Author: fartheroffthewall

“Buzz Saw: The Improbable Story of How
the Washington Nationals Won the World Series”

The author:
Jesse Dougherty

The publishing info:
Simon & Schuster
$28
308 pages
Released March 24

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

The review in 90 feet or less

There’s value in deconstruction.

Especially in the aftermath of what rubble Los Angeles may think it’s still under, and whether it falls under the recovery benefits defined by a National emergency.

We’re in a state of grace at the moment, right? Able to look at history and wonder: What if?

What happened last October blew in to Southern California was an act of the Baseball Gods, a force of nature with crazed momentum, leveling the Dodgers’ scheme of finally winning a World Series after its failed attempts in ’17 and ’18, giving the city its first MLB title (in L.A. at least, not counting the Angels’ 2002 trip) since that 1988 magic.

Yet, if you can appreciate the nature of the game, and unpredictable beauty of it, there are endearing parallels to draw between these fresh-brewed ’19 Nationals and that ’88 Dodgers vintage.

Why revisit any of this? Why not.

There are things to learn, appreciate and reinforce, and for the record, make sure our facts are straight versus what our emotions tend to define. In the compelling way Dougherty does it, there’s added enjoyment to show step by step how the Nationals achieved something that readers can’t help but admire and applaud. Especially since the seven game World Series tour included four wins in Houston. Harrumph.

D.C.’s run may have looked superhero “improbable” – another word we recall Vin Scully pulling out of the sky 32 years ago, and used correctly in the book’s title. But wasn’t impossible,  considering what was already in place, how the current pieces really did fit, the psychology and balanced thought behind everything, and the methods used to achieve a championship that seemed to be going against the 21st Century grain.

Dougherty, the Nationals’ beat reporters for the Washington Post and a former L.A. Times guy who covered the NHL’s Kings, has all the proper power tools to chip away at how and why it happened, then yank off the white cloth and let us gaze upon what we see now to have a better understanding.

He writes that this was a seven-week project after the last out of the World Series, and it took 35 additional interviews to weave in more context during this short window of interpretation. This isn’t cutting and pasting daily stories together like some scrapbooking project some may take in this to capitalize on a moment. Nor is it done by someone who can’t turn a phrase or define a consequence when it’s needed. Continue reading “Day 4 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: Not to be a buzz kill, but need a new read on the Dodgers’ 2019 collapse? It’s more than ‘Baby Shark’ attacks and strategy gaffs” →

“The Hidden Language of Baseball:
How Signs and Sign-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime”

The author:
Paul Dickson

The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Press
$19.95
200 pages
Revised edition published in July, 2019 (updated from 2005 and 2003,from Waller Books)

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

It’s a sign of our times, and a symbol of what we don’t want to be.

Dickson’s latest edition of “Hidden Language” went out of print in 2017. The prolific baseball historian had the good sense to know it needed to be refreshed. For many reasons. But even then, he couldn’t have realized that this reboot would have overlapped with the fact the Houston Astros were about to claim their first World Series title that winter, against the Dodgers, and two years later, become the most anguished-about controversy clouding the game’s credibility.

(Hey, did you happen to notice: There’s a publication by Easton Press, a tricked-up commemorative book with the splashy title: “History Earned!” still available for sale. Too rich for our tastes — four monthly installments of $35 to have this cool leather-bound, hubbed-spined edition accented with 22kt gold and gilded page ends … There’s also Ben Reiter’s “AstroBall: The New Way to Win It All” that came out in July, 2018, and has demanded a reprint)

Revisionist history aside …

Dickson’s decision to rejoin the conversation and update all he knew through 2018 all came before the summer of ’19, when the banging of trash cans would take down the managers of the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros and New York Mets before the 2020 season even began. Whenever that will be.

Dickson was more focused on what was latest controversy at that time — the infamous Apple Watch sign-sealing incident of 2017 — the Red Sox were fined for using technology to swipe information from the Yankees. In the 14 pages he dedicates to this new Chapter 9 entitled “Devious Digital Devices – from TV Camera to Apple Watch,” the foundation and context of what the Astros are now accused of doing should provide a better understanding when one would rightly be engaged as to the ethical pros and cons of what went down.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of history to go through:

But then there’s what Dickson lays out what’s happened in just this recent century: Continue reading “Day 3 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: What’s so hidden about sign stealing if it’s so out in the open? A Dickson dissertation” →

“The Incredible Women of the All-American
Girls Professional Baseball League”

The author/illustrator:
Anika Orrock

The publishing info:
Chronicle Books
$19.95
160 pages
Released March 10, 2020

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

The review in 90 feet or less

I asked my soon-to-be 80-year-old mom recently: So what do you remember about watching All-American Girls Professional Baseball League games when you were growing up in South Bend, Ind., back in the 1940s?

Didn’t you say you have a photo of yourself with a player named Lou Arnold?

She did. It’s still framed. Here it is:

Louise Veronica “Lou” Arnold was a pitcher for the South Bend Blue Sox for five seasons, posting a 23-16 record with a 3.02 ERA in 72 games. At 5-foot-3 and 125 pounds, the Pawtucket, R.I. native debuted in 1948 — my mom was 7, going on 8, and living in the city made famous as the home for the University of Notre Dame.

Arnold attended to a league tryout in ’48 with no baseball position. The league was desperate for overhand pitchers – when it started five years earlier, it was a fast-pitched underarmed style. It moved to sidearm in ’47 and finally evolved to overhand. Arnold she seemed like a good pitching prospect based on her high school athletic ability.

So while Arnold was there for ’48 and ’49, she did quit in 1950 for “undisclosed reasons,” according to the bio. She came back in ’51 (a 10-2 record, a no-hitter and 32 straight scoreless innings and nine complete games). Then she quit after ’52, deciding to live in South Bend the rest of her life working on brake lines at the Bendix Corporation.

The youngest of 13 kids, she wore No. 13. She died in 2010.

My mom has photos and autographs inside a leather-bound small scrapbook that Arnold once gave her. It’s all still preserved in pristine condition. We can still make out the inscription: “To My Friend Theresa, Lou Arnold, 1949.”

More team photos and individual shots of the players are now all over mom’s coffee table. She’s holding them up with a magnifying glass, studying it all again.

Like this new book.

On page 47 of “The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Baseball League,” a quote from Arnold appears:

“Wonderful umpire, Barney Ross … but I was pitching to this girl who wasn’t the best hitter and he called a strike a ball. Of course my catcher was yelling at him and I said, ‘Barney, I want to tell you something,’ and he said, ‘Yes, Lou?’ And I said, ‘You are going blind!’ He said, ‘Lou, I want to tell you something. You go back to that mound and I’ll show you how blind I’m getting.’”

It makes mom smile.

The quote is accompanied by an illustration of a woman in a catcher’s mask going face-to-face with a home plate umpire with his mask on.

That’s all due to our new favorite artist — Orrock, an Oakland native now in Nashville who characterizes herself as an illustrator above all – writer, designer, cartoonist, humorist and baseball devotee. But with all her talents, she figures out a way to piece together vignettes about the league with style and grace to reflect the sense of importance, excitement, competition and fun that was going on by those who were there.

Nothing gets skirted here. Continue reading “Day 2 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: The girls still got game, or do we need to draw you a picture?” →

“State of Play: The Old School Guide to
New School Baseball”

The author:
Bill Ripken

The publishing info:
Diversion Books
$24.99
240 pages
Released February 18

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At IndieBound.org
At his personal link

The review in 90 feet or less

Thanks, Diversion books, for this diversion. And going cleats up into a topic that needs some smarts behind it.

There is no Utley Rule to stop this one.

Here’s Bill Ripken, no longer Billy Ripken Younger Brother of Cal Ripken, a former MLB infielder and current MLB Network studio analyst, with his own public service announcement.

Let’s get united instead of divided on the national pastime as it is in 2020.

It’s a refreshing take considering how the game now may offend some who value its tradition, yet inspire those who see ways of modernizing it to a new audience.

Can he achieve such a thing? It depends on how open your mind is to constructive criticism, trusting someone who has been around the game for more years than you and isn’t trying to keep his name fresh, and someone engaged in how the game played today has been subject to all sorts of attacks and backlash.

The son of former Baltimore Orioles’ longtime minor league and brief major league manager Cal Ripken Sr., we know Bill has the genetics and phonetics to make this credible, having already co-authored “Play Baseball The Ripken Way: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Fundamentals” and doing more than noteworthy work on the MLB-infused 24/7 channel.

(To note: In 1987, rookie Billy Ripken hit .308 in 58 games and in 1990, actually led the Orioles in hitting with a .290 average and a league best 17 sacrifice bunts. Cal hit .250. On a team that went 76-86 and had a 23-year-old Curt Schilling, in his first full season, making 35 relief appearances, unable to break into a rotation that had Pete Harnisch, Dave Johnson, Bib Milacki, Ben McDonald and John Mitchell. Schilling was dealt the next year to Houston for Jason Grimsley. Sorry for the sidetrack.)

Old school doesn’t mean outdated. New school doesn’t mean the way things must adjust and modify. Scoresheet vs. spreadsheet can be tallied simultaneously. Continue reading “Day 1 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: State your purpose, Ripken … Ah, well played” →