Baseball Books

Good stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_fXNLNzNuk

on Jim Brosnan and The Long Season:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/10/25/quit-thinking-you%E2%80%99re-hurting-the-club/

Neyer read the Piazza book so you don't have to

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2013/2/15/3991264/mike-piazzas-new-book-has-something-for-everyone

Found some good ones at a thrift-store sale today, all brand new:

MVP -- Robert W. Cohen (evaluates all the awards--looks to have a sabermetric bent)
Ty and the Babe -- Tom Stanton
High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for Fastest Pitcher of All Time -- Tim Wendel
The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated & Underrated Players in Baseball History -- Jayson Stark (going to start on this right away)
2012 Prospect Handbook -- Baseball America (I used to buy every Baseball America/Sporting News/Elias/STATS/etc. annual on the market when they were everywhere as remainders...the glut slowed down a few years ago)

I've never read Jayson Stark, but my impression was that he was someone worth reading. 40 pages into The Stark Truth, I don't think I've recoiled from a book this much since a Cintra Wilson collection I read a few years ago. I mean just him as a writer, never mind some of his over/underrated valuations. His jokes are so clunky and obvious, and he never lets up--he's got three terrible eating jokes in his Babe Ruth entry. And from what I've read and skimming ahead, he's got Kevin Brown, Tommy John, David Wells, Graig Nettles, Andruw Jones, and Bobby Abreu as overrated, and Roger Bresnahan, Todd Helton, Derek Jeter, and Pete Rose as underrated; putting my own feelings aside, wouldn't the general perception of those players be reversed? Lots of strawmen, too. Ron Blomberg is his #1 most overrated DH of all time...I remember Ron Blomberg--has anybody under 35 even heard of him?

Stuart Tanner on his new labor-centered book The Baseball Trust:

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2013/04_-_April/Q_A__Stuart_Banner_on_baseball_s_antitrust_carve-out/

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm101710363/pure-baseball-keith-hernandez-paperback-cover-art.jpg

This is terrific and can be had on the cheap. Watch two ball games with Keith. Great riff on the hit-and-run and inside pitching strategy.

Mathewson back on the shelves

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/10/christy-mathewson-and-the-thinking-mans-game.html

Re-reading Ball Four. Not for the first time, but the first in at least 20 years. Just got sent back to Vancouver--great as ever.

The one thing you can do now is check out some of Bouton's stories. There's one about both Tommy Davis (in the majors) and Phil Linz (in the minors) getting co-operation from the opposing catcher so they could preserve .300 averages for the season--in both instances, they get a hit.

I'll give Bouton a passing grade on that one, but just barely. He identifies the Davis season as when he was with the Mets, and sure enough, Davis did hit .302 that year, and went 1-3 for the final game. But it didn't come down to the last AB; he doubled in his second AB, then grounded out in the 4th, then got pulled. Technically, he could have gone 0-3 and still would have rounded to .300. More important: the story is told as Davis's old friend John Roseboro doing him a favor, but Jeff Torborg caught that game--Roseboro only pinch-hit after Davis was gone. As far as Linz goes, the only minor-league season he had that was close to .300 was .298 in 1959. I can see where minor-league stats might have been very unreliable then, and something got revised later on. Otherwise, the story is based on something that never happened.

print the legend

I was at the documentary festival this afternoon, waiting for a film to start, when the guy beside me noticed my copy of Ball Four. "Good book"--said he'd read it long ago.

Earlier, as I stood in line outside, I started giggling out loud at this part:

The kids beat the fathers 40-0, and Sibby Sisti said, "Forty runs, for crissakes, and nobody gets knocked down." And McNertney said he was standing next to Sal Maglie during the game and swore he heard Sal saying, "He's a first-ball hitter"--"a high-ball hitter"--"a fastball hitter"--and none of the kids was over four feet tall.

If you post on ILB and have never read it, order a copy tonight from AbeBooks or somewhere.

I can't believe you hadn't read it in over 20 years. I think I last read it about 3-4 years ago, but it's the kind of book I feel like I should be reading every year when spring training starts.

I saw Sibby Sisti at a SABR convention (before he died, as Yogi wd say)

That's great. Bouton goes fairly easy on Sisti, who's just there to qualify for a pension.

One thing I'm really noticing this time is how the book is like a blueprint for sabermetrics to a degree. First of all in a general sense--questioning conventional wisdom at every turn (I think Ball Four helped me get ready for the Abstracts--but also in some specifics. Bouton talks about how wedded writers are to a pitcher's W-L record, and how it doesn't matter how you're actually pitching--pitch well for a month and win nothing, then win a game giving up six runs, and the writers will be there to ask when you started to turn things around. Also, at one point, he talks about the mindset of a professional player, and how in a key situation he'll say, "I've been here before; I've succeeded and I've failed, and none of that has any bearing on this particular at-bat." You could easily translate that as skepticism about the idea of clutch hitters.

He ridicules a lot of dumb sports cliches but I wouldn't go that far. There are many 2 IP, 2 H, 2BB, 0 ER appearances that he calls "good" or "excellent". He pitches into trouble, escapes without giving up a run, and sees it as a job well done, which isn't really true, especially for relievers.

I was curious about that, so I added up the most basic totals for his excellent and good outings. (If you haven't read the book, Bouton has a detailed personal game log at the back, with a rating for each appearance as excellent/good/fair/poor.) The numbers are microscopic in my old paperback, so hopefully this is accurate.

In the aggregate, at least, his designation of excellents is spot-on, I think:

IP - 72.1
H - 33
BB - 19
K - 59
ER - 4
ERA - 0.50
H/9 - 4.11
KK/BB - 3.11

He's looser with his definition of good, agreed, but I don't think it's that unreasonable a description:

IP - 24.2
H - 22
BB - 8
K - 19
ER - 7
ERA - 2.55
H/9 - 8.03
K/BB - 2.38

Also, when Bouton talks about giving up hits throughout the book, he's often very specific about which ones were cheap hits and which ones were clean. Is that partly where all the work being done on defense right now resides? (An actual question--I don't know.)

Anyway, I think it depends on what sabermetrics means to you. If it means WAR and BABIP and UZR, then no, Bouton has nothing to do with sabermetrics. How could he? A player, much less a player in 1969, doesn't think that way.

But to me there's a direct line from Bouton to James in the more general sense I described above: "Everyone says this is true--it is actually true?" That's everywhere in Ball Four, just like in the Abstracts.

"is it" in the last line...if I manage to get through a post without a typo, other gremlins take over.

Holy crap, nice work. I checked my copy of the book, and you're right, there are some questionable decisions over whether to call an appearance "excellent" or "good" or whatever, but in the aggregate, his designations are justified.

I didn't mean that Bouton anticipated the use of complicated statistics but it's true that he tended to analyze his performances on a batter by batter basis, rather than just looking at the linescore for the day. An outing where you retire five straight batters but make a mistake to the sixth and he hits it out could still qualify as a very good outing, even though 1 ER in 2 IP might not look impressive. He certainly knows it's different than 4 H, 1 ER, 2 IP and getting out of a jam when the defense turns a double play. He also tracks inherited runners scored (and understands why it's important for relievers), which was likely somewhat revolutionary for the time.

I should have tracked inherited runners, too--that would have figured into his rating for each outing. The other big factor is the knuckleball. He tends not to penalize himself too much for walks, as one of the ongoing stories in the book is how he's trying to discipline himself not to give in and throw a fastball (which he doesn't have anymore) when he's behind in the count, unless it's a Dal Maxvill or a pitcher at the plate. He almost considers it a moral victory when he walks a good hitter on a 3-1 knuckleball.

Just loved the book this time around. Beyond the baseball, it's such a document of the culture. On the war and on race, Bouton's great. I'd give him a pass on the book's treatment of women--there's the crude sex stuff (usually really funny), yes, and I could see where that would bother people, but in the way he talks about his own wife and daughter, very thoughtful. The one area where it's typical of it's day is in its treatment of homosexuality. Not hateful or anything, just a very dated kind of humour. That only comes up two or three times.

jason grilli 'wrote' a book

guess i won't be too sad when his regression to suckitude soon gets him dfa'd

http://www.bucsdugout.com/2014/5/12/5706120/book-review-jason-grillis-hilariously-narcissistic-just-my-game

http://www.timwendel.com/images/SummerCover-210.jpg

Excellent. Wendel spends more than a third of the book on the world out there--I wouldn't want a baseball book on 1968 to do anything but. But he makes the connections back to baseball well. Example: I never knew that RFK's assassination was so divisive within MLB as to how it should be handled. Some players sat out the next day, most played; of those who sat out, sometimes management looked the other way, sometimes not. Milt Pappas was very militant, and after an on-field confrontation with his GM, he stepped down as player rep. A week or two later he was traded. No connection, promised the GM. Another: the Astros in to play the Cubs in August during the Democratic convention, Larry Dierker watching the chaos below from his hotel window.

Everyone knows Drysdale's scoreless streak in '68, but both Gibson and Tiant made at run at the record themselves. Gibson got to 47 innings, Tiant (whose streak preceded Drysdale's) to 41. A couple of big fights are documented, including one involving Tommy John and Dick McAuliffe: "...order was soon restored. That's when everybody noticed John holding his left arm. Afterward, it would be determined that he had suffered torn ligaments in his pitching shoulder." Good writer that he is, Wendel leaves it at that.

Great World Series at the end, and a couple of famous plays: Brock getting thrown out at home in Game 5 (Cardinals were 3-1 at that point), and Jim Northrup's triple in Game 7 to put the Tigers ahead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU6jXgINHZA

Flood said he misplayed the ball and should have had it, Gibson and all the other players (both sides) stuck up for him. I don't know...I'd have to say I agree with Flood.

Okay, back to the present.

i read 'the art of fielding' chad harbach book, it is v good; is more a novel w/ baseball in it than a 'baseball novel' or w/e but its well done, maybe justifying its bidding war

Just joined a Facebook group devoted to Ball Four. For acolytes only, it would seem--as I scrolled through, spotted a post on the death of Greg Goosen's brother.

I've been reading a collection of Ring Lardner's baseball-themed short stories and they are really delightful. The You Know Me Al series and all the others.

Rob Neyer has something up on Ball Four:

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/ball-four-jim-bouton-45th-anniversary-062215

i was just thinking about Steve Hovley the other day, baseball player who seemed to have figured out how to live:

Steve Hovley was dancing to a tune on the radio and somebody yelled, "Hove, dancing is just not your thing."
"Do you mind if I decide what my thing is?" Hovley said.
So I asked him what his thing was. "I like sensual things," he said. "Eating, sleeping. I like showers and I like flowers and I like riding my bike."
"You have a bike with you?"
"Certainly. I rent one. And I ride past a field of sheep on the way to the park every day and a field of alfalfa, and sometimes I get off my bike and lie down in it. A field of alfalfa is a great place to lie down and look up at the sky."
I sure wish Hovley would make the team.

One of my favourite guys in the book. Still alive--70. You've inspired me to sponsor his B-Ref page, with a quote from your excerpt. (Will probably take a day or two to get processed.)

Has anybody here read Jim Brosnan’s "The Long Season" or Jerry Kramer’s "Instant Replay", the two books mentioned by Neyer that predate Bouton's?

I read The Long Season a few years after I first read Ball Four. I vaguely remember that I understood why it was considered a precursor to Bouton, but that it wasn't nearly as funny--didn't try to be--and that as a critique of the game's inanities, it was fairly mild. Long time ago--maybe I'd like it better today.

I'm about halfway through Steven Travers' Tom Seaver book, The Last Icon. It's pretty good. I read John Devaney's Seaver book as a kid, so I'm familiar with the basic outline of his story, like the game in 1970 where he crossed up Grote, blew a lead in the 9th, and went into a tailspin.

Bizarre hype from Travers in describing that game:

"It was a terrible double whammy of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory; a sure 18-6 record on the road to 30 wins instead of now a 17-7 mark..." Earlier on the same page, he says that Seaver "stood an excellent chance of winning those additional 13 games." (All of this is predicated on Seaver's announced intention, before the season, to try to win 30.)

The game in question was the Mets' 118th that year. Hodges had switched back to a four-man rotation, meaning that Seaver would get 11 more starts the rest of the way. Now, if he doesn't lose that game, and then goes 11-0 to finish up--which of course is really easy to do--he ends up with 29 wins. So all he had to do was win 12 of his remaining 11 starts.

"Excellent chance," yes.

This Seaver book (almost finished) is something else. I've never read a baseball biography where the writer whines so much about how mistreated his subject was (particularly in regards to awards). Conceding that Seaver was one of those players (like Mays, Bonds, Pujols) who was shortchanged because of the shiny-object aspect of awards voting, this guy's positively vindictive at times, as in the ridicule he heaps on Randy Jones over the '76 Cy: "A soft-tossing southpaw from Brea, California, named Randy Jones of the San Diego Padres, a figure barely recalled by history who could also not carry Seaver's dirty jockstrap...Seaver was the best pitcher in the game before Jones arrived and was still the best pitcher in baseball five years later when Jones was 1-8, on his last legs."

Is this really necessary over an almost 40-year-old vote? Jones was 22-14, with a 2.74 ERA, and pitched 315 innings for a 73-win team that year. Seaver was the better pitcher that year, but I wouldn't call it lopsided or anything (5.5 - 4.8 for Seaver in WAR). He doesn't mention Jones in connection with the '75 vote, which Seaver won; Jones was 20-12, 2.24, for a a 71-win team. Randy Jones was damn good for those two years. With regards to '81, he actually says Fernando won a "politically correct vote, as much affirmative action for his role as a Mexican as it was for great pitching." (Surprised the publisher allowed "affirmative action" to stand.) That's another close call that could have defensibly gone either way. And for what it's worth, WAR gives it to Fernando 4.8 - 4.0.

Had the idea that I might write this guy (Steven Travers) via Facebook taking issue with his dismissals of Jones and Valenzuela. Probably not worth the effort: his wall is filled with hard-right links to Dinesh D'Souza, Trump, and lots of fringe hysteria. (The Fernando comment aside, I really didn't expect that.) Partly that makes me want to write even more, but I'll likely pass.

Found a 1993 Barnes & Noble reissue of Ball Four today for $10. Hardcover, perfect shape, with the plastic slipcase still on. When I opened it up, jackpot!

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/cover_zpswmw9uhvv.jpg
http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/signature_zpsmb3qbjpt.jpg

Halfway in, I'm really enjoying Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose by Michael Sokolove. Fascinating character, from this 80s baby's perspective.

http://www.si.com/mlb/2016/03/28/book-excerpt-the-arm-jeff-passan-tommy-john-surgery

Youth travel baseball has become at least a nine-figure industry, preying on parents’ insatiable desire to secure college scholarships and high-paying major league futures for their children. In 2015, Perfect Game held more than a dozen events for nine-and-under teams. The same year the U.S. Specialty Sports Association, a governing body for slo-pitch softball that worked its way into amateur baseball, ranked 30 four-and-under teams -- as in, preschoolers.

http://665880566.r.lightningbase-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/00000000-david-Duchovny-bucky-dent.jpg

At last received my preordered copy of Lindbergh and Miller's book about saber-running the Sonoma Stompers last year. I've only read the prologue, which is good.

http://theonlyruleisithastowork.com/

I'm thinking about buying this. Would love to hear more thoughts if you'd care to post any

it's fun; got halfway in about an afternoon of straight reading but I put it down bc work n such. very brisk read and am more interested in the expanded website offerings tbh

http://www.amazon.com/Class-Baseball-Everywhere-Lucas-Mann/dp/0307949753

this one is a good read^

i'm about 130 pp in The Only Rule, wd recommend.

I have learned

-players smoke weed and distrust tobacco smokers
-scouts refer to a prominent, sculpted behind as "baseball butt"

Feh is a hilarious character.

It's making the NYT bestseller list. Had a brief chat w/ Ben L last night, gave him a little grief for letting Sean Conroy throw 140 pitches.

RIP WP Kinsella

Kinsella's Iowa Baseball Confederacy is terrible, too...

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, June 17, 2004

can anyone confirm?

I saw Jim Bouton and his wife speak at the SABR convention today on a panel dedicated to him. He acquitted himself well and wittily, given the post-stroke hardships detailed here:

Bouton’s body was largely unaffected by the stroke. But his mind, the one whose pointed and poignant observations produced the classic memoir “Ball Four” in 1970, will never be the same. This weekend in New York, at the convention for the Society of American Baseball Research, Bouton went public about his brain disease: cerebral amyloid angiopathy, which is linked to dementia.

Bouton had a smaller stroke before his 2012 episode, which was treated immediately with blood thinner. That was “catastrophic,” said Dr. Alec Kloman, a neurologist at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Mass., and led to a hemorrhage in the frontal lobe. The hemorrhage dissipated, but in the aftermath, Bouton’s language skills were essentially wiped out. He had to relearn how to read, write, speak and understand.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/sports/baseball/jim-bouton-brain-disease.html

Nice to hear that. Re: Iowa Baseball Confederacy, I read it long ago, I wouldn't say it's terrible, but it is completely fucking nuts.

Just started Posnanski's book on the '75 Reds. Great intro, where he goes through the everyday lineup player by player--even now, not sure if there's been a deeper starting eight since (starting with Morgan and Bench, where you almost certainly have the best post-war players at their positions). Eye-opening: Tony Perez's signing bonus in 1960 as an eighteen-year-old out of Cuba, $2.50. I know about inflation, but...

Gleaned from the above:

1) Before the '75 season, the Royals almost traded George Brett to the Reds straight up for Tony Perez. Brett was 21, a second-round pick, and had just finished third in ROY voting; Perez was 32 and coming off a mediocre season. According to Joe, the Royals backed out of the trade. Maybe even more than a lot of infamous trades that were made, this tells you a lot about the thinking then about established stars (put aside that Perez was somewhat overrated) vs. young players.

2) The night before the 1970 All-Star Game, Pete Rose had Ray Fosse over for dinner. Never knew that.

The Jays are nowhere, my favourite players are hurt or hurting, the past beckons.

Something about 1975 I have no recollection of: the attempt to make a big deal out of who would score baseball's one millionth run. Communications being what they were then, there ended up being some uncertainty, when it finally happened, about whether it was scored by Bob Watson or Dave Concepcion (early May). They credited it to Watson (years later, they retroactively switched to someone else entirely).

Tootsie Rolls had a big contest around the run, with money and prizes to both the player and fans who guessed correctly. Posnanski digs up a quote from the Tootsie Rolls VP:

"I was glad to hear (Watson)'s a clean-living athlete. We have to keep the image--good for kids, good for Tootsie Rolls. I know he's not blond and blue-eyed, but he's my kind of an All-American."

I'm sure Watson was thrilled with such a testimonial...Odd to see the Reds presented as the personification of All-Americanism in the book (no long hair, no mustaches) next to the Dodgers (scruffy third baseman, iconoclastic closer). Not that the Reds weren't, but by the '77 and '78 World Series, the Dodgers inherited that role when contrasted with the Martin-Jackson-Munson Yankees.

Well worth reading. The afterword, which is partly Joe explaining why he thinks the '75/76 Reds were the best team ever, but which is mostly him explaining why he wrote the book, is especially beautiful. It sums up why Posnanski and James and Rob Neyer and a few others are my favourite baseball writers: they can hold two thoughts in their mind at once, and since one of them they assume you already know, they're okay with still writing about the other one as fans.

Good backdrop for the Dodgers' season. The Reds were 18-19 when they bottomed out mid-May; they went 90-35 the rest of the way, .720 baseball. Looks like the Dodgers will blow past them: 11-12 late April, 68-20 since, .773. Man for man, I don't know--depends too on whether you'd only compare them 1975 vs. 2017, or whether you'd pull back a little bit.

About halfway through the Jaffe HOF book. Another improbable feud, one I didn't know about, joining Abbott and Costello, the Everly Brothers, Sam and Dave, and Joey and Johnny: Tinker and Evers argued over a cab in 1905 and didn't exchange another civil word for 30 years. And this from the pre-launch-angle universe:

"(Grich) experimented with his swing during the spring, emulating new teammate Rod Carew's wrist action so as to produce more topspin, and raising his hands. Via Sports Illustrated's Joe Jares, 'He stands deep in the batter's box and holds his hands near his right ear, which he feels has eliminated his old uppercut swing that produced far too many strikeouts and fly balls.'"