* Review: Everything They Had

The National Sports Review gave this posthumous collection of Halberstam’s sports pieces top marks.

Upshot:

The book is littered with really interesting stories, including a neat section on Michael Jordan. I love reading about Michael Jordan so I was glad to see he was included. The story about his interview with Ted Williams was really neat too. Basically Halberstam is second to none in his biographies of professional athletes.

The reviewer’s sole complaint: Halbertam’s “tendency his tendency to be ‘old-manish’ and complain that things were better back in his day.”

* Review: The End of Baseball

City Pages, a Minneapolis/St. Paul based organization, ran this review of Peter Schilling Jr’s. new novel concerning the integration of baseball and Bill Veeck.

Upshot:

Skillfully drawn with all his flair (and all his faults), Schilling does a near-masterful job of constructing Veeck….And for what Schilling lacks at moments in his spare descriptions of zeitgeist and his caricatures of violence, he makes up for with adroit depictions of game stories. Baseball, when on the field, is one of those books where pages can flip in wonderful three or four pages chunks. Schilling has a great talent for description of in-game storytelling, and also for getting inside both the respective heads of his players and the mood of the dugout. Countless of these passages are skillfully written with grinding tension, tangible sweat, and audible jubilation (or rage, depending on the city).

A caveat, however: Schilling used to write for City Beat, in fact in the same capacity as the reviewer of his book.

* This week in Sports Illustrated

The cover story (by Albert Chen) is the improbable tale of Josh Hamilton, now with the Texas Rangers. It wasn’t enough that he came back from the brink of oblivion; now he’s excelling in a way that wasn’t even predicted when he was originally drafted.

So many low points to choose from. No, it wasn’t the time the check he made out to a crack dealer bounced and he had to ask his father-in-law to go and give the dealer $2,000 cash. No, it wasn’t the time after a party when he ripped the rearview mirror off a friend’s truck, punched out the windshield and was thrown in jail. No, rock bottom, he says, was the night in the late summer of 2005 when he awoke from a crack binge in a trailer with a half-dozen strangers around him; with nowhere else to go, he appeared like a ghost at his grandmother’s door — his sunken face as white as snow, his 6′ 4″ frame shrunk from 230 pounds to 180. “He’d be at the lowest of lows,” says [father-in law Michael Dean] Chadwick, “and he’d sink lower.”

* Happy birthday, Eric Davis

The superstar for the Reds and several other teams turns 46 today.

Davis, who played for published his autobiography after battling back from colon cancer (like his friend Darryl Strawberry), seemed destined for greatness, having some terrific years with Cincinnati. His injury during the World Series against the Oakland A’s in 1990 made headlines not because of what he did on the field, but because of the shabby treatment he received from that bastion of racial harmony, Marge Schott, who didn’t see why she had to pay for his flight home since he wasn’t actually playing.

The Amazon Report on Eric Davis:

Born to Play

* Announcemnt: New book celebrates Rockies’ “almost” season

Sports Publishing announces the release of Tony DeMarco’s new book, Tales From the Colorado Rockies.

If this is anything like the other “Tales from” books from the publisher, it’s basically a collection of anecdotes. Seems to be almost one per team by now, some have earned two volumes. (Like “best” and “great/greatest” permutations, one of those adjectives that regular fails to live up to its promise is “complete.” How often have you seen something like “The complete Baseball Reader, Volume 2.” It’s not that it was deliberately printed as a multi-volume set, it’s just that as time goes on, there are naturally more things to add.)

* More on The Wall Street Journal’s sports section

From RotoNation.com, this piece on the plans for the financial stalwort’s newest “toy,” which was the brand old newspapers put on the sports department. Because it was fun. You play it, see? Sheesh.

* Announcement: New book chronicles Mantle’s rookie year

From a press release:

One of the most famous and beloved baseball legends of all times is Mickey Mantle. Many books and articles have been written about the sports hero. In his new book, Mickey Mantle, Rookie in Pinstripes, author Fred Glueckstein, delivers an in-depth account of Mickey Mantle’s life covering his early life to his 1951 rookie year.

Glueckstein presents a comprehensive story of how events in Mickey’s young life, particularly his relationship with his father, early teammates and coaches, as well as significant incidents that influenced and shaped him to become a baseball legend. Glueckstein chronicles his childhood as a “shy youngster with blond hair and freckles from rural Oklahoma.” Raised in a family with a strong work ethic, readers will gain insight into the deep connection Mickey had with his father and the trials and tribulations he faced and conquered. Not only do we gain insight into his personal struggles, Glueckstein also shares the influences of such baseball greats as Yogi Berra, Hank Bauer and Phil Rizzuto. Memorable events such as meeting Joe DiMaggio were both emotional and inspiring: “With Joe DiMaggio, I couldn’t even mumble hello. It was as if you needed an appointment just to approach him.” As well, readers will discover how other baseball legends felt about Mickey.

Along with a very detailed account of Mickey’s childhood and rookie year, Glueckstein is able to capture the excitement of the era making one feel as though they are reliving legendary moments in baseball history. What makes the story such a fascinating and compelling read, is how much research went into writing the book which includes documented conversations, letters, pictures of Mickey during childhood, and baseball stats. The book is skillfully crafted to allow readers to see a personal side of Mickey that was burdened with such struggles as personal loss, overcoming weaknesses in terms of playing performance, and the pain endured from physical injuries. Readers will gain a candid look into how the baseball legend was made with the strong influence of his father shaping his determination, resolve, dedication, and the love of the game. It is an inspiring story of never giving up on a dream.

* Well of course Boston doesn’t think it was a great game

Surprise, surprise. The Boston Phoenix finds fault with Richard Bradley’s new book on the 1978 playoff game between the Yankees and Red Sox. Perhaps had it turned out differently…

“I don’t know about your reading habits,” writes George Kimball, “but when I come across an obvious factual error in a book, my initial inclination is to wince in sympathy for the soon-to-be-embarrassed author.

“Unless, that is, the mistake is infuriatingly egregious, in which case I’m more apt to throw the book up against the wall in disgust.”

Now I must admit, I haven’t thoroughly read the book yet, but by now readers of the Bookshelf know my feelings about any book labeled “great,” “best”, etc. The subject matter usually isn’t.

Bob Neyer recently sent an e-mail in answer to an issue I had with the indifference, if not inaccuracy, of another author’s project. Most publishers don’t care, as long as there isn’t anything for which they can get sued. Maybe Kimball and his brethren should start looking for representation. The former sports editor of the weekly alternative paper lists several errors of fact, the usual stuff like getting the “handedness” of the ballplayers wrong, or the date:

The dust jacket of Richard Bradley’s new book describes a game played on the “afternoon of October 4, 1978” as “the culmination of one of the most intense, emotionally wrought seasons ever, between baseball’s two most bitter rivals.”

The one-game playoff in which the Yankees defeated the Red Sox to advance to the ’78 ALCS had taken place two days earlier at Fenway Park — on October 2.

There was a baseball game played on October 4 of that year, all right, but it took place at Royals Stadium — in Kansas City. The Royals’ Larry Gura beat the Yankees’ Ed Figueroa to even the American League Championship Series at a game apiece.

(Heavy sigh).

Unlike newspaper columns, I’m guessing readers don’t often bother writing to authors or publishers to vent their frustration. If they’re luck the corrections are made for subsequent editions.

Not to be puny, but these books are less great than “grating.”

* Announcement: Game of Shadows hits the small screen

According to Richard Deitsch’s “Media Circus” column on SI.com, Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, Tin Cup), is working on a script of the Fainaru-Wada/Williams book for HBO. “The film will air on HBO (likely in 2009) and will be directed by Shelton if his schedule permits,” writes Deitsch.

* Suggested reading for Mets players

This piece from Bloomberg.com suggests that Willie Randolph follow the example of Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson and give some of his players reading assignments in the hopes that it might open their minds to philosophies that will help the team win.

As for the connection to athletes and reading, I recall an anecdote about Yogi Berra and Bobby Brown when they were teammates on the Yankees. brown was reading a medical book, on his way to studying to be a doctor; Berra was reading a comic book. When both were finished for the day, Berra asked Brown, in effect, “How did yours turn out?”

* Review: Ball Four

A blast from the past courtesy of the Lansing State Journal.

Upshot:

…[O]ne book is not responsible for the seismic shift in sports media during the past 40 years, or even the past five years. But it’s part of it, and Bouton’s book is among the first insights that the game, the strategy and the personnel who make up baseball haven’t changed so much as the relationship with anyone outside of their immediate world has.

* A bizarre feature in Acrobat Reader

I came upon this completely by accident.

When you open a document in Adobe Acrobat Reader (I use version 8.1.2 and don’t know if this feature appears in earlier versions) and click on “View,” the damn program reads the document to you! It’s not foolproof, doesn’t work with every document — it seems to be best suited to straightforward text — and sounds very computerish-creepy, but it’s there for you.

* Spring SABR Biblio Committee Newsletter

for those interested in such things.

Spring 2008 Newsletter

This issue’s reviews and features include:

• Dreaming Baseball, by James Farrell. Reviewed by Leverett T. Smith, Jr.
• Baseball Magic, by Jay Martin. Reviewed by Robert W. Hamblin.
• Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, The Lies, and Everything Else, by Rob Neyer. Reviewed by yours truly.
• A profile of sports photographer Neil Leifer.
• A look at books in the post(?)-steroids era.

* Now hear this: 7

I’m surprised Peter Golenbock’s ribald tale of Mickey Mantle hasn’t hit the remaindered bin yet. Lasorda’s I Live for This got the treatment just a few months after it published.

Anyway, here an excerpt from the audio book as read by Alan Smithee.

* Review: Living on the Black

Today’s Publisher’s Weekly ran this starred review of Feinstein’s latest:

Though the season-long profile—in which a sportswriter follows a player, team or coach through a single season—grows increasingly familiar, this entry from Feinstein, one of the genre’s pioneers (Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today’s NFL;The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever), delivers rare insight into the minds of two of baseball’s most cerebral (and successful) pitchers. Veteran sportswriter Feinstein follows the Yankees’ Mike Mussina and the Mets’ Tom Glavine during the 2007 season, as they pursue personal milestones and try to pitch their teams back into the postseason. Although they each reach some of their goals (Mussina to 250 wins, Glavine 300), neither team reaches its ultimate goal. The main narrative, of personal and team struggle, is compelling, but the true enjoyment of books like these are in the details, and Feinstein does not disappoint. Not only does he exhaustively chronicle the season on-field, he reveals tidbits of inside ball that even hardcore fans will find enlightening: Who knew that Mussina’s best friend on the Yankees is the bullpen catcher, Mike Borzello, or that Glavine helped avert a likely player strike after the 2003 season? This smart season tour makes a treat for both casual and die-had fans.

* Home Run Derby, Old School

Seems the Yankees and their fans are somewhat upset about MLB’s “Call Your Shot” promotion, in which a fan winning an online contest will choose a spot here he believes Red Sox slugger David Ortiz can park one.
“Sacrilege,” they cry, to befoul the final season at the hallowed Yankee Stadium with such heresy.
The whole thing sounds pretty dopey to me, but leave it to the Yankees and their faithful followers to get up in arms about anything that has to do with the Boston team.
Oh, for the good old days.

Home Run Debry was a popular show back in the 1950s, pitting sluggers of the day mano-a-mano. in this episode, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays — two of the greatest centerfielders of all time and the source on constant debate among New York fans — face off. The repartee between the athletes and the announcers is embarrassingly amusing.

* The problem with sports journalism? It’s the athletes.

Pat Jordan, who wrote about the difficulties of trying to interview Jose Canseco on Deadspin.com, does it again for Slate.com, this time with Josh Beckett, who declined the honor of a New York Times’ profile.

This has become the curse of modern sports journalism. Writers and fans alike no longer get to know the object of their affections in a way they did years ago. Athletes see us as their adversaries, not as allies in their achievements. They are as much celebrities as rock stars and Hollywood actors are. They live insular lives behind a wall of publicists, agents, and lawyers. They don’t interact with fans or writers. They mingle only with other celebrities at Vegas boxing matches, South Beach nightclubs, and celebrity golf events, all behind red-velvet VIP ropes. We can only gawk at them as if at an exotic, endangered species at a zoo.

I’ve been trying to get a hold of Scott Schoeneweis, the New York Mets’ reliever, for a project at my day job. Every year we produce a “Source” magazine, a directory of services within the community for our readers. I’ve been writing the celebrity profiles for the last three issues, which have a unifying theme. This year it’s sports personalities from New Jersey; Schoeneweis is from Long Branch. Repeated requests for a brief telephone interview have yielded negative results. Whether it’s the Mets not wanting to be bothered or the ballplayer making the decision is impossible to tell from their responses.

Now I know we’re not the Times over here (not that such cachet did Jordan much good), but I would have hoped that Schoeneweis would have embraced the opportunity to reconnect with his old stomping grounds. Maybe he didn’t enjoy his time growing up in the Garden State.

A veteran sports writer I have chatted with bemoans the way things have changed for his profession. In the old days, he told me, players and writers were relatively equals when it came to salaries. This is obviously no longer the case and he felt that had a lot to do with the disconnect. And I imagine the demands on their time from all the new media can get a bit intrusive, especially when stories such as this make the front page. (By the way, NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, included this item in its May 25 program, available from iTunes or the WWDTM Web site (scroll down to Opening Panel Round /”Why the Yankees’ locker room is turning into a Giambi’s Secret store…” and click the link).

* Nitpick of the day: Living on the Black

(Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a regular feature.)

Reading the new book by John Feinstein. I’ve always enjoyed his work, especially on baseball and golf, but I came across this paragraph and it got my eyes rolling:

On page 155, Feinstein writes:

Joe Torre, who came up to the majors as a catcher, can still remember Birdie Tebbets starting for the Braves twice on two days’ rest in the 1957 World Series [emphasis added], a team his older brother Frank Torre played on.

There are problems on several levels (Thanks, again, Neyer!).

First off, by 1957, Tebbets, a catcher for 14 major league seasons, had been retired as an active player for five years. He was, at that point, manager of the Cincinnati Reds. (He later served in that capacity for the Braves for part of 1961 and all of 1962.)

So let’s assume that the player in question was actually Lew Burdette. You say Birdie, I say Burdette. Sounds similar, so maybe Feinstein misheard Torre, assuming that he actually interviewed him for this passage and wasn’t getting the info anecdotally (there’s no direct quote from the Yankees skipper). If that’s the case, a sportswriter of Feinstein’s caliber should have either pricked up his ears at the gaffe or checked its validity.

To continue…

Burdette was the MVP in the ‘57 Series, which was played against the Yankees. He won Game Two, which was played on Oct. 3. His next appearance, another win, was Oct. 7, which meant he had three days off. He won the finale on Oct. 10, the only occurrence of two days’ rest. (By the way, the scenario almost repeated the following year: Burdette pitched in Game Two on Oct. 2, Game Five on Oct. 6 (three days’ rest), and Game Seven on Oct. 9 (two days).

So someone got both the personnel and temporal facts wrong. The question is, who?

Who is responsible for getting the information right? Torre? Feinstein? After reading Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Myths, it could be simply a case of Torre misremembering rather than embellishing. But, again, shouldn’t the author have checked? Did he think Torre would have been insulted to have his recollection doubted?

Perhaps it is the editor’s responsibility to fact-check? Did she or he think Feinstein — based on his best-selling author reputation — couldn’t have made such a mistake or would be insulted by being questioned about the discrepancy?

The problem I always have in such situations: if I caught this one glitch, are there others I missed?

* Baseball book roundup: The Palm Springs (CA) Desert Sun

A set of mini-reviews, mostly of older titles, from the Desert Sun, including:

• Playing With The Enemy, A Baseball Prodigy, A World at War and a Field of Broken Dreams, by Gary Moore.
• Teammates, A Portrait of a Friendship, by David Halberstram.
• Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss.
• The ERA, 1947-1957 When The Yankees, The Giants and The Dodgers Ruled The World, By Roger Kahn.
• Hank Greenberg, The Story of My Life, by Hank Greenberg.
• The Big Bam, The Life And Times of Babe Ruth, by Leigh Montville.
• Baseball Dynasties, The Greatest Teams of All-Time, by Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein.

Is there any rhyme or reason to these selections? Hard to tell, the writer — Peter Donovan — offers no introductory note other than “some summer baseball reading.” Except for the Clemente and Ruth biographies, they seem to all consider baseball during and immediately after WW II. And sicne the folumn is dated May 22, it doesn’t seem to be in connection with Memorial Day.

Maybe I’m thinking too hard on this one.

* Review: The Comeback Season

From the Columbus Dispatch, this review of the new young adult fiction on love, loss, and baseball.

Upshot:

[Author Jennifer E. Smith] might be a rookie, but she hits a home run with a poignant and touching novel about hope, perseverance and the strength of the human spirit.

* Will Leech, er Leitch in the Times

Funny how the editor of Deadspin.com has such disdain against traditional journalism except when he seems to benefit from it. Case in point, his article on the Chicago Cubs in the New York Times‘ “Play” supplement. On the other hand, is the newspaper just as “guilty” of providing the forum?

I’m just askin’…

* Ban the Boo-birds

According to this op-ed piece in the May 25 New York Times, in which the writer claims booing the home town team is among the most traitorous of behaviors imaginable.

* Review: The End of Baseball

As reviewed on Stltoday.com, a St. Louis-based web site. The End of Baseball is a Bill Veeck-inspired historical fiction, which is on my shelf for near-future reading.

Upshot:

Mainly, as somebody in baseball puts it, “The End of Baseball” sails
straight down central. As somebody else in baseball used to say, it’s a
winner.

* Curses, Haunted Baseball again

The recent release of the Indiana Jones movie allows for the tangential connection with Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends and Eerie Events, wherein coauthor Mickey Bradley is interviewed for this piece in Newsday.

* Bits and pieces

Catching up a bit:

• Bob Murcer’s autobiography as reviewed on MLB.com
• The Griddle on Baseballtoaster.com considers Peter Morris’ latest, But Didn’t We Have Fun?
• wickedlocal.com, a Massachusetts Web site, reports on an appearance by author Jim Collins at a Cape Cod high school. Collins is the author of The Last Best League: One Summer, One Season, One Dream about the Chatham A’s 2002 season.
• As a reminder that baseball is not justed written abut on the major league level, Al Ogletree, a veteran college coach, pens his autobio in Take Two, Hit to Right, Slide Against the Wind: A Lifetime of Memories of the Pinstripe Teams of Coach Al; A Story of My Life.
• The New York Observer reviews The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball, Nicholas Dawidoff’s memoir of his “father’s mental illness with America’s favorite pastime.