Announcement: New title chronicles history of baseball in Durham

From the Raleigh (NC) Chronicle:

An exhaustive 400 page book coming off the presses in March will
document the history of professional baseball in North Carolina and
also features Durham’s pivotal role in Tarheel baseball.

Entitled “Cradle of the Game”, the book’s author is Mark Cryan, who lives in Burlington. Cryan used to work in professional baseball for minor league executive Miles Wolff, who talks about his involvement in the baseball movie, “Bull Durham.” Cryan also worked as the general manager for the Burlington Indians.

Mini-Review: The Baseball Prospect Book 2008

From BaseballCrank.com, this brief but fervent recommendation for John Sickels’ annual book.

Author profiles: John and Rick Wolff, The Harvard Boys

I had an opportunity to pose a few questions about Harvard Boys with the father and son writing team of Rick and John Wolff, about life in the minors, parental advice, and the process of putting the book together. Their responses, via e-mail. :

Bookshelf: John, knowing what your dad went through, the difficulties he had, and the odds against an MLB career, why did you want to go through the same thing?

John Wolff: The difficulties in minor league baseball certainly add up and prevent many ballplayers from reaching their major league dream. Even though he didn’t make it, I respected my dad for trying and I wanted to do the same. I thought I could maybe pick up where he left off.

Not making it to the major leagues leaves any professional baseball player with a sense of inadequacy. However, when a ballplayer signs a contract there is a part of him that truly believes that he is going to be the one that defies the odds. I was drafted in the 47th round, which means that my odds of making the big leagues were less than slim to none. That being said, there was still a part of me that truly believed I could be the player who goes against the odds. I had to give it a shot.

Bookshelf: Did you rely a lot of your father’s experiences, or did you want to do things totally on your own?

JW: I tried as best as I could to build from my father’s experiences. I knew that I had to be a smart ballplayer because my talent would only take me so far. Ultimately, my father and I have different personalities and we were different players, so our experiences turned out to be very different.

I did enjoy doing things on my own and trying to be my own person. However, it was always nice to know that when I messed up I could always go back to my father and he would understand.

Bookshelf: Did your father offer a lot of unsolicited advice or was he respectful of wanting you to make your own decisions…and mistakes?

JW: The only time his advice was unwanted or unsolicited was usually immediately after a tough ballgame. As with any player, I didn’t enjoy recapping all my mistakes right after a game when my emotions were still running high. It usually took me a few hours … to calm down and then think about how to improve on my errors or strike outs. As it turned out, once I calmed down I ended up asking him for a ton of advice about how to handle the ups and downs. And in my short career, I had plenty of “downs.”

Bookshelf: What was it like, growing up as the son of a pro player? Did that put any extra pressure on you as a young athlete?

JW: I think it put some good pressure on me. I loved the idea that my dad played professionally when he was younger and I wanted to be just like him. It made me work hard to get better and reach the same level he did.

However, it was frustrating at times when his old teammates would tell me how much better or faster my dad was than me. I worked very hard to improve my foot speed but I was not blessed with the ability to fly like my dad on the base paths.

Bookshelf: I noticed that most of your entries could be considered “PG.” Was that a conscious decision? I’m sure you could have been more “earthy” if you had chosen.

JW: Yes, I tried to keep the book fairly PG. There were a lot of stories that were left on the cutting room floor. As you could imagine, the stories about drugs, girls, steroids, and other hot topics might have tainted the true message of the book. I wanted the book to be a positive story and depict the challenges of chasing a dream that was just slightly out of reach. I didn’t want to focus too much on the dark side that has been the in media so much very recently.

Bookshelf: Rick, How long have you been doing The Sports Edge?

Rick Wolff: I started the show on WFAN in February, 1999. 

Bookshelf: Were you extra cautious not to be too interfering because of a) the show, and b) your experience as a player. I’m sure you must have had at least a few frustrating experiences with youth coaches. How did you handle that?

RW: Yes, just like any other sports parent, I have encountered all sorts of frustrating situations with youth coaches over the years with my own kids. In truth, I have always tried to deal with coaches in a spirit of respect and cooperation. But I know first-hand how emotional parents can become when it comes to their kids in sports.

Bookshelf: Did you offer unsolicited advice to your son, or did you let him make his own mistakes?

RW: When John was very young, I would try and show him the basics of how to field a groundball, swing a bat, etc, but as he got older, he was able to find his own way. John was one of those rare kids who was extremely self-motivated and always wanted to improve his game.

Bookshelf: I’m very interested in the process of creating Harvard Boys. How did this project come about?

RW: Back in the mid-1970s, I kept a diary of my own minor league experiences, and that diary eventually became a book called What’s A Nice Harvard Boy Like You Doing In The Bushes?….It didn’t take too much creativity to see if John wanted to keep a diary of his first year in pro ball. But instead of writing it in letters home, he did via e-mails. It was great fun.

Bookshelf: How did you handle the writing? Did John start off and Rick added his comments? Some other way?

RW: John wrote the book day-to-day, and I added my comments and reflections as we went along.

Bookshelf: Who was your editor? Was he knowledgable about the game? Do you think that is an important factor? Can you think of specific example of how he improved something you had written and, conversely, something he suggested that you disagreed with?

RW: Mark Weinstein was our editor, and he did a terrific job in helping us shape the book. For example, we had a long discussion as to whether having two different voices in the book would work, and ultimately Mark, John and I agreed it would. We also had conversations about just how much detail and specific names would go into the book, and we were able to come up with compromises. In short, the editor played a significant role.

Review: Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventures Playing Minor League Basebll

Skyhorse Publishing, 2007

Rick Wolff hosts a straightforward radio show about youth sports on WFAN in the New York market. Many is the time I almost reached for the phone to put in my two cents on the topic of the day or ask advice concerning my own child’s situation.

So it was with great curiosity that I read Harvard Boys, written with Wolff’s son, John. I wondered if it might be a case of “Do as I say, not as I do”; that the senior Wolff preached fairness and inclusion on the show, but when it came to his own, he might whistle a different tune.

What a refreshing surprise, then, to have the son take the lead, telling his story of the struggles of the low affiliate player trying not only to improve and rise in the hierarchy, but simply to survive. It’s hard to remember that these kids — many not out of their teens at these levels — are on their own for the first time, trying to eke out a reasonable existence  with little money or “grown up” skills such as managing money or even doing laundry. One of the constant in minor league towns seems to be a constant boredom away from the field. The hours are lousy, the temptations, many. Keeping focus can be difficult. The juxtaposition of the generations is also noteworthy. If John and his cronies were constantly frustrated with their off time, how on earth did Rick and his contemporaries survive in an era before iPods, X-Box, and e-mail?

As John Wolff points out, most of these guys were superstars in youth leagues, high school, and college. But sports has its own trickle up theory; now comes the separation.

While John’s is the primary voice of Harvard Boys (and what are the odds of that whole  scenario?), Rick adds his commentaries, always supportive, never “I would have done it this way” (remember Karl Malden in Fear Strikes Out?).For most of the book, John seems to be progressing nicely, but, as he points out, none of that matters if you’re not on “the organization’s” radar.  The future franchise players  need teammates to play with, but the majority of these supernumeraries never makes it past the first couple of years.

We also realize the concept that “Man plans, God laughs.” It only takes a pebble on the infield to set the stage for a career-ending injury (although in John’s case it was shoulder problems). Thank goodness for that Harvard education.

The book is told in a “PG” manner. There’s no mention of drugs (recreational or performance-enhancing) or sex, which, in this TMZ day and age is amazing. And, at least for this reader, it didn’t detract anything from the story. I guess there are two guys out there who realize this is still a family-oriented game for the fans.