* RK author profile: Troy Soos

Apropos of the interview I did with Favorite PASTimes, here’s a profile on Troy Soos, author of the Mickey Rawlings series of historical baseball mysteries, I did for the Summer 1998 edition of The Mystery Review, a defunct Canadian publication.

* * *

The manicured grass of the baseball field doesn’t grow under Troy Soos’ feet. The Cincinnati Red Stalkings, the fifth in the Mickey Rawlings mystery series (Kensington Books), is due out this spring. And he’s already working on his next book. And the one after that.

Mixing well-researched fact with fiction, Soos depicts the travels and travails of Mickey Rawlings, a journeyman ballplayer in the early 20th century. Rawlings possesses a keen mind, if mediocre athletic skills. He must contend not only with the tenuous nature of the athlete’s career, with all its peculiarities and Runyonesque characters, but with becoming enmeshed in the murders that somehow crop up at each of his venues.

As a young man, Rawlings left home to pursue his dream to become a professional ballplayer. His journeys took him to factory towns where work was often secondary to playing for the company team. He caught the eyes of major league scouts and wound up on the Boston Braves of 1911, only to be released after the season. He hooked up with the crosstown Red Sox, where his exploits begin.

In his debut, Rawlings must deal with a Murder at Fenway Park. By the time his train arrives in Boston, he’s missed his first game with his new team. Except for the guard who lets him in, there’s no one left to greet him as he wanders the tunnels of the new stadium – no one except a bloody corpse. Now he has to prove to the authorities thathe’s not the murderer. Before long he will also need to be wary not to become the next victim.

During a recen t conversation with Soos from his home in Winter Park, Florida, the author discussed the complexities of the historical mystery novel.

Soos was born in New Jersey in 1957, two weeks after the Brooklyn Dodgers migrated to the West Coast. He attended his first major league game in 1963, primarily to see Duke Snider, a former Dodger winding down his career with the fledgling New York Mets. Watching his idol sparked a lifelong interest, not in modern baseball, but in the game’s history.

* Bits and Pieces

Time to play a little catch-up:

• From Pressboxonline.com, a Baltimore-sports oriented site, a review of Bert Randolph Sugar’s new coffee table book about the Hall of Fame. “[The author] left nothing out and I can’t think of a better way to educate those whom are grasping for a better understanding of baseball’s history than to give Sugar’s account a long look.”
• From the Magazine History blog, this entry about early articles on  the new national game.
• From the Illinois-based Beacon News, a profile of first-time author John O’Donnell and his new book, Like Night and Day: A Look at Chicago Baseball 1964-1969.
• From NewJerseyNewsRoom, this Q & A with Curt Smith, author of the new Vin Scully biography. Smith will be at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls on Sunday, June 28, at 4 p.m.
• Via a roundabout path, here’s a great piece by Robert Lipsyte on the spate of new books on baseball and steroids, including the usual titles (American Icon, The Rocket That Fell to Earther, A-Rod, Cooperstown Confidential, The Yankee Years, and more).
• Mark Lamster reviews Michael Shapiro’s Bottom of the Ninth in the Los Angeles Times. “Shapiro… does an admirable job telling this complex story. His biographical sketches of Rickey and Webb are especially compelling. But a sausage story is not always the most compelling of reads, and to inoculate himself against that reality, Shapiro has larded up this one by interspersing a second narrative, the story of Stengel’s final years with the Yankees, which is of little relation to the primary action of the book. It’s less than ideal, but Rickey, always an optimist, might have put a positive spin on it: Two stories for the price of one.”

* Review: Sweet Lou and The Cubs: A Year Inside the Dugout

By George Castle (Lyons Press)

As per the Seattle Times.

First LaRussa, then Torre, now Pinella?

Upshot: “[R]eaders will find a different Piniella than the man who managed the Mariners to four postseason appearances.”

* “Hello, is this the legal department?”

I have a copyright infringement issue.

In describing the final weekend of the NFL regular season, the Dec. 29 digital issue Sporting News Today caries the headline “Crazy ‘08.”

Problem is, that title was already taken, by Cait Murphy in her excellent book about the Chicago Cubs.

No doubt this was meant as an homage by TSN.

* RK Review: We Are Cubs Fans

An Unofficial Journal of Baseball’s Best Fans, Volume #1 By Will Byington

It takes a special person to be a Cubs fan. With such a rich history of failure and disappointment, some would call them masochists, but looking at the photos and reading the stories in Byington’s new book, they seem happy enough. (Of course, there are several shots of people with beer…)

This is a collaborative effort. Byington enlisted comments and pictures from his fellow fanatics, supplementing them with his own photographs.  Some of the stories are standard: Having Gramps take you to your first game, meeting your future spouse, the simple pleasure of a hot sunny summer day in the best place in the world to take in a game, but that doesn’t diminish the extended pleasure of shared joy. Offhand, I can’t recall any shots of players in the book; it’s all about the team’s rooters.

Byington is already thinking ahead: the coffee-table book includes a postcard for readers to offer their own Cubs memories for Volume #2. They can also write and submit photos online at www.wearecubsfans.com.

* (Baseball) stuff white people like

From the blog:

• Wrigley Field

And from the book by the same name:

The Boston Red Sox

Though many would argue that the Chicago Cubs are the top club for white people, the Boston Red Sox remain the undisputed white franchise. In fact, were it not for the players, there would be no recorded instances of a person of color wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey.

White people love the Red Sox for a number of very important reasons, one of which is the fact that they play in Fenway Park, one of baseball’s oldest and most iconic stadiums. This is viewed as the professional-sports equivalent of living in a Victorian house or a converted loft, both of which are highly desirable in the white community.

Though they are officialy named the Boston Red Sox, the team is beloved by all of New England, including the popular white-people states of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. This gives them more white coverage than any other franchise in baseball, beating out the Seattle Mariners.

Sadly, in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and in the process lost something more highly prized by white people than success: character. Prior to that date the franchsie was afflicted by the “Curse of the Bambino,” brought on when a cheap owner sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. The loss was a great one for white people, who for almost a century would tell it to anyone who would listen.

When dealing with a Red Sox fan, it is not hard to start a pleasant conversation. Just mention the team and they will likely tell you stories about how much they love the Red Sox and how the team used to break their heart every year. In fact the only ways you can upset a Red Sox fan are by mentioning that you like the Yankees or that they were the last Major League team to integrate. But mentioning the Yankees is still worse.

* As predicted: Cubs books

Rick Brimeyer gets dibs. His journal of the season, Every Hundred Years: A Typical Cubs Fan Chronicles an Atypical Season, was just waiting for the final shoe to drop, the last nail go into the coffin, the…well, you get the idea.

The Freeport (IL) Journal-Standard ran this story on Brimeyer.

Brimeyer wants his book, a chronological take on each Cub game of the season with stories of Cub lore filling the off-days, to lift the spirits of fans (emphasis added). He maintained a game-by-game journal throughout the season and has deliberately focused his book on the positive, outstanding plays incorporating entertaining and humorous things that happened.

Yeah, good luck with that.

But seriously, good luck to Brimeyer, who will use the proceeds to help pay his brother-in-laws medical bills.

The book is priced at $14.95 with a $5 shipping and handling fee. There is no sales tax outside of Iowa, Brimeyer said. Orders may be placed by sending checks and return address to: Rick Brimeyer, 2615 Southridge Circle, Ames, IA 50014.

* Let the post-season publishing begin

From a Business Wire press release:

The Chicago Sun-Times is proud to announce the publication of its stunning 84-page color glossy commemorative magazine, The Cubs: Their Thrilling 2008 Season, that catches the best of the thrilling 2008 season, as well as recaptures what it’s taken to get to where the Cubs are today.

The Cubs: Their Thrilling 2008 Season is a special collectible magazine that allows fans to relive highlights through stories and photos from this season and the last 100 years. Relive Carlos Zambrano’s no-hitter against the Houston Astros in the game moved to Milwaukee because of Hurricane Ike; take a look at the 10 season-shaping games of the season as analyzed by the Sun-Times’ top-notch sports writers, the best in Chicago and in the nation; and don’t miss the eloquent introduction by star Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander, who beautifully sums up the joy of this season.

The Cubs: Their Thrilling 2008 Season also looks at the last 100 years, decade by decade, reminiscing about great players and managers including Ernie Banks, Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, Mark Grace, Fergie Jenkins, Ryne Sandberg, Ron Santo, Hack Wilson and Billy Williams.

So if the Cubs are eliminated in the first round of playoffs, will there be a revised edition? Sounds like the rush to publish all those books about Yankee Stadium before the final season was over.

* This week (Sept. 29) in Sports Illustrated

http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/si_online/covers/images/2008/0929_mid.jpgAfter a lengthy absence, baseball takes its rightful place on the cover with a story about Wrigley Field.

Other baseball items include:

That’s right, there are none.

* An anniversary some would rather forget

Fans have been talking incessantly about the Cubs’ failure to win a World Championship in the last 100 years. What often goes overlooked is how they got to that one. If it weren’t for the infamous baserunning blunder by a New York Giants rookie (actually playing in his second season), the Cubs’ futility record would be even longer.

Sept. 23 marks the 100th anniversary of Merkle’s Boner.

Several outlets are marking the occasion, so I won’t delve into detail here. Rather read the articles from the Peoria Journal Star, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and the Watertown (Wisc.) Daily Times. The last item mentions that ESPN will be posting a story today, which was not available as of “post time.”

For more on the Cubs 1908 season, read the excellent Crazy ‘08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, by Cait Murphy.