Of all the speed bumps, detours and roundabouts we encountered since leaving the 2023 Major League Baseball season – we’ve been told the Rangers won out, outlasting the Diamondbacks, yet we’re still not convinced it wasn’t a COVID nightmare – we hesitate to ramp to the 2024 campaign that begins with the Dodgers and Padres officially on a working good-will vacation in South Korea — 16 hours ahead from L.A., and 6,000 miles West into the future — showing off Shohei Ohtani to a new part of the world, and, with that, relaunching the annual baseball book review project.
For those who aren’t up to our speed ball, this has been an exercise in empathy for the authors and efficiency on our end trying to crank out (at least) 30 reviews of new spring baseball books and post them, once a day, during the month of April. It was deemed something of a success for many years starting in 2011*. We were on target with 30 reviews in 2023.
*Our memory is fading and we weren’t actually sure, but that’s the best guess, since we’ve got The Wayback Machine to find things we’ve posted going back on InsideSoCal.com going back to our first posts in 2006.
Our ’24 baseball book review list again deviates a bit from its original intent. We’ve reigned that we can’t do it as before as life’s challenge intercede but the spirit is still there. We’ve started a bit pre-April early (because the MLB season keeps backspacing itself on the calendar leading to a November conclusion) and try to time the landing of reviews to dates that make sense – such as April 15’s Jackie Robinson Day.
We promise to be as diligent and perhaps less wordy with these reviews. The point it to let readers know these works exist, should you be temped to pick them up for purchase without knowing their caveats. It’s also a way to uncover projects that otherwise might be off the radar.
So let’s crack this thing open …
On the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA telecast of a Monday exhibition from South Korea, the video screen shows one of the fan activities between innings: Two women see who can drink a beer the quickest with a straw.
Among the books we look forward to highlighting this spring/summer:
= “Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero” by Waite Hoyt, with Tim Manners, where some 40 years after the death of the one-time Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher, a memoir has been uncovered.
= “Baseball: The Movie,” by Noah Gittell, touted to be the definitive history of the game as portrayed on film since 1915.
Add to that the fact we have been undangling participles and prepping punctuation for “Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully,” submitted to University of Nebraska Press editors for a May 1 release. We also been cultivating another media project called (at least for the moment): SoCal Sports History 101: The prime jersey numbers from 00 to 99 that uniformly, uniquely and unapologetically create an authentic all-time roster. One of those numbers assigns No. 67 to Scully, which somewhat deviates from the premise of a jersey or uniform number, but on the other hand, how many organic Scully 67 jerseys have been seen at Dodger Stadium over the last handful of years? We also pulled a story from our “Perfect Eloquence” about the time Scully did don a real Dodgers jersey and sit in the dugout for a game at Wrigley Field.
More side notes before going forward
A post-Christmas and pre-New Year’s trip to Portland (please, bring this great city back to what it once was) led to another pilgrimage through Powell’s City of Books. I picked up three first-edition copies of baseball books I’ve long wanted to put on my shelf that are reminders/relics of where baseball journalism has evolved.
Book 1: George Plimpton’s “Out of My League” (1961, Harper and Brothers Publishing, 150 pages, purchased for $19.95) recounts the day in 1958 when he talked his way onto the mound at Yankee Stadium to see what it would be like if an Average Joe (he was a 31-year-old known-enough-around-New York scribe) actually pitched against real All Stars. It’s fascinating how rudimentary this all came to happen – and it’s a keen reminder about how the participatory sports journalism we came to know him for was really inspired by Paul Gallico’s work decades earlier. We had thought this was only done for a Sports Illustrated story – it involved hiring an SI photographer to document it, and the magazine put up $1,000 as a “contest” prior to an exhibition game for Plimpton to get the attention of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson, Gil Hodges and other legends of the day to buy into it. It doesn’t end well, as an exercise for Plimpton’s ego, but he so creatively tells how it devolved in front of his blurry eyes and what he took away from it. Even more impressive is the book has a blurb endorsement from Ernest Hemingway, and it launched Plimpton’s mission to become a Detroit Lions quarterback and Boston Bruins goalie.
Book 2: Jim Brosnan’s “The Long Season” (1960, Harper and Brothers Publishing, 273 pages) has a brief mention in Plimpton’s “Out of My League,” which shares the same publisher. There is a strange overlap in these two that could have put the idea into Plimpton’s head to journal about bring a big-league pitcher. Yet Brosnan’s diary is of his 1959 season (months after Plimpton’s stunt). It started with him as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals and diverts with him to Cincinnati during a June trade. He had been in the league 12 years at that point. Excerpts of this book were printed in SI. Brosnan’s book, of course, is often cited as a precursor for Jim Bouton’s more well known “Ball Four,” which launched in 1970 and also is fortunate for Bouton in some regards that he was also traded in the middle of that season, from the expansion Seattle Pilot misfits to the Houston Astros after already having built a career with the New York Yankees (and would come back years later with the Atlanta Braves).
Book 3: Tom House’s “The Jock’s Itch: The Fast-Track Private World of the Professional Ballplayer” (1989, Contemporary Books, 129 pages) calls this his “Ball Four-esque” attempt to tell it like it was when the former USC pitcher somehow made it through an MLB career with Atlanta, Boston and Seattle that ended in the late 1970s. It goes deeper into his post-life, trying to figure things out based on lessons not learned as a pro baseball player, and always having that “itch” to get back into it as a coach. (And, yes, he was the Braves’ relief pitcher who caught Hank Aaron’s 715th home run while in the bullpen, despite Bill Buckner’s attempt to climb the wall and get it). House, at the time, was starting as a Texas Rangers pitching coach who created new techniques – like warming up with a football – to launch a whole new career as an expert in this new field of mental and physical training, leading to a dozen more books on the subject. This first-person account of what it was like for him doesn’t try to call out former illicit teammates, only the circumstances they all faced in what was a somewhat mature-deficient situation made worse by hero worship.
The three together form a nice trilogy of work that now give more meaning to my expanding collection of Bouton’s “Ball Four” editions that I’ve collected over the years and was fortunate enough to have him sign several of them before his 2019 passing (and provided so much context for a tribute we were able to do about him for the Los Angeles Times – note, we took the picture of the book covers as we laid them out on our backyard lawn to give it a nice baseball-looking background texture.)
A recent fact-finding expedition to the local Barnes & Noble led to three somewhat kismet discoveries:
First: Who knows more about this Lego typewriter above?
It’s astonishing, for what looks like the combination of what might spit out of a 3-D printer, and what’s essentially something you attempt to assemble with more than 2,000 little kids’ snap-together sea-foam colored blocks. Given it’s not a workable machine, we can still work with that premise. The $250 price tag (we have since found it on line much less expensive) discourages an impulse buy (unless you’re Tom Hanks) but then again, we didn’t think twice when paying about that much in extra baggage fees during a couple airline trips this year. We’d have gladly tried to carry it all on (and learn to pack more light) if the reward was this little engineering marvel.Bravo, Lego.
(At the Lego website, we see it has a 4.5-out-of-5 rating based on about 170 reviews. Those who’ve given it the highest raves still aren’t completely satisfied it doesn’t act more like a real typewriter — a lack of spring in the keys, a clumsy rolling bar. C’mon. It passes the eye test. Those most frustrated seem to be taking it out on the vague instructions. Builder beware).
Second: This is a sign we saw set up at a table with all the new-ish baseball books that have been released.
Dad joke? Probably. It worked with us.
What slipped our mind is that we’d likely seen is several times this summer — and photographed it in late June, during Post 20 when we reviewed Tim Brown’s “The Tao of the Backup Catcher,” noticing his book had been out for sale a couple weeks before it’s scheduled release date. That sign wasn’t the focus of the photo.
This time, we actually read it. And laughed. Because, well, it finally hit us.
Third: This is a 36-pack card game available amidst all the things we get to look at and touch and hold and smell and ponder in the moments before we get to the check-out register.
It’s produced by a company called eeBoo.com, which frames it as educational toy and puzzle company “women owned and mother run.” Plus it’s “sustainable” and “always good.”
We feel the good, green vibes and appreciate the retro artwork that makes it unique.
The game involves anyone age 5 and older — we check that box — and players flip over a card that shows what the batter does as your team is on offense. A paper fold-able field helps visualize what the runners are doing. It encourages using pennies or jellybeans for runners.
We had a flashback to fifth grade when we had the MLB-approved Thermos metal lunch box with the generic players — and the spinner game on the back with magnetic players.
It was a daily recess and lunchtime activity that still seems like yesterday as much as it seems like 100 years ago.
The card game was the 10th temptation of that bookstore visit we respectfully resisted — along with a variety of book purchases we’ve noted. And even if they weren’t $250, they were things we can file away in the memory back as possibly justification for purchase to fulfill an obligation of a birthday, anniversary or Grandfather-Grandson Day activity.
We slid into home at the counter, used our B&N membership discount, and came away with the simply copy of Consumer Reports issue that is all about how to take better care of oneself.
Healing Through Baseball sounds like a much better proposition.
We touched a bit on that in the last post, recalling the work our friend and baseball documentarian Jon Leonoudakis, who we quoted in our 50th anniversary of the Baseball Encyclopedia story for the L.A. Times, can tell you more about the wonderful project he has involved with baseball history and trying to use it as a platform to help those suffering with memory loss find something to grab onto and fire up the synapses.
Our baseball book therapy program has closed for ’23, restored with the following 30 posts that covered more than 40 books released this year (or late last year that were relevant).
It’s also therapeutic when we read stories about public school book banning — even some that involved baseball — that finally get resolved by with more level-headed decision making. The books? They’re in the photo above. Third-grade level. On Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente.
Pretty controversial in Florida apparently.
So here’s how the books posting ended up, and how we’d rank and file them:
TOP SHELF:
Day 11: “Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers,” by Erik Sherman for University of Nebraska Press.
Sherman can be thanked for finally shaming the Dodgers organization (at least the current ownership) to finally retiring Valenzuela’s No. 34. The context is all here for those who were unclear all these years after his final pitch, and his current goodwill as a Spanish-language broadcaster.
Day 30:“Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments,” by Joe Posnanski for Dutton Books.
For the many fans of the author, this could easily be reframed as “Why We Love Joe Posnanski.” The first story is his admiration for Duane Kuiper. And the love affair with the game builds from there. It’s easy to share the love.
Day 20: “The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game,” by Tim Brown for Twelve Books/Hatchette.
Former big-league backup catcher Erik Kratz is the focal point in proving that taking one for the team is an art unto itself.Journalist Tim Brown is a perfect sherpa for this journey having already chronicled the true grit of Jim Abbott and Rick Ankiel.
Day 12:“Baseball Field Guide: An In-Depth Illustrated Guide to the Complete Rules of Baseball” by Paul Formosa and Dan Hamburger for The Experiment LLC.
Version 4.0 is blue-ribbon work. If the book isn’t dog-eared, bookmarked with adhesive note pages, highlighted with yellow marker and held together with paperclips by its fifth use, you aren’t handling it properly. And if this isn’t kept near the real, confusing Official MLB Rule Book on one’s shelf, it’s a missed opportunity.
Day 1:“Cooperstown at the Crossroads: The Checkered History (and Uncertain Future) of Baseball’s Hall of Fame,” by G. Thomas Scott for Niwanda Books (released late 2022).
The hope is that someday “Tungsten Arm” O’Doyle makes it to Cooperstown, maybe in the same class as Shohei Ohtani. Thomas could make that happen with all the changes he suggests to fix this somewhat dysfunctional shrine/museum/nostalgic warehouse.
Day 21: “Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years,” by Stephen P. Gietschier for University of Nebraska Press.
Six-hundred plus pages explaining the game from the end of World War II to expansion in the early 1960s. It ain’t heavy lifting. It’s high heat. It’s history come alive and brilliant. You’ll end up far more educated than you anticipated.Also enjoy the cover art by Graig Kriendler.
Day 10:“Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer, at the Perfect Ballpark, at the Perfect Time,” by Ryan McGee for Doubleday.
Shelve it right there next to “Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir,” by Greg Larson, which we enjoyed reviewing in 2021. The insight Larson gave in “Clubbie” runs parallel to McGee here. Full of delight. The meaning of delightful. And shedding light on a subject that needs more historical perspective.
Day 18:“Making It Home: Life Lessons From A Season of Little League,” by Teresa Strasser for Berkley Books.
It’s about dealing with good grief, with diamond therapy. Kids do all the heavy lifting. Parents observe and ruminate. The Hallmark Channel might not want to secure the rights to this one, but some brave network will see this has having all the hallmarks of a winning scripted series.
Day 3: “A Damn Near Perfect Game: Reclaiming America’s Pastime,” by Joe Kelly with Rob Bradford for Diversion Books.
The former Dodgers relief pitcher has his say about the state of the game. By the time it started circulate during the summer, he was somehow perfectly back in L.A. working with full mariachi jacket again.
Day 29: “No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of ‘A League Of Their Own’ – Big Stars, Dugout Drama and a Home Run for Hollywood,” by Erin Carlson for Hachette Books.
After further review, it is confirmed: The girls just wanted to have fun in 1992. And they did, making history along the way. Thanks to Penny Marshall and this refresh of a story that continues to resonate with an Amazon/Prime series.
THEY ALSO MADE US SMARTER:
Day 28: “There’s a Bulldozer on Home Plate: A 50-Year Journey in Minor League Baseball,” by Miles Wolff for McFarland.
Plus: “One Season in Rocket City: How the 1985 Huntsville Stars Brought Minor League Baseball Fever to Alabama,” by Dale Tafoya for University of Nebraska Press; “Bush League, Big City: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees and the New York-Penn League,” by Michael Sokolov for State University of New York Press; and “Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational and Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball,” by Tim Hagerty for Cider Mill Press.
Day 24: “Smart, Wrong and Lucky: The Origin Stories of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars,” by Jonathan Mayo for Triumph Books.
Plus: “Baseball’s Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It,” by Lee Lowenfish for University of Nebraska Press.
Two well crafted looks at the art of guessing a player’s upside. Smart, wrong and lucky are three ways. The other is being bold and calling a kid’s bluff.
Day 23: “The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball,” by Russell A. Carlton for Triumph Books.
A follow up to “The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking,” Carlton is back with an analogy about how relief pitchers are like an invasive flock of finches who migrate into an eco system and mess it all up. Our feathers are appropriately ruffled.
Day 27: “Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption,” by Michael T. Friedman for Cornell University Press.
Plus: “Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports,” by Bruce Schoenfeld for W.W. Norton & Co.
You’ll never look at Dodger Stadium the same way, or figure out what they’re trying to do in Anaheim to help the Angels, when you figure out how it’s been redesigned to pick your pocket.
Day 17: “Baseball’s Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th-Century Major League,” by Justin McKinney for McFarland.
Plus: “Baseball’s Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884,” by William J. Ryczek for McFarland.
Look for the Union League label when searching for your baseball history about 150 years ago.
NEW BIOS … BECAUSE?
Day 15: “Penguin Power: Dodger Blue, Hollywood Lights and My One-in-a-Million Big League Journey,” by Ron Cey with Ken Gurnick for Triumph Books.
A high 5. Yet, as triumphant a look back at the life of the Dodgers all-time franchise third baseman — as he backs up with new stats — how did this not end up published by Penguin Press?
Day 5: “Spitter: Baseball’s Notorious Gaylord Perry” by David Vaught for Texas A&M University Press.
Gaylord willing, a spit-shine revival on the life and times of the Hall of Fame twirller may actually may change how we remember him. This all gave us a lot to chew on.
MARKS FOR CREATIVITY:
Day 2:“The Ballpark Bucket List: The Ultimate Scorecard for Visiting All 30 Major League Parks,” by James Buckley Jr. for Quarto Publishing Group.
If you’re scoring at home, or if you’re just alone, this is your new little brown faux-leather book. Journal your way to another book idea, kids.
CONVERSATION STARTERS:
Day 8: “Strength for the Fight: The Life and Faith of Jackie Robinson,” by Gary Scott Smith for Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (released late 2022).
Plus: “Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter” by Michael G. Long and Yohuru Williams for Farrar, Straus and Giroux (released late 2022).
For the April 15, 2023 Jackie Robinson Day, we had to step back in time a bit to find relevant new books on his life and times. The lesson learned: Call him Jack. That’s on his Hall of Fame plaque. That’s his true first name. It’s what his wife Rachel called him. Otherwise, maybe you don’t know Jack.
Day 22: “The Black and White of Baseball: Overcoming Bias in Baseball and Life,” by George F. Wrighster, through Elite Publications.
The grandfather is disturbed by what he sees his grandson going on through on the Little League diamond. Racism? Sure looks like it. How do we make this a teachable moment?
SOFT PASS:
Day 14: “Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas,” by Jesse Cole with Don Yaeger for Dutton Books.
Turns out, the guy who created this phenomenon has already two previous books about his claim to fame. No one has said he’s not a good promoter. He’s also figure out how to manipulate supply and demand. Bananas foster more ideas.
Day 9:“Sons of Baseball: Growing Up with a Major League Dad,” by Mark Braff for Rowman & Littlefield.
The chapter on the son of former Dodgers outfielder Henry Rodriguez is a little disconcerting. Otherwise, be aware: There are no interviews done with the fathers of any of these sons, if it was possible (a few have passed away). It might have added more depth and context to the stories of their relationships. Maybe that’s for the next round of expanding on this book’s idea.
Day 7: “The Voices of Baseball: The Game’s Greatest Broadcasters Reflect on America’s Pastime,” by Kirk McKnight for Rowman & Littlefield.
A fortuitous re-release of the book first issued in 2015, but now with Vin Scully gracing the entire cover, and fortified with more of his peers talking about his greatness.
Day 6:“Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess,” by Evan Drellich for Harper.
The fix is still in: Let’s dredge up the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal again. Especially after they won the 2022 World Series and manager Dusty Baker put a happy face on the franchise again.We’ve moved on.
TIRED OF THE RETREDS:
Day 26: “The New York Mets: Celebrating Six Decades of Amazin’ Baseball,” by the editors of Sports Illustrated for Triumph Books.
Plus: “The Last Miracle: My 18-Year Journey with the Amazin’ New York Mets,” by Ed Kranepool with Gary Kashak for Triumph Books.
We curb our enthusiasm every time another crop of books honoring the Mets happens. It’s amazin’ there are still miracles to drain from the swamps of Flushing.
Day 13:“Baseball at the Abyss: The Scandals of 1926, Babe Ruth and the Unlikely Savior Who Rescued a Tarnished Game” by Day Taylor for Rowman & Littlefield.
Plus: “The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever” by Jack Curry for Twelve Publishing.
Plus: “Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball” by Chris Donnelly for University of Nebraska Press and “Thurm: Memoirs of a Forever Yankee,” by the late Thurman Munson with Marty Appel for Diversion Books.
The blight of the Yankees’ book brigade reminding us about its franchise greatness. And did you notice: Aaron Judge was the AL MVP in 2022 instead of Shohei Ohtani. How? Because Judge is a Yankee and Ohtani isn’t. And by the way, the new Yogi Berra documentary was created on flawed logic and should have gone straight to video.It was criminal. Not our words.
REWRITE, PLEASE:
Day 25: “Bonus Baby: A Long Walk Off The Mound,” by Josh Wilson.
A cautionary tale about … we’re not sure. Don’t be an immature idiot like me? It was a promising premise penned by a former Cardinals farmhand who never made it to the bigs, with relatively minor in lessons learned. Unless he’s pitching this as a script for “East Bound and Down.”
Day 19: “Baseball’s Memorable Misses: An Unabashed Look at the Game’s Craziest Zeroes,” by Dan Schlossberg for Sports Publishing/Skyhorse.
Plus: “The Baseball Maniac’s Almanac: The Absolutely, Positively and Without Question Greatest Book of Facts, Figures and Astonishing Lists Ever Compiled,” edited by the late Bert Randolph Sugar with Ken Samelson, for Sports Publishing/Skyhorse.
Yes, a miss. And missed opportunity. Turns out to be a zero-sum game when you’re trying to collect all the things in the game that don’t add up.We tried to do an intervention. Maybe help out the common publisher. Maybe that only made us feel better.
Day 16: “Field of Magic: Baseball’s Superstitions, Curses and Taboos,” by John Cairney for McFarland.
Pretty heady stuff for things you like to think are just circumstantial. If you can plow through all the academics of it, there’s some fun to be had. Unfortunately, not enough fun, and too many high-falootin’ overthinkin.
Day 4:“The Fireballer: A Novel” by Mark Stevens for Lake Union Publishing/Amazon.
We had faint hopes this was based on the life of Steve Dalkowski. Not sure the author even knows who that was. The book somehow had more than 1,000 global ratings on Amazon.com just a week after its launch, a 4.3 out of 5 consensus. It made us suspicious as much as duped into thinking there was a good reason for it. Perhaps that the benefit of having Amazon Publishing as the owner of the Lake Union Publishing imprint (among many others).Another lesson about the book publishing world.
As for the books we didn’t get to (and we apologize, but still can give you some background):
= “The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams,” by Adam Lazarus for Kensington (to be released Aug. 22): The two Marines, better known as American heroes in other fields, are crossing the 38th Parallel together into Communist airspace in 1953’s Korean War. Sounds like a great Veteran’s Day read.
= “Bill Virdon: A Life in Baseball,” by David Jerome for McFarland (released in March, 2023). The 12-year MLB outfielder, 1955 NL Rookie of the Year (the Cardinals moved Stan Musial from the outfield to first base to accommodate his coming up), and manager for four teams in 13 seasons died at age 90 in 2021.
= “Jazz Age Giant: Charles A. Stoneham and New York City Baseball in the Roaring Twenties,” by Robert F. Garratt for University of Nebraska Press, (released in April, 2023). Stoneham bought the New York Giants for $1 million in 1919, the largest amount ever paid for an American sports team. He came to epitomize the high life and the changing mores of American culture during the 1920s, and the importance of sport, especially baseball, during the decade when his team won four consecutive National League pennants and two World Series, both against the rival Yankees.
= “The Year Without A World Series: Major League Baseball and the Road to the 1994 Players’ Strike,” by Robert C. Cottrell for McFarland (to be released Sept. 6, 2023). It was one baseball’s most self-inflicted injuries, calling off the 1994 MLB season in August, watching the World Series disappear, and then having the ’95 season start late (and was shortened to 144 games) because the labor dispute continued — and it was almost at a point of having “replacement” players keep it going. That 1994 debacle was also the beginning of the end of the Montreal Expos. Not sure what the value is in going back to relive all that — except maybe to learn from mistakes made?
= “Baseball, Nazis, and Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing Up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark,” by Jerry Izenberg for the Sager Group LLC (released in March, 2023). The sports columnist for the New Jersey Star-Ledger for more than 70 years is a survivor. “This story begins on a winter night in 1930 when Harry Izenberg and Sadye Weiser Izenberg threw back the covers, put their arms around each other and created me,” is how it begins. “Thank God for romance. If either of them had begged off with a headache, I wouldn’t be here and neither would this book.” Harrumph.
= “Contenders: Two Native Baseball Players, One World Series,” by Traci Sorell for Kokila/Penguin Books. The illustrations by Arigon Starr for project aimed at grades 1-to-4 brings to life the time when New York Giants catcher John Meyers (who later played for the Brooklyn Dodgers) and Philadelphia A’s star pitcher Charles Bender became the first two Native pro baseball players to meet in a World Series. Meyers was from the Cahuilla reservation near Riverside. He hit .300 (6-for-20) in the 1911 World Series and, according to his 1971 obituary, he threw out 12 runners, a record for the most assists by a catcher in the Fall Classic. After losing 2-1 to Christy Mathewson in Game 1, Bender was the starter and winning pitcher against Mathewson in Game 4, and then won the Game 6 clincher, 13-2, giving him three complete games. Meyers went 3 for 11 against Bender in the three games with two doubles. Do we need to add that both Meyer and Bender were more commonly known by their same nickname, “Chief”? How about we end it with this illustration from the book:
Our participation was an attempt to cultivate more an appreciation for baseball and its history, and our connection to it all.
Results vary.
The exercise insists on coming up with a player from MLB history – and the Baseball-Reference.com databank has more than 23,000 legit to pick from — that satisfies the horizontal and vertical intersection of the three categories. A team logo, a statistical achievement, an award or honor. Nothing yet about handlebar mustaches or wife swapping.
We struck out five times on filling this one our.
Nine open squares. No margin for error. It’s bound to knock you on your axis.
Our score is pretty pathetic. You want to get at least … less than 200?
This challenge of one’s faulty memory (go ahead and cheat a little only if you must to confirm Tom Seaver really did play for both the White Sox and Red Sox) draws its name from the rare feat of when a pitcher records three straight strike outs to complete an inning with the minimum of nine pitches. Its active Wikipedia page notes that it has happened 114 times in MLB history. Far more rare than a no-hitter (322 since 1876). A bit more common than a perfect game (24).
Sandy Koufax, with four no-hitters and one perfect game, also lays claim to three immaculate innings. Because of course he did. Yet that only ties him with Chris Sale and Max Scherzer, who continue to pitch in an era where batters aren’t embarrassed by taking called strikes if the pitch isn’t near their analytic hot zone.
Short sidetrack: “Immaculate Inning” is a term used in baseball for only the last 20-something years. So when rookie reliever Sloppy Thurston of the Chicago White Sox did it against the Philadelphia Athletics in the top of the 12th inning on Aug. 22, 1923 – whiffing the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 hitters in the lineup, Beauty McGowan, Chick Galloway and Sammy Hale – it’s likely no one even thought twice about it. In the 13th, Thurston got a little sloppy and gave up a go-ahead single to Frank Welch, so he was squeezed with the loss at Comiskey Park, 3-2.
The more we do this gridstuff, the more we’ve realized our brain doesn’t think of baseball history in this way. It most often leaves us twisted and tormented, feeling inadequate and we didn’t pay attention enough during Fantasy League drafts.
The Immaculate Grid is not a chapter Joe Posnanski chooses to include in this new book.
Perhaps it someday will be considered another way to sweet on baseball and its mystical ways. It probably came along too for this publication deadline, but we doubt he’d be apt to include it in a future update, based on what he has written about it on his daily Substack column, JoeBlogs.
“Some days I love IG. Some days, when I’m getting a terrible headache trying to think about who played for the Rockies or Rays, I kind of hate it. Sometimes my strategy is just to pick the most obvious players and get through. Some days I try to go as obscure as I can go and shoot for the lowest rarity score. I feel way too much pressure playing it. Who needs that?”
Many of us do, apparently.
A rarity score, FWIW, is taking this to the next level of brain cramping. It’s what the Baseball Mensa shoots for – pulling a player’s name from a dark hole who fits the answer in the most obscure way possible. For example, to satisfy the category of someone who once played for the Dodgers and Angels, the most common choices might be … let’s say … (think real hard) …
Albert Pujols … Andy Messersmith … Don Sutton … Fernando Valenzuela … Bill Singer …Frank Robinson … Tommy John .. .Zack Greinke … Hoyt Wilhelm …
Baseball-Reference.com can actually aggregate its data and pull up a list. Which means, if you cheat and look at it, you can lower your rarity score by instead picking …
Jack Fimple … Barry Lyons … Jim Leyritz … Shea Hillenbrand … Noah Syndergaard!
It seems to be why the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner, who can’t get enough satisfaction having two books on the game still be among the most popular buys in recent years, posts his results daily on Twitter. It’s not so much to boast about how he really came up with another low rarity score again. It seems to show that, if you really want to work at it, this thing can be harnessed … for good?
You’d think at some point, our SABR friend Jon Leonoudakis might even figure out a way to incorporate this game part of his BasebALZ program, to use baseball’s history and help those with fading memory and forms of dementia reconnect. The SABR friends are standing by.
Maybe … just maybe.
If there is a way for Posnanski to keep at it with the Immaculate Grid, our hope is there will be more love and appreciation, and he will figure out a way to pass it onto us. Maybe the key for him will be that one moment when there’s the intersection of “C” for Cleveland and “SF” for San Francisco, and Posnanski assuredly drops in the name Duane Kuiper.
For cryin’ out loud, there’s plenty of crying in baseball.
And in Hollywood.
From who’s in and who didn’t make the cut in a blockbuster casting call. From studio bickering about who’ll head up the project and why it’s worth nearly killing it. To what it might even take to remove a scene in the editing department because it isn’t resonating with the test audiences.
In 1992, the same year when the British-made “The Crying Game” with its shocking plot twist was one of the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, the Penny Marshall-made “A League of Their Own” may really be best remembered for, well, crying.
Because of this:
The dialogue Tom Hanks spit out during “A League of their Own” – he’s all puffed up as Rockford Peaches manager Jimmy Dugan, beyond frustrated with his right fielder, Evelyn Gardner (played by Bitty Schram) – has become so identified with the film as its pop and sports culture reference point that, in 2005, when the American Film Institute’s 100 Movie Quotes in cinema came out, “There’s no crying in baseball” is locked in via the popular vote at No. 54.
Also no surprise it’s the eye-dabbing, heart-pulling title that the publishers attached to Erin Carlson’s new book about how this whole movie came about, why its worthy of being included in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, and how it’s been revived as an Amazon streaming series with a modern update/enlightenment character development that its original screenplay didn’t have the gumption to dive into nearly 30 years ago.
Different times, different audiences. Different threshold for what was considered tear-jerking.
On page 70, getting into the fourth chapter of Carlson’s well-crafted research on the film, we see how screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell pulled out that line, again maybe not surprising, based on a true Hollywood story.
Carlson, a culture and entertainment journalist who has previously done two Hollywood-based film books on Nora Ephron and Meryl Streep, first explains how Ganz and Mandell established their chemistry by collaborating on scripts for TV that included Marshall the actress (“The Odd Couple” and “Laverne and Shirley”) and then went into movies with familiar cohorts (the Ron Howard-directed “Night Shift” in 1982, followed by the Tom Hanks-Daryl Hannah “Splash” in 1984, Steve Martin in “Parenthood” in 1989 and Billy Crystal in “City Slickers” in 1991).
So, that rant they pulled together for Dugan came from a moment when Ganz and Mandel were included in a studio’s story development meeting. A woman director (whose identity isn’t revealed) shed tears at some point during the discussion. The writers remembered hearing a producer in the room mutter under his breath: ‘What is this crying? Did Howard Hawks ever cry at a meeting?’”
At last check, it was forecast for an arrival in October with a $99 sticker price and a new publisher.
The book’s online synopsis: “When the pandemic hit in early 2020, baseball’s minor leagues cancelled their seasons. A few independent leagues tried abbreviated schedules, but all Major League affiliates shut down — for the first time in more than 120 years. Since then, Major League Baseball has taken over governance of the minors, and leagues and teams have been eliminated. In its fourth and final edition, this book gives a complete accounting of the minor leagues as they were known from the late 19th century through 2019.”
That smells like a multi-layer obituary.
When Johnson and Wolff got the inspiration and gumption to produce the book in 1993 – 24 years after the landmark “The Baseball Encyclopedia” reference book gave us the “complete and official record of Major League Baseball” — it was 420 pages strong, weighing in at three pounds, and published by Baseball America. Wolff was the company’s publisher.
It was given the Macmillan-SABR Baseball Research Award, and worthy of updates in 1997 (672 pages) and 2007 (767 pages), by then, each of them exceeding the initial six-pound delivery of that first edition of “The Baseball Encyclopedia.”
McFarland, the publisher set to release this fourth edition, says on its website that The Sporting News once called the project “wonderful” and “indespendible,” the later of which we will dispense and take it to mean “indispensable.”
The project came from two legendary figures in the baseball media business.
Johnson, a Syracuse grad who became the Society of American Baseball Research’s president and executive director, also put in time as a researcher for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He then became the founder and first director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He became the author/editor of the 1994 “The Minor League Register,” which is still available, published by Baseball America. He also edited “The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History,” in 2001. Twenty years after that, in 2021, he also wrote an LGBT contemporary novel, “The Freed Church Boy.”
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 