The book:
“They Bled Blue: Fernandomania, Strike-Season Mayhem, and the Weirdest Championship Baseball Had Ever Seen: The 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers”
The author: Jason Turnbow
The publishing info: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26, 360 pages, due to come out June 4
The links: At the publisher’s website, at Amazon.com, at BarnesAndNoble.com, at Powells.com
The review in 90 feet or less
From Chapter 1, page 1:
“Tommy Lasorda was always a shill. Long before he became a fount of managerial enthusiasm and brand fealty, he was a shill. … The guy loved his team and wasn’t shy about letting the world know it.”
This simple observation is better explained and put into context in the preceding pages. But could this opening salvo be a deal-breaker if a reader particularly protective of Dodgers’ lore decides this is taking a poke at a sacred cow?
Listen, plenty have opined as much about the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame manager, and this might manage to unite anti-Lasorda sentiment from the jump.
It’s worth asking: Are we getting our chains yanked by someone who just couldn’t resist the opportunity?
Turnbow’s unimpeachable track record with previous baseball-related works go back to the 2017 “Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s,” and a 2010 favorite “The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime.” There’s also the 2013 audio book, “Baseball Forever!: 50 Years of Classic Radio Play-by-Play Highlights from the Miley Collection.”
But we had ourselves a laugh when we came across the fact Turnbow, in an act of transparency, actually called himself out growing up in the Bay Area as a Giants fan in the 1980s. In both an author’s Q&A that came with our review copy, and in acknowledgements, he clearly points out that rooting against the Dodgers back as a fan was a territorial right. Completely understandable. Continue reading “Day 8 of 30 baseball book reviews for April 2019: Monday, Monday … A split decision on how to revisit the Dodgers’ ’81 title run”
Rory McIlroy (7-1), world No. 1-ranked Dustin Johnson (10-1) and four-time champion Tiger Woods (14-1, with Justin Rose) are listed as the odds-on-favorite to capture the 83rd Masters (Thursday-Sunday, ESPN and Channel 2). Three-time champ Phil Mickelson (30-1) isn’t that outside the box at age 48. But defending champion Patrick Reed, who held off Rickie Fowler for a one-shot victory and two shots over Jordan Spieth, is just 60-1 as of the April 6 posting on VegasInsider.com. ESPN golf Curtis Strange, who once won back-to-back U.S. Opens on two different courses, thinks the reason Reed may not be getting a lot of attention for a repeat is because of the way today’s game is made up with such deep talent. “I just think it’s tough to repeat anywhere on Tour. Just quite simply, because it’s a year removed. And to win on Tour, you have to be so precise and so exact and so perfect, just about, for four days now; that’s the obvious. The second here is that you have a great field, and you know, the best players in the world are all there, and to beat them two years in a row is just a difficult task. You know, you have to be — especially with these green complexes and the speed of the greens, you’ve just got to be spot on, as they say. Two years in a row is just a tough — it’s just tough to do.” 
Josephine Morhard’s life story is worth telling on its own, and by the time we get around to the baseball angle of it, you figure out how a sport gave her only son some structure, discipline and a chance to shed himself from a Depression Era plight.
The book:
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 