Author: fartheroffthewall

Author’s note: Updated 8.17.20 with new reviews posted on various media outlets:

“Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original”

The author:
Mitchell Nathanson

The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Press
$34.95
448 pages
To be released May 1

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At the author’s website

The review in 90 feet or less

It’s right in the middle of Chapter 14 – the one with the endearing heading of “Fuck You, Shakespeare.”

Mitchell Nathanson writes about how Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter were tossing around potential titles for this new book they were writing about Bouton’s experience during the 1969 Major League Baseball season.

There were ideas like “There’s More to Baseball than the Score.” Or “Take Me out to the Ballgame,” “Hiya Baseball,” and “How’s Your Old Tomato?” There was the inspired  “Constant Replay,” a twist on the 1968 book “Instant Replay” that Dick Schaap did with the Green Bay Packers’ Jerry Kramer.

As Nathanson explains:

‘Sports books always had these upbeat titles, “Running to Daylight,” Bouton said … “You never heard of a sports book called ‘Running to Darkness.’ … But when a drunk woman at the Lion’s Head (a bar in New York) overheard Bouton and Shecter debating possible downbeat titles (the working title for the book as described in the publication agreement with World was ‘Baseball Journal’), she slurred her way to literary gold by suggesting a title that evoked failure rather than success: ‘Whyyyyy don’t you caaaaauuull it Baaaaallllll Fooooouuuuuuuuurrrrrr?’ After rejecting it out of hand, they realized she was onto something.

It was a deja vu moment all over again.

The paragraph included a couple of numbered footnotes, so we flipped to the back to the notes section and found Nathanson had two references: “Hoffarth, ‘More on “Ball Four” @ 40.”

Even further into the bibliography: “Hoffarth, Tom. ‘More on “Ball Four” @ 40 … From a Drunken Women’s Title Suggestion to a Musical Number on the Roof Top of the Shoreham Hotel.’ Farther Off the Wall with Tom Hoffarth, September 20, 2010, http://www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth.”

We were magically dumbstruck.

First, the link to that information no longer exists. The Southern California News Group erased it all shortly after my January, 2018 layoff. That was among thousands of paragraphs of original material – much of it we couldn’t fit into a standard 800-word newspaper piece. It was perfect for this platform. All the extra stuff. But some of it even stand-alone stories we could post. We’re resigned to the fact they’re all gone now. For whatever reason.

********

(Author’s note on May 23, 2020: Thanks to those who reminded us of the “Way Back Machine” website that captures snapshots of the internet at various times and is able to save things. We have found the link to this notated September 2010 post and are thrilled to read all the material we were able to include in this).

**********

Second, we realized as well how emotionally frayed we were about this revelation. It was somewhat profound moment of how we’ve become enormously emotionally invested in Jim Bouton, again. If this biography that we expect to read, and re-read a few times, becomes as important enough to share the same shelf as all our personally signed versions of “Ball Four,” acting as a book-end to a man who became very much a sports hero in our own journey, this best be worth it.

However we can help make this something that smokes ’em inside, outside, and all around the strike zone.

Nathanson, a Villanova University law professor who teaches writing at the school’s sports law center, was thankfully able to capture those nuggets of information we once posted — given to us directly from Bouton about the creation of “Ball Four” during a 2010 interview. Those notes are filed away, preserved as part of the “Ball Four” legacy. We were surprised that of all the tiems Bouton may have told that story, we had documented it and it was retrieved for this excavation.

As “Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original” was one we’ve long awaited to read, review and learn from, we also came to the realization that it gives us the capability to remember.

Why Nathanson decided to tackle this project, there’s a personal connection as well as a curiosity as to to explore more about who he felt were the most influential ballplayers of the 1960s — Bouton, Dick Allen and Curt Flood. The later had some decent biographies about him. In 2016, Nathanson took it upon himself to rectify some of that with “God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen,” for University of Pennsylvania Press. The mercurial Allen, aka Richie, had been another of our MLB childhood favorites, if only because of the one year he played in L.A. for the Dodgers drove Walter Alston to demand he be banished to Chicago, where we saw him develop into an AL MVP and punctuate a career still missing Hall of Fame recognition in Cooperstown.

But with Bouton, Nathanson writes that he “was my white whale.” Continue reading “Day 30 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: Bouton, the final chapter … -30-“ →

“Rod Carew: One Tough Out:
Fighting off Life’s Curveballs”

The author:
Rod Carew
with Jaime Aron

The publishing info:
Triumph Books
$26.96
336 pages
To be released May 12

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At Indiebound.org
At the author’s website

The review in 90 feet or less

Rod Carew was a known fastball hitter – interestingly, at anything pitched anywhere except down the heart of the plate. That would freeze him up. His unorthodox crouch-and-finesse batting stance from the left side actually changed pitch by pitch. That made sense to him, signaling where he thought the pitch would be coming and adjusting — or forcing the pitcher to pitch to his stance and then adjust to that thinking.

Curve balls, literally and metaphorically, gave him heartache.

It seems he’s now finally able to adjust to some of life’s major change ups without knuckling under.

Fittingly from Triumph Books, here is a triumphant reflection that comes from the heart. Specifically, it comes after a delayed heart transplant that now 74-year-old received in 2016 and the astounding story that unfolded along the way.

There are only two previous books attributed to the Hall of Famer: A 1979 bio written with Ira Berkow, when the 33-year-old left Minnesota after 12 years and came to the Angels, and a 1986 instructional book, “Rod Carew’s Art and Science of Hitting,” with Frank Pace and Armen Keteyian, the year after Carew retired at age 39 and starting a new career as a hitting instructor. Both were re-released in the mid 2000s.

While we definitely were in need of a refresh, we had to wait until he had the fortitude to come through with it.

Carew breaks this all down in three stages. The first 160-plus pages recap a life we may have read about before, but he corrects inaccuracies — all about growing up in Panama near the famous canal, moving to Manhattan with his mother as a way to flee his father, signing with the Twins, curious about how he was referenced in the 1967 Baseball Digest as a “Panamanian Negro,” becoming disenfranchise by the baseball business, forcing a trade to Anaheim, then taking No. 29 into retirement by both franchises once he passed the 3,000-hit milestone in his final season, securing a Hall of Fame election in 1991.

(For the record: He was born aboard a racially segregated moving train in the town of Gatun. The doctor who tended to him was named Rodney Cline – where Rodney Cline Carew would get his first two names. But Carew clarifies he was actually delivered by a nurse named Margaret Allen. “Once the wails of a newborn rang out, the conductor summoned a physician from the white section – Dr. Cline, of source. While Dr. Cline became the inspiration for my name, Mrs. Allen became my godmother.”)

From this point, the Carew story goes from being characterized as “Sports & Recreation/ Baseball” to “Religion /Christian Living/ Inspirational.” Continue reading “Day 29 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: Now batting, No. 29, Rod Carew … he connects, from the heart” →

“Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul
of Team Chemistry”

The author:
Joan Ryan

The publishing info:
Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Books
$28
272 pages
Released today, April 28

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At Indiebound.org
At the author’s website

The review in 90 feet or less

Nope, no way,  no how did the Dodgers of 1988 have any business squashing the Oakland A’s in the World Series. But it happened. Nor did the Nationals of 2019 have any realistic chance of knocking out the two-time defending NL champion Dodger in the NLDS. It happened, too.

The Onion once ran a headline that captures this perfectly: “Team’s chemistry overwhelmed by opponent’s biology.”

Now it’s a chance for Joan Ryan to peel back the onion.

By adding that satirical quip in the introduction of her book, Ryan gets to flex her investigative reporting skills she used for several decades as a San Francisco Chronicle columnist and self discover if there’s a tangible way to define and quantify what we all can talk about in esoteric terms as they pertain to success in team sports.

In our book, Ryan has always had the tactile ability to tell stories based on well-cultivated information. Most recently on the baseball front was forming Bengie Molina’s family project “Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty.”

But our trust goes back to the landmark book, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnastics and Figure Skaters” from 1995, perhaps foreshadowing all the sexual abuse that took place with the Olympic gymnasts and Larry Nassar.

And our heart remains with her personal story from 2009, “The Water Giver: The Story of A Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance,” that focuses on her 16-year-old learning disabled son named Ryan (his dad, Joan’s husband, is acclaimed sports broadcaster Barry Tompkins) who fell off a skateboard, and she documents the medical ordeal that followed from crisis to crisis.

Since 2008, Ryan has been a media consultant with the San Francisco Giants, so it’s somewhat a natural she’s able to hold up the construction of the 2010 Giants roster that won the first of its three World Series titles in a five-year span as a test case about how team chemistry seems to have worked. This was, as described in Andrew Baggarly’s book, “A Band of Misfits.” Especially when she can compare that to the 2007 Giants roster that has been “cliquey and snippy as a middle-school cafeteria.” Three years later, there was a new openness, and the chaos subsided.

She starts with the premise that asks three questions:

Does team chemistry exist? If it exists, what is it? And how does it affect performance? Continue reading “Day 28 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: How Joan Ryan *tinkers with the *ever-possibility it’s more than *chance how baseball chemistry/biology works (*did you get the Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance reference?)” →

“Summer Baseball Nation: Nine Days in
the Wood Bat League”

The author:
Will Geoghegan
Also follow at:
Summer9Nation

The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Press
$29.95
240 pages
Released April 1

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At Indiebound.org
At the author’s website

The review in 90 feet or less

How far would one go to watch Wood Bat League baseball?

Consider how Will Geoghegan is based in Rhode Island working for the weekly Independent covering University for Rhode Island and prep sports, as well as focusing on the Cap Cod League. The roadie he takes to Alaska and then veering south through Santa Barbara during the summer of 2016 kind of defines how much pine-tared affection he has for the subject. And a wish we could have tagged along.

We recall once talking to USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux about the pros and cons of aluminum bats. At the time, Dedeaux was proudly getting around with a cane famously fashioned out of a wooden bat.

“You just get used to it, but I’d prefer wood bats any time,” he said as we watched a USC-UCLA game from Dedeaux Field.

Same here.

Dedeaux had been one of the first major names to start funneling future Trojan players through the Alaskan Summer League experience – Tom Seaver, a recruit from Fresno City College, had yet to prove himself at this level and Dedeaux wanted to see if he was worthy of a scholarship, so the Alaska Goldpanners gave him a shot.

Dedeaux’s Alaskan pipeline was established.

While Geoghegan starts and ends his journey in his home turf of Cape Cod as well as venturing over to Newport, R.I., for more research, it’s his far-away trip to Fairbanks, Alaska on the summer solstice of June 21 for the Midnight Sun Game that brightens our day.

That’s followed up by a fascinating trip to Santa Barbara to document the success of the Foresters, a perennial National Baseball Congress World Series squad headed up by Bill Pintard, that reveals more about the  California Collegiate League that spans from Long Beach to wine country has plenty of noteworthy talent as well to choose from. (Note: They also use flat-seemed baseballs).

Cape Cod visits make up three of the “nine days” as the title says, in addition to trips to Hampton, Va.; Washington D.C., Kenosha, Wisc. – places where college players get to play with other top talent in their region, specifically using wood bats so the pro scouts can have another frame of reference in their notes.

Some of it can be the stuff of movies.

So maybe “Summer Catch” with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jessica Beal in 2001 didn’t circle the bases for you. It’s another of San Fernando Valley-based producer Mike Tollin’s sports-related themed movies that uses sports as a platform to tell another relationship story. Even as much of it was filmed in North Carolina. Yet, there’s Hank Aaron making a cameo as a scout. Too rich.

The Alaska trip is one we’ve had on a bucket list, particularity the Midnight Game, which we read now actually starts at about 10:30 p.m., leads to the crowd singing the Alaska state song in the inning closest to midnight, then takes a hiatus if the sun decides to disappear for an elongated dusk for a couple hours, with the knowledge it will come back quick enough. Listen, you’re less than 200 miles from the Arctic Circle, where ice fishing and curling should be king. But baseball is the kingfish during the longest day of the year, and it goes back more than 50 years and has survived some problematic hurdles of the modern world.

Geoghegan reminds us that the best-attended Midnight Game was in 1967, when 5,200 saw a USC product, Bill Lee, pitch against a team from Japan. Lee circled back 42 years later, in 2008, and at 61, threw six innings and got the win, before 4,900.

In the game Geoghegan saw, there was enough Southern California talent to note – pitcher Joe Fernandez was wearing a Compton Baseball sweatshirt before the game, a reference to the JC ball he played at El Camino-Compton Center. Second baseman Alex Mascarenas is a former UCLA football player who started two games at defensive back in 2011 before concussions led him to leave. He is trying to come back in baseball after having gone to Santa Ana College. Now he’s a Goldpanner, too. (Still wondering: Is he the head softball coach at Mt. SAC?)

(Spoiler alert: The game Geoghegan attends is suspended because of … get this … darkness. Or mostly thick clouds that won’t disperse until the next day. Which is actually the same day. So it is completed but … )

(Non-spoiler alert: W actually know someone who played in the Alaska Summer League … chew on that)

In Santa Barbara, the Foresters play on the same field in Carpinteria as UCSB’s Gauchos, and the rosters over the years have been supplemented by USC and other college powerhouses. Of most interest is how Pintard created a method of tabulating an “Offensive Pressure” formula for his team to aim to achieve each game — an insightful way any coach can use a goal-orientated approach toward providing the best-chance elements of a game that will, percentage-wise, lead to a more likely victory (i.e.: earn nine “freebies” such as a walk, stolen base or error, create as many eight-pitch at-bats against opposing pitchers that lead past a 150 pitch-count thresholds, and it’s not easy to lose).

There’s also a great back story to Pintard and his son that’s worth uncovering.

The theme Geoghegan discover unveiling in front of him becomes obvious:

I found great stories, surrounded by the same trappings that had always seemed so perfect. Big dreams. Small towns. Warm nights. Through the lens of nine days, a summer picture emerged.

How it goes in the scorebook

A perfect pitch, matched by a perfect pace.

Peaceful and profound in many ways. A rhythm of summer captured with the proper tone all while getting the best wood of the barrel of the bat, label up, on the right notes of information.

Just by reading, so many senses are revisited and reopened to similar experiences we’ve had a smaller, slower-paced ballparks around the country.

And if you crave more, Geoghegan has a website of his own, plus one dedicated to the Cape League called rightfieldfog.com. Catch it this summer, hopefully.

More reviews

== From Publishers Weekly: “The players only play for few months in these leagues before the short season ends, so Geoghegan offers only brief glimpses of the them, focusing more on the coaches, GMs, and owners, who, as locals or rooted transplants, have stronger ties to their communities. Though Geoghegan says the teams are all about community, there’s little about the fans, the families that host players, or what college kids do in, say, Fairbanks, Alas., for a summer. Geoghegan’s exploration of little-known baseball leagues is best suited for diehard baseball fans.”

Coming up related to wood bats

== “The Major League Baseball Bat, From Tree to the Swing, 19th Century to Today,” by Stephen M. Bratkovich, (McFarland, $29.95, 190 pages, due June 2020).
From the publisher: “Why do modern-day sluggers like Aaron Judge prefer maple bats over the traditional ash bats swung by Ted Williams and others? Why did the surge of broken bats in the early 21st century create a crisis for Major League Baseball and what steps were taken to address the issue? Are different woods being considered by players and manufacturers? Do insects, disease and climate change pose a problem long-term? These and other questions are answered in this exhaustive examination of the history and future of wooden bats, written for both lifelong baseball fans and curious newcomers.”
Exhaustive? It’s 190 pages.

More info

The California Collegiate League announced a new format for this summer, if there is play to be held: A three-Division (North, Central and South) set up with: North Division features the Healdsburg Prune Packers, Lincoln Potters, Solano Mudcats, and Walnut Creek Crawdads. Central Division teams include the San Luis Obispo Blues, Santa Barbara Foresters and Conejo Oaks. The South Division teams are the Arroyo Seco Saints, MLB Academy (Compton) Barons, and the Orange County Riptide.

“The Resisters”

The author:
Gish Jen

The publishing info:
Knopf Doubleday
$26.95
320 pages
Released Feb. 4

The links:
At the publishers website
At Amazon.com
At Barnes and Noble
At Powells
At the author’s website

The review in 90 feet or less

We’re in a time warp. Again.

In the time we’ve given ourselves to focus on acceptance of  “The Resisters,” and what this dystopian look at a world that must include baseball because a bat and ball are part of its cover artwork, we’re not sure how far we want to stretch any bigger bang trashcan theories into what this premise promises to offer.

We did become enamored with the challenge of considering this after a review/interview in the L.A. Times by Bethanne Patrick that gave a better taste of what’s ahead:

“‘The Resisters’ is set in a near-future America, narrated by a man named Grant; he has a wife, Eleanor, and a daughter, Gwen. Citizens are now sorted into categories of ‘Netted’ — working, producing — and ‘Surplus’ — unemployed and relegated to floating ‘Flotsam Towns.’ Grant and Eleanor try to live off the grid, growing their own food because the free provisions doled out by the surveillance state (‘Aunt Nettie’) may be laced with sedatives or other drugs.
“Gwen is a talented pitcher, and when her throwing arm draws the attention of the establishment, she’s offered a chance to attend ‘Net U’ for free, forcing the entire family to make some tough choices.
“ ‘The bad news is that they are the underclass,’ Jen says, ‘but that’s the good news too, you know? This family has a lucky niche in the world I created, one they’ve done a lot with, which weirdly makes Gwen kind of — privileged is the wrong word — but [it] allows her to think differently’.”

We think differently frequently, yet resist change at almost every turn. Until we’re convinced it’s safe to go outside with our own devices.

There was one more reference point coming from Jane Leavy, whose recent work, “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World he Created” remains a best-seller: “I love this novel as much as I fear the future Gish Jen has conjured in it.” 

That’s also our conundrum.

At a time when we’re already unraveling the seams of a baseball with a ballpoint pin and a pair of scissors, it seems this could add more anxiety, treading on paths we’ve never taken. We could envision that this is where baseball could be going someday, and we’re just extremely uncomfortable. Continue reading “Day 26 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: We’ve resisted this long enough” →