conventional wisdom that Cobb was just a nasty S.O.B.

Stanton also discussed his book on NPR’s Only a Game.

Author profile: Curt Smith

For more than a quarter-century, Mel Allen owned the most recognizable voice in America. Filmgoers listened to his MovieTone newsreel narrations while a national radio audience was soothed by his smooth introductions to numerous programs. But most of all, baseball fans followed his calls of the New York Yankees, his signature “How about that!” signifying a clutch hit or outstanding defensive play. Allen, who died June 16, 1996, received numerous accolades for his work, including the Ford Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame and induction into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1980.

With such a storied career, it’s difficult to fathom why his employers, the Yankees and NBC, unceremoniously dumped Allen in 1964 when the team was sold to a new ownership.

In his new biography The Voice: Mel Allen’s Untold Story (The Lyons Press), Curt Smith, a senior lecturer in English at the University of Rochester and author of several books on baseball broadcasting, explains the backstory of startling rumors that led to Allen’s dismissal.

Melvin Allen Israel was brought up in an Orthodox home near Birmingham, Ala., where his Russian immigrant parents, Julius and Anna , ran a dry-goods store. “Mom clasped good works, prayer, and belief that God guides life,” Smith writes. When Allen decided to change his name — as Jews frequently did in those less-enlightened times — his father “blew a cork, then softened…. Less than his folks, being Jewish was only one part of his makeup. Mel was really the ultimate achievement-driven man — more American than ethnic.”

Growing up under such circumstances was not easy, Smith said in a telephone interview, but “it gave Allen a sense of values about right and wrong that remained with him throughout his life.”

“I think the ritual of Judaism, the Judaic canon, was important to him, perhaps not as important as to his parents. Given the facts of his growing up, achievement was not simply his ladder, but his way out, to go beyond the discrimination of youth to achieve in later life.”

Allen was “an institution, the most marquee voice in the country,” Smith said. “Yet he went from the most recognized voice in the country to a non-person.”

No official grounds were ever given for his dismissal. Among the “explanations” Smith offered: The Yankees and NBC brass thought that Allen was an alcoholic or a heroin or cocaine addict, that he had had a series of mini-strokes, and that he was a homosexual. One Yankee official at the time simply said, “We see no reason to embarrass Mel .”

“What does that mean?” asked Smith, who said that Allen told him years later, “When people are left to believe the worst, they will.”

Smith, who ranks Allen as the second-best baseball announcer of all-time (behind Red Barber), said that the announcer “was the best ever at his peak. Nobody could do with his skills what [he] did doing baseball: the lexicon, the stunning grammar. No prepositions were left at the end of a sentence, no participles were left dangling, no infinitives were split.” But after listening to more than 100 hours of tapes, Smith agreed with the critics: By the time of his firing, “the Voice” had lost his chops. “He would repeat himself, he would misstate facts, he would let silent air prevail for 25-30 seconds, something that you would never abide from Allen a decade earlier.”

In The Voice, Smith offers his own thoughts as to the reason behind Allen ’s downfall.

At 51, said Smith, the legendary announcer was feeling the effects of his demanding profession, which the author does not attribute simply to burnout. Allen engaged the services of Dr. Max Jacobson , a “physician to the stars” whose clients included Eddie Fisher, Truman Capote, and John F. Kennedy. His specialty was prescribing amphetamines, which were legal at the time.

Given all the facts, Smith said that he believes that Jacobson “misprescribed,” and that Allen never understood where the problem lay. “The kind of damage done is cumulative, and even when you stop taking [it] you never quite regain your former skill, and he never did.”

Allen was essentially, if tacitly, blacklisted for more than a decade, until he made a remarkable comeback with This Week in Baseball, a syndicated TV program that features game highlights and player profiles.

Allen, said Smith, “was as color blind and devoid of any bias or prejudice or animus as any human being I’ve ever known.” He would get an occasional anti-Semitic letter, but “he always reacted in such an extraordinarily intellectual and high-class way that I think he shamed the bigot.”

The author called Allen “was one of the finest people I’ve ever met in any field. I have a six-year-old boy, and if he’s half the person Mel was, I would be one happy dad.”

A version of this story appeared in New Jersey Jewish News, May 24, 2007.

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Other baseball titles by Curt Smith include:

• Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball’s 101 All-Time Best Announcers (Carroll & Graf)
• What Baseball Means to Me: A Celebration of Our National Pastime (Warner Books)
• Storied Stadiums: Baseball’s History Through Its Ballparks (Carroll & Graf)
• America’s Dizzy Dean (Chalice Press)
• Our House: A Tribute to Fenway Park (Masters Press)
• The Storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas : Sixty Years of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth (Macmillan Publishing Company)

Bits and Pieces

Bill Syken, who blogs for Sports Illustrated’s Web site, discusses The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History’s Most Desired Baseball Card. a fascinating and disturbing look at the decline of the baseball card industry, by Michael O’Keefe and Teri Thompson. For those of us of a “certain age,” card collecting was a fun hobby, not an investment opportunity.

I started collecting in earnest in 1967, when a pack of cards was only a nickel and most of the players sported crew cuts. Of particular interest were the inserts that came with the regular cards. One year it was mini-posters; another it was peel-and-stick team logos. And while I can’t use the excuse that my mother threw out my collection, they did get lost somewhere along the way.

I no longer have most of the cards. In their stead is one of my most treasured books is the Topps Baseball Cards: The Complete Collection, a 35 Year History 1951-1985. (I dislike the overuse of the word “complete” in a title, unless it’s something that will absolutely not be added to, such as The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Obviously, Topps has continued to print cards, rendering the use of the word incorrect and misleading.) Even now, it’s a source of nostalgia to look through the old cardboards.

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It’s bad enough having to have books by marginal and not-so marginal players, but to have their “associates” feel the necessity to tell their own story? Jose Canseco’s wife, Jessica, writes her answer to his tell-all Juiced with Juicy: which TheBookStandard.com wesbite calls a “concoction of sex, drugs and money.” Confessions of a Former Baseball Wife,

I have little patience for hangers-on (though I hate using that term when speaking of someone’s spouse, although in the case of some celebrity unions it seems apt enough) who try to make a buck off their association with celebrities:

But Jessica Canseco sees her story as one of transformation. So transformative, in fact, that the innocent little country girl with the generous endowments would grow up to be this month’s Playboy covergirl, as sport-sexy on the cover as she can be…

The article also includes an interview with Jessica. Asked how her family reacted to the book, she replied:

My family is very small and very supportive. It’s a pretty amazing story, and shocking, and they’re fine about it.

Especially the parts about her three-somes, no doubt.

This example of several exchanges in the brief interview, makes me wonder if Mrs. Canseco ever read a book, let alone wrote this one herself.

Q: In this month’s issue of Playboy, you appear in Oakland A’s gear [the team for which Canseco helped take to the World Series in 1988 and again in 1989]. Where did that idea come from?
A: Just because that’s how people know Jose—from the A’s. That was their idea. It’s pretty clever, I guess.

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Other items of note:

An article on Jonathan Eig’s latest biography on Jackie Robinson’s Opening Day from the Boston Herald Web site.

Peter Golenbock’s 7 finally gets reviewed by The New York Times.

Review: The SABR Baseball List and Record Book

The SABR Baseball List and Record Book, edited by Lyle Spatz (Scribner)

The ambitious Record Book contains almost 750 categories. The cover heralds the volume as “Baseball’s most fascinating and unusual statistics” with an asterisk that draws the eye to a tiny footnote claiming that the information is “not available online or in any other book.” (It’s a commentary on the book industry that it has to play second fiddle to the Internet.)

Strictly speaking, of course, this statement is not true. There are other sources where one can find the most consecutive games played or most wins by a right handed relief pitcher. And although there are several interesting lists, for the most part I daresay they would be classified as neither “fascinating” nor “unusual.” While the fact that Sammy Sosa holds “the record” for the longest time between home runs in a park (5,824 days at Fenway) is interesting, I would hesitate to classify it as fascinating, save in the characterizing of those people who would take the time to keep track of such ephemera.

Having said that, this book is quite entertaining. One could easily see broadcasters utilizing the book to supplement the teams’ media guides (longest gap between 100 RBI seasons: Harold Baines, 14 years).

But it could have been better, more user friendly. For some categories, it might have been useful to provide the players’ teams, especially for certain seasonal citations. It might also have been helpful to have some typographic device to indicate active players to put them in context with the all-time leaders.

Infrequent notes are helpful. For example, Ted Williams’ only pinch-hit home run in a 1-0 game clinched the pennant for the Red Sox in 1946. Such nuggets, however, are few and far between, which could be attributed to space issues.

Among the highlights of the SABR Baseball List:

• In 1996, Brady Anderson led off four consecutive games for the Orioles with home runs; the Birds lost all four games.
• A table of Triple Crown losers (i.e., batters who finished last in HR, RBI and BA).
• Barry Bonds had more walks than games played in four straight seasons.
• Of Leon Wagner’s 26 home runs for the Angels in 1963, only two came at his home field.
• Walter Johnson won 110 shutouts; 38 of them were 1-0.
• Since 1957, no one has made more game-ending outs than Pete Rose’s 150.
• Umpire Bill Klem ejected 239 players and managers over his career.
• Tommy Davis hit home runs that gave Sandy Koufax a 1-0 victory on three occasions.

Despite some flaws in design and scope, the SABR book is a labor of love that will undoubtedly be useful to researchers and just plain fans.

Happy Birthday, Studs Terkel

Author Studs Terkel recently celebrated his 95th birthday.
While he wrote no books about baseball, per se, he did portray another literary legend, sportswriter Hugh Fullerton, in the movie version of Eight Men Out. (Director John Sayles played Ring Lardner.)
The long-time Cubs’ fan offered an observation on the delight of afternoon games as a talking head in Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary:

The savvy viewer will recognize the music after his remarks from the movie.

Given Mr. Terkel’s genius at the oral history genre, I wish he had produced a volume on the game.

Golden Time

An Associated Press story in the Washington Olympian about a new book and exhibit highlighting The Glory Days: New York City Baseball, 1947-1957, edited by John Thorn.

Note that this should not be confused with Harvey Frommer’s New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age 1947-1957, published originally by Macmillan in 1980, and re-released by The University of Wisconsin Press in 2004.

Author and publisher have a tendency to toss around the description “the golden age” pretty liberally. Often, they can’t agree on the exact timeframe, to wit:

The Golden Age of Baseball, by Robert Cassidy, Bruce Herman, Dan Schlossberg, and Saul Wisnia (Publications International, 2003)

Baseball: The Golden Age, by Harold Seymour (Oxford University Press, 1989)

Baseball’s Last Golden Age, 1946-1960: The National Pastime in a Time of Glory and Change, by J. Ronald Oakley (McFarland, 1994)

The Golden Age of Baseball 1941-1964, by Bill Gutman (Gallery Books, 1989)

Baseball’s Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon (Harry N. Abrams, 2003) Evocative shots of players and personnel from the early-mid 20th century.

Willie’s Time: Baseball’s Golden Age, by Charles Einstein (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004) One of my favorite stories recounts how Einstein, who had ghostwritten a Mays autobiography, ran into the ballplayer one day and went unrecognized. When he tried to identify himself as the writer who had done Mays’ book, the ballplayer, not known for his intellectual pursuits, asked “What book?”

Crash Davis, redux

In Bull Durham, the late Max Patkin — the “clown prince of baseball” playign himself in the film — is talking up Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) to Annie Savoy (Susan Sarndon), telling her what an unusual guy he is. “I actually saw him read a book once,” Patkin says with a touch of awe, adding that the publication didn;t even have pictures in it.

Meet Matt DeSalvo, the latest in a stream of Yankee rookie pitchers, and subject of a recent New York Times article by Tyler Kepner for the simple fact that the young man actually reads!

The budding bibliophile — who has a list of 400 books he wants to read before he dies — pitched well in his debut, a no-decision in the 3-2 loss to the Mariners in which he game up one run on three hits in seven innings. He won his first game five days later, again in a game against the Mariners, giveing up two runs in 6.1 innings.

As if to show how much of an anomaly DeSalvo must be, Kepner puts his hobby in context:

“He is halfway through the list already, having devoured 17 books during spring training alone. Teammates marvel at this.

“For me to read a 200-page book,” said the reserve catcher Wil Nieves, who caught DeSalvo in the minors, “it would probably take two years.”

More on DeSalvo from the blog, BookChase.

Yearbooks

<p>I was at my local supermarket this afternoon and saw a shocking site. Not the $1,400 / pound for truffles, but the New York Yankees Yearbook mixed in with the magazines.</p>

<p><a onclick=”window.open(this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=800,height=600,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false” href=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/00yan66.jpg”><img title=”00yan66″ height=”112″ alt=”00yan66″ src=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/images/00yan66.jpg” width=”150″ border=”0″ style=”FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px” /></a> I’m old enough to remember when you could only buy these publications at the ballpark. Somewhere I still have the Mets and Yankees issues from the mid 1960s. They consisted of player profiles and statistics, with a couple of pages of action photos, maybe an interview or two, all packed into an economical 72 pages or so. They even used to revise them mid-way through the season. Cover price: 50 cents.</p>

<p>This year’s&nbsp; edition weighs in at more than 300 pages, and, acco<a onclick=”window.open(this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=311,height=400,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false” href=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/00_yearbook.jpg”><img title=”00_yearbook” height=”192″ alt=”00_yearbook” src=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/images/00_yearbook.jpg” width=”150″ border=”0″ style=”FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 5px 5px” /></a>rding to a review on eBay, weighs more than three pounds. It looks more like an issue of <em>Vanity Fair</em> than a sports publication. Since the proud history of Yankee Stadium is about to be plowed assunder, there’s a tribute to Monument Garden, among other articles. </p>

<p> Cover price for the 2007 Yankee yearbook? $25. You can do the math, but I’m just guess that’s way more than the regular rate of inflation.</p>

<p>And they wonder why they’re losing fans?</p>