* Home movies

I think a fantasy for every collector is to come across a rare item totally by accident: a garage sale in which the seller wants to get rid of some bit of memorabilia that used to belong to a dead uncle. A book long-forgotten in an attic corner. Or a cannister of grainy black-and-white film featuring the mighty Babe Ruth. Here’s the NY Times story, and a media piece from the paper.

And while, strictly speaking, this is a documentary rather than a home movie, it also features a long-gone legend, in this case Josh Gibson, who was often considered the black Ruth. The piece references William Brashler’s 1978 biography, Josh Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues. This article also features a brief video excerpt.

* RK reviews: Red Sox oldies but goodies

Wife and daughter are at the Sawx-Tigers game at the moment, so I thought it appropriate to haul these three reviews out of mothballs. All appeared in A Red Sox Journal, published by The Buffalo Head Society in the late 1990s.

* * *

Murder at Fenway Park, by Troy Soos. Kensington Publishing: NY. 1994

Imagine your first day as a member of the Boston Red Sox in 1912. You rush to Fenway, anxious to meet your new teammates and get back to the game you love after being released and written off the year before, a 19-year-old has been.

But your train arrives late. You’ve missed the game. Everyone is gone and there’s no one there to welcome you. No one, that is, but a bloody corpse. There’s been a Murder at Fenway Park and now you have to not only prove to the authorities that you’re not the murderer, but also keep from becoming the next victim.

Murder is the first in Troy Soos’ series of “historical murder mysteries” featuring Mickey Rawlings, journeyman ballplayer.

Off to this inauspicious start, Rawlings must contend with cops who want to arrest him, a team official who thinks news of the death would be bad for attendance, and teammates resentful of any new young player. He must also learn the art of investigation on the fly, as it were, if he’s to clear his name. Poor Mickey; all he wants from life is to bat .250 and play in a World Series.

While trying to find the real culprit, Rawlings discovers the murder is connected with the seamy world of gamblers and corruption, stemming from the 1910 batting crown race between Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie. The victim had been a pawn in that suspicious contest, which saw Lajoie win the title (and the trophy car that went with it) under questionable circumstances. Mickey’s crude investigations turn up a plethora of suspects, including Cobb himself. But when a second killing takes place, the evidence once again points at Rawlings and his time is running out.

Through all these distractions, Rawlings is nevertheless a ballplayer. 500s’ renderings of the games are a treat. The former research physicist at MIT painstakingly depicts Rawlings’ thought processes in his alert play in the field and as he takes his at bats against the likes of Walter Johnson and Jack Warhop. Soos’ eye for detail would make Ted Williams proud, not only in his depiction of the games, but of life in 1912 Boston as well.

Soos seamlessly blends in the players of the era and has no qualms about giving major roles to stars like Cobb and Hal Chase, another baseball bad boy of the day. He incorporates real events among the fictional, such as the sinking of the Titanic, a suffrage parade in New York, and Cobb’s suspension for beating a defenseless fan, which precipitated a one-day strike by his surprisingly supportive Tiger teammates.

Despite all his troubles, including finding some doctored evidence placed in his lodgings, Rawlings finds time to indulge in his favorite pastime, silent films. By attending the “flickers” he becomes reacquainted with a young lady who helps in his investigation and introduces him to Karl Landfors, a muckraking newspapem1an, who will become the Watson to Rawlings’ Holmes.

Subsequent installments in the Rawlings’ series include Murder at Ebbets Field, Murder at Wrigley Field (even though the Cubs’ ballpark wasn’t so named until years after the story setting), and, most recently Hunting a Detroit Tiger. Fans of both mystery and baseball will find all of these volumes entertaining. Soos’ fifth novel, The Cincinnati Red Stalkings, is due out next spring and the tireless author is already preparing the next adventure, which sees Rawlings in the uniform of the St. Louis Browns. Soos has also written a non-fiction book entitled Before the Curse: The Glory Days of New England Baseball, 1858-1918.

* Review: 7

From Bookchase, this review of Peter Golenbock’s roundly-panned fictional account of Mickey Mantle.

As a bonus, here’s a piece on a book that features a section on Babe Ruth, who

makes several appearances in The Given Day but it is in the book’s prologue that Lehane renders him most memorable. That section of the book, some twenty-seven pages long, in which Ruth and some other professional baseball players unexpectedly find themselves challenging a group of black amateur ballplayers to a game in the middle of nowhere, should be published as a short story on its own. It exposes the racism of the day and introduces both the Babe and Luther, all of it centered around one of the best descriptions of a baseball game I have ever read.

* It takes a big man to admit his mistakes…

And they don’t come much bigger than John Goodman.

“Babe Ruth (sic) is one of those things I wish I could go back and do over. It’s like being in that dream where you’re in the subway with no clothes on.”

Talking about his portrayal of the Yankee legend in The Babe (1992) in the January 2009 issue of Esquire.

* Fan mail

Dear Joe,

Welcome to LA.

Tommy Lasorda is thrilled about your arrival. Now you have someone to talk to in Italian. Too bad he canceled the parade for you, but when he found out he couldn’t be in the lead car… well, we all knew you’d understand. Hey, at least you don’t have to wash and wax Steinbrenner’s Rolls-Royce anymore, not to mention picking up the Boss’s dry cleaning.

But let’s talk baseball, because I think you’ve got the right attitude for the Dodgers. It took nerve to tell Frank McCord he couldn’t play in the outfield. It took guts to send the pitcing staff back to the Dominican Republic to work the sugarcane fields.

By the way, if you find yourself at a Hollywood party and things get a little wild, hit a few pop flies into the living room and yell, “I’m under it!”

If you meet big stars — say Leo DiCaprio — give him a Dodger hat and tell him to go away.

And if George Steinbrenner shows up, throw yourself on the floor and say, “George, what happened?”

I know you’re gonna do great for the Dodgers. If you don’t always have winning seasons, don’t worry — you can always go back to your old job tying up boats in Capri.

<signed> Your pal

Mr. Baseball

* * *

Dear Babe,

Everybody claims they were at the ballpark the day you hit your sixtieth home run, but I actually was there. My uncle Saul told me we had great seats, but we were so high up in the bleachers, pilots waved at us.

Didn’t mater. It was still a thrill. As the game went on, over the loudspeaker came the words, “NUMBER THREE…BABE RUTH!” I got so excited that my pants dropped off and fell three rows past the guy hawking cotton candy.

Suddenly a tremendous crack of the bat. Then a screeching sound. As I saw the ball zooming right at me, I knew this could be the souvenir of a lifetime. Unfortunately, I forgot my glove, so I hid under Uncle Saul. But he ducked, and the next thing I knew I was at Presbyterian Hospital mumbling, “Where’s the Babe?”

Hope this true story amuses you as you lounge on a fluffy cloud, eating a Baby Ruth.

<signed> Your biggest fan,

Don Rickles

From his new book Rickles’ Letters (Simon and Schuster)

* At the risk of tooting my own horn…

Thirteen years in the making.

In 1995, I delivered my first “scholarly paper.” It was at Hoftsra University’s centennial celebration of Babe Ruth’s birth and it was a hoot. I spent three days there, listening to all sorts of presentations, visiting exhibits and finally — nervously — making my own. My topic was “The Books on The Babe: The Later Biographies of George Herman Ruth.” The titles I analyzed included Robert Creamer’s Babe: The Legend Comes to Life; Marshall Smesler’s The Life That Ruth Built: A Biography; Babe Ruth and The American Dream, by Ken Sobel; and Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend, by Kal Waggenheim. I recall how nice everyone was to me, even though I certainly did not have their academic credentials.

One of the perks was that the conference organizers were going to take all the papers and publish them as a compendium.

Baseball and The “Sultan of Swat”: Babe Ruth at 100, edited by Robert N. Keane and published by AMS Press, arrived on my doorstep today.

I feel honored to be in such company. Among the names I recognize from the publishing world and the Society for American Baseball Research who also presented during the conference were Ron Briley, William Cahill, Victor Debs, Jr., Steven Gietschier; Stan Isaacs, Ray Robinson, Ken Shouler, Lyle Spatz, George Vecsey, and Peter Williams.

But better late than never? Perhaps not. Several other books on the Babe have been published since then, most notably Leigh Montville’s The Big Bam. Much of what I wrote back then is still applicable, but it just seems a bit outdated by newer material so it seems anti-climactic so long after the fact.

Still, after so many magazine articles, it’s kinda nice to see my work within a hard cover.

* In the name of the father

Julia Stevens, the daughter of Babe Ruth, recently appeared at a Las Vegas book store to promote her new book, Babe Ruth: Remembering The Bambino in Stories, Photos, and Memorabilia.

It was only seven years ago that she and her co-author, Bill Gilbert, published Major League Dad: A Daughter’s Cherished Memories. (Not to be confused with former MLB pitcher Tim Burke’s 1994 book, Major League Dad.)

One wonders what prompts a 92-year-old to produced a second book so relatively soon after the first. At the risk of coming across as cynical (who, me?) I continue to have a tough time with those whose only claim to fame is that they are the offspring of famous parents and seek to make buck off it.

I’m just sayin’.

* Now if we had instant replay back then…

Every now and again we have someone who brings up the question: Did Babe Ruth actually “call” his home run in the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs?

Many say no, some, like this gentleman, swear he did. Who’s to say? Grainy film of the event make it difficult to tell with absolute certainty. But I can say one thing: if this was happening in the current climate, you’d have 13 cameras fixed on his every twitch.

Did he or didn't he?

*Mr. Baseball, Esq.

In celebration of its 75th anniversary, Esquire magazine is running a series of — and on — “Page 75.” In the September issue we have a chance to recap several baseball stories that have run in the publication over the years including:

• “The Silent Season of a Hero,” by Gal Talese (July 1966)
• “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Nows?” by Richard Ben Cramer (June 1986)
• “The Homecoming of Willie Mays,” by Murray Kempton (September 1972)
• “The House That Munson Built,” by Michael Paterniti (September 1999)
• “Zimmer,” by Scott Raab (July 2001)
• “The Real Babe Ruth,” by Roger Kahn (August 1959)
• “Reggie Looks Back in Anger,” by Philip Taubman (March 1978)

For more on baseball items appearing in Esquire, see here. A caveat: as with most search engines, not everything included is 100% baseball.

* Author profile: Ray Negron

Newsday ran this piece on Negron, who has just published a kids’ book on Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson.