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“The Spaceman Chronicles:
The Life of the Earthling Named Bill Lee”

The author:
Scott Russell

The publishing info:
Stillwater River Publications
447 pages
$24.99
Released Oct. 13, 2020

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA.com
At PagesABookstore.com
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Indiebound.org
At Bookshop.org

The review in 90 feet or less

Accepting the premise there are variously shaded gray areas between genius and insanity, creativity and wacked out, linear and off the rails, the terms we have reached at the conclusion of this exercise is that a review relying less on reactive words and more on encouraging a very late-night reading experience of this radicalized homage to “an Earthling named William Francis Lee III, aka Bill Lee and one who would eventually be known as ‘The Spaceman’” would be the most realistic way to introduce this the general population.

In other words, simply noting the book’s existence and hubris may be all we’re authorized to do in this space.

A traditional bio of the now 74-year-old would have notations of trajectory starting with his birth in Burbank, rearing in Canoga Park, success in taking Rod Dedeaux’s USC team to the 1968 College Baseball World Series title, and continual efforts to set records for age-related athletic achievements by pitching in professional contests. Much has already been laid out in various book forms.

The most renowned would be “The Wrong Stuff,” with Dick Lally in 1984 (Viking Press, 242 pages), shortly after Lee realized the MLB world wasn’t ready to keep him around in his late 30s. It was also a year after the success of the movie “The Right Stuff” about the original Mercury 7 astronauts, playing right into Lee’s strike zone. A paperback was reissued in 2006 by Three Rivers Press to coincide with a Hollywood version of his life, but if we recall, there was something lost in the historical portal translating 20^th Century events into the 21^st Century of entertainment.

Just before the reissue, Lee popped up with “The Little Red (Sox) Book: A Revisionist Red Sox History,” with Jim Prime (2003, Triumph Books, 224 pages) as well as another Lally-aided literary piece/followup called “Have Globe Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond” (2005, Crown, 320 pages).

As a way again to revive Lee’s spirit and genius, because we all should never forget it, statistician and long-time Lee drinking pal Scott Russell (who also thinks of himself as someone named Kilgore Trout) writes about how he got Lee’s New Year’s Eve blessing to launch this random-looking look-back and give it the name as homage to “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury.

Continue reading “Day 11 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews in 2021: Ground control to Major Bill, in a radicalized non-chronological form” →

“Turn Your Season Around:
How God Transforms Your Life”

The author:
Darryl Strawberry
With Lee Weeks

The publishing info:
Zondervan
208 pages
$18.99
Released Jan. 12, 2021

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At L.A.’s The Last Book Store
At PagesABookstore.com
At Target.com
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Indiebound.org
At Bookshop.org
At ChristianBook.com
At the author’s website

The review in 90 feet or less

In Devin Gordon’s spankin’ new book about his comically tormented relationship with the New York Mets called “So Many Ways to Lose” — a rip-roaring rant that will review in the coming weeks of this series — he starts Chapter 11 by recalling a peculiarly dark detail from another book.

That would be Peter Golenbock’s 2002 oral history tome, “Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team.”

The book’s 2003 paperback update ends by lamenting the death of Darryl Strawberry.

“I mourn him already,” Golenbock writes. “He was too human, and should be beloved and remembered for his contributions — even though he has suffered from drug addiction. It seems only fair.”

As Gordon then points out in his own book — Strawberry is still with us.

He explained: ” Amazin’s publication date put Golenbock in a trick spot, because throughout that summer of 2003, many people believed Darryl Strawberry was a dead man walking, including Darryl Strawberry. He’d just gotten out of jail again. This time it was for cocaine possession, but it could’ve been any number of drugs. Crack. Meth. He’d done them all. The cancer in his colon that nearly killed him in 1998 had returned and this time, he was refusing chemotherapy because he no longer wanted to live. His prognosis was ‘not good,’ Golenbock reported, accurately at the time. ‘The cancer is spreading.’ And that’s when he shifted into the past tense regarding Strawberry.”

For the record, present-tense Strawberry turned 59 last March 12.

A miracle, eh? Pretty amazing.

Happy Birthday, Darryl Strawberry! 🎂🥳 pic.twitter.com/tIGZbzy3Kn

— New York Mets (@Mets) March 12, 2021

Continue reading “Day 10 of 2021 baseball book reviews: An Easter message from Darryl Strawberry: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’” →

“A Season With Mom: Love, Loss
and the Ultimate Baseball Adventure”

The author:
Katie Russell Newland

The publishing info:
Harper Horizon
(Harper Collins)
256 pages
$24.99
To be released April 6, 2021

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At the author’s website
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At L.A.’s The Last Bookstore
At PagesABookstore.com
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Indiebound.org
At Bookshop.org
At ChristianBook.com
At Target.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Katie Russell’s drive to visit all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums during the 2015 season wasn’t just a personal pursuit, but an emotional mission.

Maybe you’ve already come across the foundation of her story as told in People magazine, Parade Magazine, USA Today and the Huffington Post, and by ESPN, ABC News and Good Morning America. We’re drawn in by these person stories of love and honoring a parent. Links to all those stories are already on her official website. (The story is so good, she has an agent helping her on ways to tell it).

Yet Katie Russell Newland’s drive to get married during the year of COVID, that’s part of this trip as well, and it becomes part of the payoff to where this book — perhaps so small and unassuming that if you’re searing for it on the baseball shelves you’d likely overlook it — eventually takes us.

Newland’s diary entries to her late mother tell her own cancer recovery story, and gives stadium-based perspective on each of her stops. It finishes with throwing the first pitch at a Sept. 22 game at Wrigley Field before a game with the Cubs – the team she and her mom followed in the Garden District of New Orleans., via WGN.

Happy Birthday, Harry! Tell my mom hi! ❤️💙👓 https://t.co/vkipg5AlqE

— Katie Russell Newland, PhD (@katiernewland) March 1, 2021

The forward by Peyton Manning adds some context as well about how he knows the Russell family while growing up in New Orleans. Katie is the fifth of six kids from Anne, and was 32 years old when her mom died at 69, yet “too busy rushing through my daily life to pause and realize that the secret to understanding who I was could only be unlocked by knowing who she was.”

As she adds in the intro: “Yes, this book is about baseball. But it’s also a love story … of a mother and daughter and our passion for the Chicago Cubs, the perennial underdog.”

Continue reading “Day 9 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews in 2021: To mom, with love” →

“Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir”

The author:
Greg Larson

The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Press
264 pages
$27.95
Released April 1, 2021

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At the author’s website

At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At DTLA’s The Last Book Store
At PagesABookstore.com
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Indiebound.org
At Bookshop.org

The review in 90 feet or less

Airing someone else’s dirty laundry can be a proven method for writers to sell books. And it sounds almost literally like what Greg Larson is trying to do here, as someone who has invested two soul-searching summers of minor-league baseball locker room shenanigans.

But that would be selling “Clubbie” far short. It’s his own life that becomes the examination through dealing with challenges he probably didn’t see coming.

Since Larson calls himself an author, editor and standup comedian living in Austin, Tex. — and offers himself up on his website as available for interviews, speaking engagements and bachelorette parties just by clicking his email link — he is teed up as someone who doesn’t necessarily take himself too seriously.

And seriously, if you can’t laugh at yourself, what’s the point?

Here, you don’t really have to read between the lines. This latest journey of baseball-as-life-metaphor doesn’t leave the reader with an overwhelming desire to laugh at someone else’s struggles despite the many humorous moments. Sympathy and empathy tug naturally instead. The real-life frustrations are transferred, as are the celebrations of those small moments of personal victory.

There’s also the sense that someone can be self-aware enough to realize that, sure, after getting crapped all over as the clubhouse attendant for the Aberdeen IronBirds of the short-season Single-A N.Y-Penn League, even spending one of those seasons living inside a storage room to save some cash, you can come out of that closeted experience on the othersize and realize it wasn’t all that crappy.

If this was a stage play, it would all center around the environment that supports this next-to-last level of the Baltimore Orioles farm system food chain, 25 miles northeast up I-95 from Camden Yards. The fact the team is owned by the Ripken family – most notably with Cal Ripken, Jr., as the front man, buying this in 2002 and moving them from Utica, N.Y. to his hometown and then having them play games at a place called Ripken Stadium — only adds more irony for the IronBirds’ method of operations.

The years are 2012 and ’13 – a lifetime ago for some of us. When owning a ’97 Cadillac Deville with an active “check engine” light ain’t a bad proposition. Nor was getting to pull on a uniform and shag balls to the delight of the other players once in awhile to break the monotony. Or sneaking out to take late-night batting practice. Share some beers with former big-leaguers and hear their life stories. Getting introduced to a couple thousand fans on opening day and jogging out to the third-base line along with the trainer to be part of a team of guys you likely won’t see or hear much about after all this is over.

Continue reading “Day 8 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews in 2021: Clubbing around with a stand-up guy trying to find a meaning of life” →

“Lights, Camera, Fastball:
How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball”

The author:
Dan Taylor

The publishing info:
Rowman & Littlefield
400 pages
$38
Released March 17, 2021

The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At The Last Book Store in L.A.
At PagesABookstore.com
At Indiebound.org
At Bookshop.org

The review in 90 feet or less

Admit to the guilty pleasure in doing a little namedropping.

Especially when it comes to the stars of Hollywood, from the glamor years of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ’50s.

From Rugger Ardizoia to Guz Zernial. Frankie Kelleher, Irv Noren and Dick Stuart. Lefty O’Doul. Frenchy Uhalt. Pinky Woods. Carlos Bernier. Bobby Bragan, Jimmy Dykes. “Ugly” John Dickshot and his 33-game hitting streak. (He made it into an episode of “Mad About You” as we recalled last year).

Paul Pettit was the bonus baby from Narbonne High and ended up as one of our high school vice principals. We appreciated the story Kevin Baxter did on him for the L.A. Times in ’19, about a year before his passing in Sept. 2020.

Bill Mazeroski? Sure, enough, if only for a couple of months before going onto Cooperstown.

Root all you want for some others like Charlie Root and Babe Herman. But the biggest star of them all who maybe was more comfortable in a supporting role was Bob Cobb. No relation to Ty, but one who made a mean salad with blue cheese, bacon, chopped tomatoes …

How someone that inventive with a head of lettuce wouldn’t also be with a group of baseball players is a leap of faith we really hadn’t considered.

From a baseball prism, Cobb’s real salad days were running the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League, taking a team that was floundering in its previous version (playing no where near Hollywood, at Wrigley Field near the Coliseum) and bringing them back for a 20-year run that will be as part of old Hollywood as red carpets and beaming spotlights.

The stories of the famous rebirth of the franchise run by the man with the most famous restaurants in Hollywood – The Brown Derby – have been told over the years by historians, players and those fans associated with that time and place that doesn’t exist any longer. It was taken off the menu upon the Dodgers’ arrival in Los Angeles for the 1958 big-league season.

Continue reading “Day 7 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews in 2021: Next up on ‘Gilmore Guys’: Hollywood horsehide and Bob Cobb’s salad days of invention” →