fartheroffthewall

Day 10 of 2025 baseball book reviews: The small-town Muck(dog)raker

April 18, 2025May 9, 2025 fartheroffthewall

“Homestand: Small Town Baseball
and the Fight for the Soul of America”

The author: Will Bardenwerper
The details: Doubleday, $30, 320 pages, released March 11, 2025; best available at the Penguin/Random House publishers website, the author’s website or BookShop.org

A review in 90 feet or less

“We look forward to being their home for many years to come.”

Kiké Hernandez hustled to the bat rack in the Dodger Stadium third-base home dugout. He saw me standing there, observing. He pointed at my shirt and made the quick comment as he grabbed a new piece of wood to take back to the batting cage:

“Hey, JetHawks. I played there.”

“I remember,” I replied.

It was some 10 years ago. I was covering a Dodgers game for the LA Daily News. My blue short-sleeve shirt with a Lancaster JetHawks logo on the left side caught the eye of Hernandez, who at that point in his career was referred to as Enrique (read the game stories of that time). Then he became a playoff legend and his calling card was modified (along with a correct hyphen to avoid Spellcheck’s wrath).

At that point, the backup second baseman, shortstop, third baseman, left fielder, center fielder and right fielder had not yet posted a career pitching 9.64 ERA with an 0-1 record in five appearances.

That one season Hernandez spent in the Cal League (100 games, .275 average, .736 OPS, 104 hits, 25 doubles, 7 triples, 5 homers, 49 RBIs, 4 steals) was a celebratory one for Lancaster’s prized entry in 2012. The 20-year old prospect of the Houston Astros was on a roster with future MLB players George Springer, Delino DeShields Jr., Carlos Perez, Domingo Santana and Nick Tropeano, all eventually playing their ways out of the high Single-A ranks to various degrees.

When he came to the U.S. mainland as a 17 year old from Puerto Rico, Hernandez was acclimated in the Astros’ Gulf Coast Rookie League. Future stops would take him to the Tri-City Alley Cats in Troy, N.Y.; the Lexington Legends in Kentucky and the Corpus Christi Hooks in Texas. In 2015, the Oklahoma City RedHawks, the Dodgers’ Triple-A team, would be his last minor stop before launching into an MLB trajectory. The only other times he would sport a minor-league jersey were on rehab assignments – the Tulsa Drillers, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the Worcester Red Sox, the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs.

Kiké got around. That’s life in the minors. You also become a community asset. As part of the Class of 2019 for the Lancaster JetHawks Hall of Fame, a key contributor to the team’s first Cal League pennant in 2012, he got a Rally Banana bobblehead to show for it as well.

Where is that Hall of Fame now? In our memories.

Continue reading →

Day 9 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Poetic justice, sonnetized and unsanitized

April 16, 2025May 9, 2025 fartheroffthewall

“Here Comes The Pizzer:
The Found Poetry of Baseball Announcers”

The editor: Eric Poulin
The contributors: Jim Armenti, Gabriel Bogart, Kurt Blumenau, Frank Cressotti, Dan D’Addona, T.S. Flynn, Harrison Golden, Pallas Gutierrez, Joanne Hulbert, Molly McClure, Jordan Nielsen, Ray L. Nielsen, Byron Petraroja, Eric Poulin, Mark Schwaber, Hart Seely, Mark S. Sternman, Cecilia Tan, James R. Walker, Tim Wiles, Robert Zussman
The cover art: “Roger” by Frank Cressotti
The details: Society of American Baseball Research, $14.95, 116 pages, released March 18, 2025; best available at the SABR publishers’ website or Bookshop.org. Also free digitally with a SABR membership.

“The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball:
Lessons for Life from
Homer’s Odyssey to the World Series”

The author: Christian Sheppard
The details: Greenleaf Book Group, $27.95, 184 pages, released March 25, 2025; best available at the publishers’ website, the author’s website and Bookshop.org

A review in 90 feet or less

About three dozen Vin Scully “vintage” broadcasts, recorded between 1957 and 1980, have found a spot on the Youtube.com home of Classic Baseball on the Radio. The Tuesday afternoon July 29, 1969 game where the Dodgers are facing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field is a fine example of what’s been captured for our modern listening pleasure.

About the 20 minutes into that particular broadcast, after the Cubs’ Fergie Jenkins walked the Dodgers’ Bill Sudakis in the top of the second inning of a scoreless game. Scully, ever mindful that he’s living up the title as game’s polyunsaturated poet laureate, reminds listeners that “this Dodgers-Cubs broadcast is coming from Chicago.”

He then recites 10 seconds of script perfectly timed to create a window where stations on the Dodgers radio network can do their top-of-the-hour ID.

This is what might otherwise be an innocuous transcript of that moment in time: You know, when your telephone rings it’s a good idea to try to answer it as promptly as possible. It’s thoughtful, courteous and a good way to make sure your caller doesn’t hang up.

So now if we go ee cummings on you, re-imagine that as “found poetry.”

Take existing words — printed, spoken, mangled — and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage.

So that so-so Scully clip/transcript above becomes sonnetized for your pleasure:

You know,
when your telephone rings
it’s a good idea to try to answer it
as promptly as possible …
It’s thoughtful,
courteous
AND
a good way to make sure your caller
doesn’t hang up

That message, once lost, is now found. Maybe this is why some refer to baseball innings as “stanzas.”

Continue reading →

Day 8 of 2025 baseball book reviews: An illogical ERA in the WAR on DEI

April 14, 2025May 9, 2025 fartheroffthewall

“Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger”

The author: Steve Dittmore
The details: August Publications, 340 pages, $24.95, released Feb. 4, 2025; best available at the publishers website, the author’s website and Bookshop.org.

***

“They Changed the Game: 50 Stories
and Illustrations Celebrating Creativity in Sports”

The authors: Matthew and Ariana Broerman
The details: Triumph Books, 112 pages, $23.95, released Feb. 25, 2025; best available at the publisher’s website, the official book website, InkAndCraft.com or Bookshop.org.

***

“Dream Merchant of the Perfect Game:
The Life and Legacy of Frank ‘Doc’ Sykes“

The author: Bernard McKenna
The details: Mascot Books/Amplify Publishing, 340 pages, $17.95, released April 1, 2025; best available at the publishers website or Bookshop.org.

***

“Play Harder: The Triumph of
Black Baseball in America”

The author: Gerald Early
The details: Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House, 320 pages, $35, to be released April 29, 2025; best available at the publishers website, the Baseball Hall of Fame and Bookshop.org

A Jack Robinson preamble

One way of reporting on the events of April 7, 2025 at the White House …

Another way of reporting on it from writer Dave Zirin for The Nation on April 4, 2025 included: “The Dodgers should also refuse this invite because Trump has put the lives of several Dodgers and their families at risk. There are 63 Major League Baseball players who were born in Venezuela. On the Dodgers, Edgardo Henriquez, Brusdar Graterol, and Miguel Rojas are all from Venezuela. Given that the United States is now sending Venezuelans without due process to an El Salvadoran labor camp, telling these players to set foot in this White House seems cruel. It’s telling them to shut up and play, or risk something worse than a team fine.”

’twas a crafty suggestion til ’twasn’t.

Blasted into the universe prior to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ problematic visit to the White House on April 7, the comment came up: What if every player dons a Jackie Robinson No. 42 jersey, make a statement, take the photo ops, be defiant?

Make ’em all squirm and show their true colors.

It, of course, didn’t happen.

Continue reading →

Day 7 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Maybelle, Why Can’t You Be True

April 12, 2025May 9, 2025 fartheroffthewall

“All The Way: The Life of
Baseball Trailblazer Maybelle Blair”

The author: Kat D. Williams
The details: Rowman & Littlefield, $32, 192 pages, released March 18, 2025; best available at the publishers website and Bookshop.org.

A review in 90 feet or less

The Shrine of the Eternals’ 2025 official ballot allows nine names to be filled from 40 eligible candidates. The top three will draw induction later this year into the Shrine as per rules of The Baseball Reliquary, which has done this now since 1999 years.

Of the candidates, six-and-a-half are women.

* Mamie “Peanut” Johnson is the only female pitcher in the Negro Leagues, after being rejected by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League because of the color of her skin.

* Melissa Ludtke is a sports writer who just came out with “Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside,” based on winning a lawsuit against Major League Baseball for locker room access going back to the 1977 World Series.

* Morganna Roberts was “The Kissing Bandit,” who turned a challenge by friends into a celebrity activity of running on to the field and planting a kiss on a player, manager, umpire or even the San Diego Chicken. It warranted numerous trespassing charges and even a stay in an Anaheim jail. She is still with us, at 78 years old, known as Morgana Cottrell. There should be a book on her … seems it would be rather robust.

* Annie Savoy is a piece of work.

Susan Sarandon shared top billing with Kevin Costner. Tim Robbins didn’t get that kind of attention — and Robbins and Sarandon married after this movie.

Fictitious work, that is, created by Ron Shelton for his 1988 movie “Bull Durham,” with the famous line: “Baseball is the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in and day out.” She gets her due in Shelton’s 2023 book, “The Church of Baseball.” Which we enjoyed reviewing and, in the process, creating a neat relationship with Ron.

* Janet Marie Smith is an architect and urban planner best known for Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, but also for extensive upgrades done at Dodger Stadium over a 10-year period as the franchise’s executive vice president for planning and development. She should eventually write a story about her experiences. A title suggestion: “Built By Janet.”

* Helen Callaghan goes in as a co-entry with her son, Casey Candaele. They are the only mother-son combination to play professional baseball. Helen St. Aubuin was a star in the All-American Girls Professional League and the inspiration for “A League of Their Own” 1986 film. She had her son, Casey, at age 38 in 1961 in Lompoc, and he had a nine-year MLB career from1986 to 1997 in Montreal, Houston and Cleveland as an infielder and outfielder.

Alphabetically, Maybelle Blair is listed first among that female subset on the ballot.

Continue reading →

Day 6 of 2025 baseball book reviews: The pandemical influencers

April 5, 2025May 9, 2025 fartheroffthewall

“My Baseball Story:
The Game’s Influence on America”

The author/editor: Nick Del Calzo
The details: Oxman Publishing, 352 pages, $49.99, released in fall of 2024; best available at the publishers website or the official book site.

A review in 90 feet or less

This is what happens when you send out an all-points bulletin — or even just a gentle nudge — asking people for their baseball origin stories. At a time when they have time to think it through.

A baseball story that makes them feel most connected. Or, the baseball story that takes them back in time. Or gives them hope.

Grandparents. Dads and sons having a catch.Mickey Mantle. Fantasy camps. Ticket stubs. First gloves. Romance. Food. Scorebooks. Historical events. Ted Williams. Fan appreciation nights. Family outings. Broken hearts. Foul balls. An autograph.

Continue reading →