Baseball Books

that's one crazy guitar chord

that's one crazy guitar chord

you can say that again!

From the Dan Epstein 1976 book: when the Angels brought Tommy Davis out of retirement in June, he was working as a promo guy for Casablanca Records (just taking off with Destroyer and "Love to Love You Baby"). Dick Williams would catch him shaving and making phone calls between innings. (For some truly inscrutable MVP support, look at Davis's 10th place finish in '73. He was a DH who slugged under .400.)

Neyer is the guest on the latest EW podcast (2nd half)

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/effectively-wild-episode-1291-power-ball-to-the-people/

A couple more from Epstein (there's no end to them).

Long relief: Dick Tidrow relieves Ed Figueroa in the 7th inning of a 4-4 game vs. the Twins. He pitches 10.2 innings, gives up four hits and no runs.

Most highbrow promotion ever: Bill Veeck's "Ragtime Night," where they give away 10,000 copies of E.L. Doctorow's novel.

Two things I took away from the Epstein book:

1) How contentious player-manager relationships could be through the '70s. It was such a regular thing for players to badmouth their managers publically. Most of the managers were still old-school autocrats, and they'd often try to enforce dress codes and haircuts and whatever they felt like; on top of that, big money was starting to creep in, baseball was catching up to the contentiousness of the '60s, and managers fought (and resented) that. You hardly ever hear about player-manager friction anymore. (I don't think, anyway--am I wrong on that?) Managers had to adapt. I don't know who the last old-school-type manager was...Pinella?

2) That, in his own bumbling way--and based on personal vendetta--Kuhn might have accidentally made the right call on Charlie Finley's rebuked fire sale. (That's my opinion, not Epstein's.) Legally, Kuhn had no standing whatsoever--as Finley pointed out (to no avail), owners had been selling off players forever. But this was just as free agency was about to kick in. I wonder if it would have been too much shock to the system all at once. I can see where all the other owners, panicked over the loss of the reserve clause, might have followed Finley's lead and automatically tried to sell anybody and everybody playing out his contract (partly as a punitive measure). I don't know--but I can see where player movement for those first couple of years might have been so drastic that teams would have been unrecognizable from year to year. Everything would have sorted itself out soon enough, I suppose, but, to use that deathless phrase, I'm not sure if selling off Blue, Fingers, and Rudi would have been in the best interests of the game, at least in the short term.

Let's go with revoked fire sale instead.

Selig cancelled that loan from FOX to Frank McCourt that more or less forced his hand in selling the Dodgers (for $2B -- even when the bad guys lose, sometimes they still win). Legally it was questionable but the commissioner does have the power to do things in "the best interest of baseball". Finley didn't really need the money, but he liked treating his players as cattle, even more so than regular owners. Kuhn's decision can't be viewed in a vacuum, it was the culmination of more than a decade of the league having the deal with Finley's BS, despite the fact that the team was very successful on the field (the Dodgers made the playoffs a bunch of times under McCourt's ownership too). But I really don't think Kuhn cared about avoiding a "shock to the system", he just wanted to hurt Finley. Kuhn was way behind the times on every labour issue of his tenure, I can't credit him with the foresight of "easing" MLB into the free agency era.

Don't disagree at all about Kuhn's motives (I said as much in my first sentence)--he wanted to fuck over Finley, pure and simple. If it had been O'Malley or Yawkey or one of the old-guard owners making the sale, Kuhn wouldn't have intervened. I just think he did the right thing--or at least, at that moment in time, the best thing--for the wrong reasons. If that sale had gone through, I think it would have been a couple of years of bedlam.

Right, although I'm saying that even if the sales had been "bad for baseball" and led to a couple of years of bedlam (which I don't agree with), Kuhn would have made his move anyway because he never grasped what was good or bad for baseball in any context.

Started Jeff Katz's Split Season: 1981, the book I mentioned above. One of the big appeals of such books for me is taking note of major changes in the game. (Major changes from what seems like recent history--obviously such changes would be obvious if you read a book about Ted Williams or Cy Young.) Three for the few pages Katz spends on Len Barker's perfect game:

-- Barker was considered a hard thrower, sometimes erratically so; his fastball was clocked at 91 m.p.h.

-- Cleveland's PR guy had to get special permission from management to allow the Toronto Star's Alison Gordon into the clubhouse after the game.

-- The same PR guy arranged for the Today Show's Bryant Gumbel to speak to Barker the next morning (this had been the first perfect game since Catfish Hunter in 1968--it was national news). Barker cancelled because he wanted to sleep in. I'm trying to imagine a player today turning down a similar chance to (as I heard some YouTube analyst creepily say the other day) "leverage his brand."

A couple of show-biz anecdotes from the split-season book:

1) John Gavin, Janet Leigh's boyfriend in Psycho, was Reagan's Ambassador to Mexico (he accompanies Valenzuela when the latter gets invited to the White House).

2) Doug DeCinces was a cousin of Lisa Loring, who played Wednesday on The Addams Family. (I had no idea DeCinces was convicted of insider trading a few months ago...is he is prison right now?)

Neyer's Power Ball won the Casey Award for best baseball book of 2018. Has anyone else read it? I'd be interested in hearing what you thought. Honestly, I didn't like it that much--and I used to like Neyer's blog a lot. The baseball was fine, although it felt like a broad overview of very familiar terrain. The bigger problem I had was with the tone. Specifically all the exclamation marks. It was like the Seinfeld Jake Jarmel epsisode.

slightly OT, Neyer has started a podcast on the SABR site, it seems.

The premise didn't interest me very much, even though I've loved reading Neyer's stuff for most of his career. Maybe I'll pick up this book after all.

I finished reading Jon Pessah's "The Game", everything up until the fallout from the '94 strike is excellent, with a lot of cool insider looks into what all sides were trying to accomplish. Once he reached the so-called Steroid Era I felt as though I wasn't learning much that I didn't already know, but then again I was following much more closely during that time.

His fawning over the Yankees and especially Steinbrenner gets to be a bit too much. Somehow big Stein avoids catching much flak and is presented as this visionary figure who sees the big picture in ways that the other owners and even (especially?) the commissioner can't see.

Didn't know this was out there.

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/el9lsa/picture27314104/alternates/FREE_1140/Pine%20Tar%20book%20cover

I guess you could get a book out of it if you pull the camera back far enough. Intrigued.

Found a first-edition Boys of Summer today, very good shape, for next to nothing. It will take the place of the stolen library copy Brian Masini passed on to me 40 years ago (I've been waiting for the Georgetown Library's version of Mr. Bookman to track me down ever since). I've never read it.

i tried to read it as a 9-year-old (or so, can't remember exactly which year) and was disappointed that it wasn't more explicitly about playing baseball. i expect that i'd like it a lot more these days

as is true with a lot of things, like say, brusselsprouts

Yeah, I think I tried at the time (probably 14 or 15) and didn't get very far. I take it it's not a book that someone that age is going to appreciate.

Same here. Should probably read it again after some thirty years.

just picked up that book via someone giving it away on a local "free shit" FB group, got it along with Eight Men Out and W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe.

I read Boys of Summer when I was 10 or 11 and loved it. So dirty.

https://sabr.org/latest/bjarkman-nowlin-grow-flagel-win-2019-sabr-baseball-research-awards

out today, from Lindbergh and Sawchik

https://tht.fangraphs.com/the-mvp-machine-review/

About a third of the way into The MVP Machine, really didn't know the extent to which these independent coaches/entrepreneurs were changing player development among big leaguers (I knew about Trevor Bauer a little, not so much about Justin Turner -- or that Marlon Byrd had jumpstarted JT's renaissance). Anyway, a must read. (You'll be surprised to read about the relevance of the hippocampus size of London taxi drivers.)

Bud Selig has a book out, and Ben Lindbergh did this interview with him where Bud made many of his classic dubious claims. Then Ben ended the show with Superchunk's "I Guess I Remembered It Wrong."

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1400-bud-selig-speaks/

Great retirement gift from a collector friend: Joshua Prager's The Echoing Green, signed by Bobby Thomson. (My friend says he has a bunch of things from Ralph Branca's estate.)

Just finished Alan Schwarz's The Numbers Game. I didn't realize it's been around a while (published 2004) until I was close to the end--thought it was a newer book. Pretty eye-opening to find out how far back certain arguments and methodologies go back. Writers were complaining about fielding average (how it didn't measure a player's range) and RBI (opportunities not being equal) over a hundred years ago. F.C. Lane was working with linear weights in 1906. George Lindsey and Earnshaw Cook independently arrived at formulas based on situational matrices (outs/runners-on) almost 60 years ago. (I'd come across Cook's name before via Bill James.) My favourite stat in the book, though, was something someone came up with in 1910 to rank pitchers: winning percentage, batting average, and fielding average were added together, and Otis Crandall was determined to be the league's best pitcher with a 2.136 mark.

Books I'd love to have (checking around, they're either long-gone or unreasonably expensive online):

Ted Oliver: Kings of the Mound (1944)
Earnshaw Cook: Percentage Baseball (1964)
Harlan and Eldon Mills: Player Win Averages (1970)
Eric Walker: The Sinister First Baseman (1982)

I did find a PDF of Player Win Averages.

RIP Jim Bouton

https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/ball-four

https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-jim-bouton-obit-20190710-lhcv7pgzwjdajlsdxprzzjszpm-story.html

sing:

Now, the Astros are a team that likes to go out on the town,
We like to drink and fight and fuck till curfew comes around
Then it’s time to make the trek,
We better be back to buddy’s check,
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.

Now, Edwards is our catcher and he’s really No. 1,
Dave Bristol said he drinks too much and calls some long home runs,
But we think John will be all right,
If we keep him in his room at night,
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.

Now, our pitching staff’s composed of guys who think they’re ‘pretty cool,’
With a case of Scotch, a greenie and an old beat-up whirlpool,
We’ll make the other hitters laugh,
Then calmly break their bats in half,
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.

Now, Harry Walker is the one that manages this crew,
He doesn’t like it when we drink and fight and smoke and screw,
But when we win our game each day,
Then what the fuck can Harry say?
It makes a fellow proud to be an Astro.

They should do a Bouton bobblehead where his cap has come off.

I found out about this NY Bouton event one day late:

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2019/07/22/15085/listen-to-an-evening-of-jim-bouton-readings-by-five-writers-in-his-debt-including-me/

Found a used copy of this the other day:

http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/9781600788215_p0_v1_s550x406.jpg

Didn't know it was out there. Often my favourite kind of baseball book: start with something narrow (a game, a season), and then, if it's good, widen out from there.

Saw this home movie footage of Marichal the other day:

On the hill with the Dominican Dandy (Part 1 of 2) pic.twitter.com/BTWaPYvdOf

— Flagstaff Films (@Flagstafffilms) August 1, 2019

That motion is incredible. I kind of missed Marichal--he was still pitching when I became a fan, but at the very end of his career--but I'm grateful I got to see Tiant, Seaver, and Palmer's deliveries.

because i like to dig, i found the game. i'm sure someone noted all this on twitter. this was the top of the 4th inning.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN196908100.shtml

There's footage of Gibson from that day too on that same Twitter page.

“I rooted against the team because my ego was in full control and if we lost then I could get out of there." Wow.https://t.co/JI6vr2FCBR

— Greg Rajan (@GregRajan) September 16, 2019

Covered Barry Zito on his first day in the big leagues, and good for him. What’s the point of writing a book that omits the truth? As Dusty once told me, “I’ll never write a book because I’m not gonna lie, and there are too many truths I don’t want to be public.”

— Full Dissident (@hbryant42) September 16, 2019

aw

Visited a friend today who, back in the mid-'80s, started a baseball monthly I contributed to, Innings. He had decent distribution, but it only lasted about a year.

Anyway, he gave me some old print matter (he's in his 70s), including some Registers and Dope Books (pre-PED) and Sporting News from the '60s, including a '63 issue with a screaming headline about the Giants' payroll about to exceed $500,000.

The most amazing thing he showed me was a copy of a Branch Rickey biography--forget the author--with an signature and a personal note from Rickey to whoever once owned the book (Martin bought it at a university book sale years ago).

Thought this was excellent:

http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407428024l/586605.jpg

The basic premise is Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky going to visit Williams in Florida just before he dies--but it covers their friendship since breaking in, along with Bobby Doerr, who couldn't make the trip. Someone on the Irishman thread said it was the rare American film that paid attention to getting old. True, but I didn't think it was all that insightful on the subject; this book is.

The back inside photo is of Williams standing in left field, with the scoreboard behind him; the board shows the Red Sox with 29 runs against the St. Louis Browns. Looked it up, and they actually had back-to-back games against the Browns in 1950 where they scored 20 and then 29. Never knew that.

Resumed The Echoing Green, the Bobby Thompson/sign-stealing book. Ralph Branca was his mom's 15th child!

Today’s job: Full transcription of 84 minutes of Rickey Henderson. It is hilarious, and when you know you’re fully engaged on the next project, Book no. 10...Man of Steal: Rickey Henderson and the Legend of Oakland. pic.twitter.com/z0fcRBlu49

— Full Dissident (@hbryant42) December 12, 2019

Where did the patented Rickey snap-catch come from? “Trying to be like Willie Mays. Started in Oakland. We had a pitcher who threw a no-hitter. First time was last out. I snatched it outta the air, gave everybody a heart attack.”
True: 1983, Mike Warren. https://t.co/LfSwV8ZPC6

— Full Dissident (@hbryant42) December 14, 2019

Reading Wayne Coffey's book on the '69 Mets. Seems out of whack: in 1965, 21-year-old starter Tug McGraw pitched 7.2 innings and beat Sandy Koufax.

When Mets owner Joan Whitney Payson attended the opening NLCS game in Atlanta, it was the first time she'd been there since 1939, when she attended the opening of Gone with the Wind--she was an investor in the film.

angell at 99: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/baseball-fiction-and-life-roger-angells-era-spanning-career-at-the-new-yorker

The baseball book of the decade, and probably more besides, is @CharlesLeerhsen's biography of Cobb. It is not a rehabilitation but a resurrection. It proves conclusively Cobb's first biographer told lied about him for money after Cobb's death.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 26, 2020

Will get this as soon as the price comes down a bit.

http://www.amazon.ca/Bouton-Baseball-Original-Mitchell-Nathanson/dp/1496217705/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=jim+bouton&qid=1588982354&sr=8-2