The Sports Junkie's Book of Trivia, Terms & Lingo, by Harvey Frommer

Frommer's latest work, Sports Junkies' Book of Trivia, Terms and Lingo, provides a resource to solve a problem I didn't know I faced. That problem is to find the origin and/or meaning of various sports terms, many of which have become so commonplace that most of us no longer have any idea of their sources. Frommer's book endeavors to fill that imformational void, though I think with only moderate success.

Certainly, there can be no question that the book contains a lot of information. Frommer evidently combined two of his previous works to make this book, and it shows: An inch-thick paperback with dozens of terms on most pages. Like any dictionary, encyclopedia or other reference book, this one simply cannot be read straight-through, and I'm sure that Frommer did not intend anyone to do so. Just the "important" part of the book, i.e. the Baseball section, contains hundreds of terms, and even if you could read them all, you'd never be able to commit them all to memory. It is, however, a useful book if you want to know to whom a certain player's nickname belongs (like for example), or what a term means (i.e. that a lazy, fly ball called a "can of corn"), or when a team's name changed (Like the Yankees, who used to be the Highlanders, who used to be the Baltimore Orioles) and so on.

Frommer covers all the "major" sports, like football, basketball, golf and hockey as well, but there is also a lot of space taken up on less traditional games. Archery, badminton, figure skating, volleyball, decathalon, tiddlywinks...you name it, he's got some terms for you. He goes into more depth with certain terms and nicknames that he deems worthy of said attention, for certainly we should talk about "The Great Bambino" more than say, "Nails", or some arcane fly-fishing term, and that's fine.

Personally, I'm not all that interested in any of the terminology pertaining to cricket or curling, or anything other than baseball, for that matter, but then I'm something of a freak in that regard. I can understand that some people do like sports other than America's Pastime, so the ever-diplomatic Frommer makes sure he's got something for everybody.

I do have two minor problems with the book, but neither is really a reason not to buy it. Problem #1 is that the book isn't really complete. Frommer is from New York, even though he lives in New Hampshire now and teaches at Dartmouth, and his heavy New York bias shows. He has lots of terms and nicknames for players and teams from New York, but doesn't give the same in-depth treatment to say, Detroit, Houston, or Anaheim, for example. Hard to blame him for that, since it would be impossible to really cover every possible term and nickname, and Frommer never says that his list is exhaustive, but it's still something to consider. A book of nicknames that includes the ever-popular "Tanglefoot Lou" as one of Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig's nicknames and leaves out much more interesting fare like "Bear Tracks" and "Death to Flying Things", cannot be considered complete.

A related, but somewhat different issue (call it problem "1a"), is that the book does not really explain the origins of certain terms and names. Frommer tells you everybody who ever had the nickname "Moose" in professional baseball, for example, and sometimes the reasons for the nicknames, but does not often explain the origin of a term, such as why a high, lazy, fly ball is called a "can of corn" or where the term "rhubarb" (a heated on-field argument) comes from. This book could have been to baseball what "Red Herrings and White Elephants" is to the English language, but it's not. That would have been my personal preference, but it would have been an enormous amount of research work, and not everybody has the thirst for esoterica from which I suffer, so I can understand why Frommer did not follow this path.

Problem #B, one that may be less of an issue for my readers than it was for me, is that most of this book is re-hashed from other stuff Frommer has written. Indeed, the publisher's website indicates that it is a combination of two other books Frommer wrote, both over a quarter of a century ago, Sports Lingo and Sports Roots. Certainly, there is some newer information in it, but if you've read any of Frommer's 37+ other books, or his website, then you've read a lot of this before. Or at least I have.

On the other hand, with all that info in one place, it's still a handy reference tool, and can be recommended on that basis alone.

Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age With the New York Yankees by Matt McGough

Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age With the New York Yankees
by Matt McGough
c. 2005, Doubleday, $22.95

The world of baseball has always been rich enough to accomodate both young boys' dreams and grown mens' nostalgia.
- Matt McGough, from Bat Boy

I have only two criticisms of Matt McGough's new book, "Bat Boy": It's too short, and it didn't happen to me.

Most young boys who grow up watching, playing and following baseball dream of someday occupying the position of their favorite ballplayer, nay, perhaps even to become that player, if such a thing were possible. For Matt McGough, a teenage Yankee fan in the 1980's (like me) that player was Don Mattingly. As it turns out for most of us, McGough did not have the magic to turn himself into Donnie Baseball, nor did he have the talent to become a professional ballplayer, but he had the determination to attempt what is likely the next best thing: being the Yankees' Bat Boy.

In 1992 McGough became the first Yankees Bat Boy, at least as far as anyone could remember, to attain the position as a result of something other than blatant nepotism. His two-year stint in that role provided him an ample supply of memories from which to draw material for his book, which he wisely chose not to write until ten years (and some writing classes at Williams College) had passed. McGough's tome recounts his many experiencess, from that of an innocent child, an awe-struck observer at the infamous "Pine-Tar Game", to that of a law-school student with the good fortune to be recalled for service during the Yankees' historic 1998 playoff run, but sadly recognizing that this phase of his life was clearly over.

Along the way, McGough relates his inauspicious start as an unsure-of-himself 17-year old trying to find his way in the Yankees' clubhouse, to an all-too-sure-of-himself 18-year old, shirking his stated duties as Bat Boy to do favors for the players and make shady memorabilia deals. The pages between are filled with practical jokes and blind dates, late night card games, batting practice and fist fights, paltry paychecks and generous tips, road trips (both with and without the team), fatherly advice, friendships gained and lost, and financial decisions he'd later regret. These are just a few of the authors many experiences, and with almost every one, there is some lesson that the author, now ten years wiser, imparts to his audience.

McGough is refreshingly honest about his feelings, as he rcalls them, from this time of his life. He does not mind sharing his vices along with his more noble motives and prouder exploits. His persistence and tenacity served him well in getting the job, as well as keeping it, once his love of the game and of his boyhood idols gave way to typical teenage apathy and overconfidence, taking his enthusiasm for shining cleats and folding jockstraps with them.

At first glance it might seem like Matt McGough was, for a time, the luckiest kid in the world. But let us not forget the words of that great old sage, Branch Rickey, "Luck is the residue of design." One of the quotes on the back of the book compares the author to Holden Caulfield, but I see this comparison doing a disservice to McGough. The problem with Caulfield, the "hero" of the Catcher in the Rye, was that he never really chose into anything, preferring instead to allow his environment to act on him, and never really experiencing life. McGough's "luck" stemmed not from confluences of circumstances beyond his control, but from his persistence at pursuing his dreams and from his willingness to do things, to try things, to make choices, even if they may turn out badly, if only so he could say that he had the experience.

Bat Boy is a wonderful, witty, well-written book. McGough's accounts are funny at times, as he relates stories that show both himself and others in a humorous light. Other stories are melancholy or even suspenseful, but in the end, almost all are touching and meaningful. McGough's ability to maintain the tension of a story in his prose serves him well, as you'll feel compelled to keep reading long after you should have gone to bed, or to work, or to get up from your comfortable chair, put down this remarkably engrossing book, and go do something productive for a while. For the record, I'm betting that you won't be able to put it down either. Maybe it's a good thing the book's not any longer than it is after all.

License to Deal, by Jerry Krasnick

License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent
by Jerry Crasnick

License to Deal 
(Rodale; June 2005; $24.95)


Captain Kirk and his crew took a five-year mission (and seven movies) to "go where no man has gone before." Jerry Crasnick took one year, and did it all by himself.

Of course, Crasnick didn't need a starship for his journey, though after reading License to Deal, I could see why one might think that baseball agents live in a different world. The "maverick" agent Crasnick follows is Matt Sosnick, half of the Sosnick-Cobbe Sports, Inc. partnership that represents some 80 or so major- and minor-league baseball players, including their crown jewel, Dontrelle Willis. The book recounts roughly a year of following Sosnick around in his travels, exploits and efforts in representing his clients, and gives a good amount of background information along the way.

Baseball authors and historians have composed tomes on all manner of baseball subject matter, from player, executive and even umpires' biographies, to ballparks to franchises and teams of certain years and eras, both good and bad, to the scouting business and even uniforms and other memorabilia. But to date no one had yet written about the business of being a baseball agent, despite it being so integral to the modern game, and Crasnick apparently decided that the time had come for someone to remedy that situation.

And what a cure it is. Crasnick, whose columns appear on ESPN.com, is a baseball writer by trade, but unlike some other beatwriters-turned-authors (Roger Kahn and George Plimpton come to mind), he doesn't have a particularly distinct writing style that serves as his trademark. He's a good enough writer, to be sure, but without the eloquence and flowery language of some writers, and without the plodding "just-the-facts-ma'am" approach of others. Rather, Crasnick seems to prefer that the subject matter speak for itself. His vast assemblage of interviews and other conversations give this book the personal feel missing from works composed from a much greater distance in space or time. The "fly-on-the-wall" perspective you get during so many interactions makes you forget that Crasnick must have worked very hard in not only following his characters around and procuring permission to record and write about them, but also in keeping himself mostly out of the interactions, allowing them to happen naturally, as he should. Like a good bass guitar player or a quality control engineer, you should only notice a writer/reporter if he's not doing his job properly, and Crasnick does.

Crasnick discusses various current and former clients of the Sosnick-Cobbe agency, featuring Willis most prominently, of course, but also discusses the agent/advisor business on a more general basis. He includes background on Matt Sosnick and Paul Cobbe, whose lifelong friendship forms the backbone of the agency, but also relates some details of the competition and the duo's relationships with other agents. Jeff Moorad, Arn Tellem, Randy & Alan Hendricks, the Beverly Hills Sports Council (affectionately known as "The Sopranos" by Toronto GM J.P. Riccardi) and others. Scott Boras practically gets his own chapter. He does a good job of being even-handed with each character in the book, portraying none as simply a villain or hero, providing both reasons for sympathy and for distaste in everyone. A good journalist you are, Jerry.

Fifty years from now, we will know whether this book was a landmark, the first in a series of tell-all, expose-type volumes on the business of baseball agents, as Ball Four was with regards to baseball players, or if it is simply part of the great landfill like most everyone else's work. By money's on the former.

Juiced by Jose Canseco

Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big
by Jose Canseco


Juiced

It's been said that one should not judge a book by its cover, though if one is to judge anything of an author by his book's cover, Jose Canseco is pretty impressed with himself. The cover of Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big, (Regan Books, $24.95, though you should never pay that much) besides somehow managing to fit the longest baseball title since "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings," also includes not one, but two pictures of Canseco, his #33, his position (RF/DH) and his career statistics, and that's just on the front. The back cover has yet another picture of the author, a beefcake shot of him flexing his bicep while holding a bat, with the title "The Chemist" above it, and a self-quote below. Not bad, if he does say so himself, and he does. Several times.

One of the first things I discovered as I read Jose Canseco's new book was that most of the reviews I had seen had not done the book justice. For one thing, 90% of the quotes they used had come right out of the introduction. I doubt most reviewers had read much farther. Another problem was that the articles I had seen about the book had seemed to discuss only the steroid-related topics in the book, whereas I found the book to be much more comprehensive than that. I hope that this thorough review will offer you a much clearer picture of Canseco and his book.

Don't get me wrong: Juiced is about steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. It's got that title for a reason. But the story doesn't start there, and Canseco knew enough as he wrote the book to know that he couldn't keep most sports fans interested for almost 300 pages if all he discussed were drugs, dosages and dropped names. Canseco spends several chapters discussing his family history and upbringing, breaking into the big leagues, and becoming an MVP. He also spends a chapter on women (plus an entire chapter on his relationship with Madonna...hint: it was pretty tame), a chapter on cars, one on dealing with the press, fatherhood, the 1994 strike, and several chapters on the twilight of his career.

I should say, "Jose's perceived reasons for the extended twilight and premature end of his career", but that comes later. The book starts with his parents' reasonably successful life in Cuba, and their flight to Miami upon Fidel Castro's takeover. Jose and his siblings grew up in Miami, and Jose maintains that he was something of a runt as a youngster. He and his twin brother Ozzie learned to play from thier father when they were little, though his father wasn't always as encouraging as he would have liked.

Much of what Canseco writes must be taken with a grain of salt, in my opinion, as the book is clearly written with an agenda in mind, namely to prove that Jose Canseco's career as a professional baseball player is almost entirely due to his usage of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone. "I was always a scrawny kid, not very athletic, and in my wildest dreams I couldn't see myself playing at the major league level," he tells you, and then he tries to play down the fact that he was the MVP of both his JV and Varsity baseball teams in high school.

Harrumph, I say. There aren't that many kids drafted out of high school by Major League Baseball teams, fewer still as low as the 15th round. The dude must have had some talent, right? He might not have had such a prolific and prolonged career without the aid of steroids, but he certainly could have been a major leaguer for some time. His brother Ozzie had essentially the same genes, and he made it to the majors, albeit briefly, without much help from steroids, though Jose attests that his twin dabbled a little in the juice as well.

Other names he mentions in the book, besides the big names like Mark McGwire, Juan Gonzales, Rafael Palmiero and Ivan Rodriguez, include Wilson Alvarez, Dave Martinez and Tony Saunders. For all of these players he purports to know first-hand of their steroid use. Canseco also discusses his suspicions about Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Brady Anderson, Bret Boone and Roger Clemens (though he does say that the Rocket never "touched down" in any woman's bed besides his wife's, as far as Jose knew).

The 2001 spring training conversation he "recalls" with Boone has already been debunked by ESPN.com's Jeff Merron here, along with a few other of Jose's fuzzy recollections. Some of these are details, like whether he pinch hit for David Cone in Game 4 or Game 6 of the 2000 World Series. Others are pretty substantial mistakes, like his account of a monster home run he hit off Walt Terrell in Detroit in 1986, which was actually hit in 1987. By Mark McGwire. Small detail.

Here's one that Merron didn't discuss: In Chapter 19, "The Godfather of Steroids", The Don discusses a home run derby in which he participated in February of 2000, along with other sluggers like McGuire, Palmiero, and Bonds. He says that Bonds was amazed by his physique, as well as the fact that he won the contest, hitting at least one blast that landed "maybe 550 or 600 feet from home plate."

"So what did Barry Bonds do that next off-season? He showed up in spring 2001 with forty pounds of added muscle. As soon as he set foot on a field in Scottsdale that spring, he was all anyone could talk about."

Well, the evidence does not support Canseco's inference that this experience led Bonds to steroid use. Bonds had missed a third of the 1999 season with injuries, but managed to hit 34 homers in 355 at-bats despite that, and was in fact, invited with other elite sluggers to the aforementioned home run derby. Bonds bounced back nicely from those injuriesin 2000, though, hitting .306, tying his career high with 129 runs scored (in 143 games) and setting new personal bests with 49 homers and a .688 slugging percentage, all at age 35. It seems more likely that Bonds' steroid use was a response to the 1999 injuries he suffered, and that the wheels were in motion well before he traveled to Las Vegas that February.

Canseco's opinions on his status as a Latino, and the influence it had on his young career, is also a bit suspect. While I don't doubt that racism existed at that time in MLB organizations, and that it still does in some forms, I don't see how the major leagues were as "closed" as he contends. In 1985 alone over 100 players, nearly 10% of all major leaguers, hailed from a predominantly Spanish-speaking country, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

Latinos had played and played well in the majors for decades before Canseco came along, with MVP winners such as Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie Hernandez, as well as fellow Cuban Zoilo Versailles. Hernandez and another Cuban, Mike Cuellar, hasd also won Cy Young Awards, and practically countless Latinos had won Gold Gloves, Silver Slugges, and other acclaim in major league baseball. A few narrow-minded hicks who happened to manage minor league franchises may have been rotten, especially towards someone they perceived as a "hot dog" or a "goof-off" like Jose. That, however, hardly spoils the whole bunch of major league owner-apples, and is far from the pervasive conspiracy to keep the Latinos down that Canseco describes.

Sketchy recollections and thinly-veiled agendas aside, the book isn't bad. Canseco's smart enough to know that someone else should write his books for them, and Steve Kettmann, his ghost writer, does a good job of putting Jose's words into, well, Jose's words. It's not eloquent or elaborate, but it's not Hemingway either. It's just plain talk, easy to read (unlike some of my stuff) and reasonably interesting. It's part revisionist history, part biased biography, and part "how To" guid, both for how to become a major leaguer (HINT: there are needles involved) and how to act when you get there (HINT: Don't date Madonna; DO be nice to the Press).

Despite my criticisms, I actually do recommend reading this book. Just try to do it with some access to the record books nearby, just in case. For all its flaws, Juiced really was interesting. Imperfect, with some big holes and lots of unanswered questions, but a fun ride nonetheless.

Kind of like it's author.

New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age, 1947-1957

New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age, 1947-1957
by Harvey Frommer

The Perfect Game. The Tape Measure Home Run. The Catch. Integration. The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.

You know the events. Now read the stories behind them.

The latest offering from noted author and historian Harvey Frommer, a reprinting of
New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age, 1947-1957, (Paperback, University of Wisconsin Press, $19.95) does not disappoint. The original was published in 1980, with a reprinting and a new afterward in 1992. This edition has a new forward by Monte Irvin, but otherwise does not appear to include anything that the 1992 edition didn’t. But that’s OK. It’s got plenty.

The time period that Frommer and many other baseball historians call the Last Golden Era, 1947-1957, at least for New York baseball, saw the Yankees, Dodgers or Giants capture 17 of 22 possible pennants (9 by the Yankees) and nine of 11 World Series titles (7 by the Yankees). More than half of the MVP awards given in that span went to players from New York teams. It was truly a dominant time for the City That Never Sleeps, and Harvey Frommer does a great job of recounting the era. He discusses the teams myriad successes and few failures, the histories of each of the three NY teams, their rivalries, and the eventual move by the Giants and Dodgers out to the West Coast All of this Frommer carefully places within the framework of living and working, growing up and growing old in the booming, post-World War II era that allowed this country, and indeed New York City itself, to experience some of the most significant growth, socially, economically and otherwise, it has ever seen.

Frommer’s penchant for writing about history and his ability to get stories about history’s figures, often from the figures themselves, both serve him well in this book. One of the best aspects of his work is the numerous first-hand accounts of the happenings inside clubhouses and on trains, the little anecdotes that make our heroes human, but that we often do not hear about until they have passed. New York City Baseball is no exception to this rule, chocked full of these stories, which can be equally as poignant to the young fan who never saw Willie or Mickey or Duke play as to the older fan who spent his childhood arguing which of those was the greatest. Those of us who never got to hear Red Barber or Mel Allen call a game can appreciate their involvement in this time as much as someone who grew up with his ear glued to the radio, listening for a “How about that?”

Frommer’s style, the simple, straightforward prose that clarifies without embellishing, that gives the story without trying to impress you with his vocabulary, makes you feel almost as if you could see and hear these old-timers sitting across your kitchen table from you, telling their own stories over a cup of Joe.

Speaking of Joe, some of the greatest players in history either rose to stardom in this time or called it their heyday: DiMaggio, Mantle, Berra, Rizutto, Ford, Mays, Snider, Campanella, Hodges, Furillo, Monte Irvin, Johnny Antonelli, Sal Maglie, Hoyt Wilhelm, Dons Newcombe and Drysdale, Gils Hodges and MacDougald, Pee Wee Reese, and of course, Jackie Robinson, all saw prominence and success in this time, and Frommer has stories for each of them.

I have only two minor qualms with this book. The first is that it’s a little pricey for a ~200 page paperback that’s been around in some form for nearly a quarter of a century. I guess that’s inflation. But, as you probably know, the book can be had for much less than that on Amazon.com, so it’s not really a problem.

The other issue is that the book seems a little dated at times. I know, that’s kind of a silly criticism for a book that purports to be about an era that occurred nearly five decades ago, but it’s true. Since the book was originally written in 1980, Frommer mentions in passing things like how Phil Rizutto calls Yankee games on WPIX TV, and Mel Allen hosts This Week in Baseball. Even the afterward, mentioning that erstwhile Yankees infielder Dr. Bobby Brown is now the president of the American League, seems a bit stale now, four years after the offices of the league presidents were dissolved, and a decade after Brown stepped down from a position that no longer exists. It’s by no means awful or anything like that, but it would have been nice to have something new from Frommer himself for this edition, don’t you think? Heck, Jim Bouton's up to Ball Sixteen or something like that, isn’t he?

Ultimately, though, this book isn’t about something new. It’s about several things old, old and wonderful, at least for fans of New York baseball, which I am. We need books like this one, and writers like Harvey Frommer, to remind us that baseball isn’t just about statistics and dollars. It’s about people. Some of the greatest of these are now gone forever, but at least they left some of their memories with Harvey before they left.

Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry by Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer

Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry
by Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer

The newest offering from father/son duo Harvey Frommer and Frederic J. Frommer, Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry (Sports Publishing LLC, $24.95) found its way into my hands about a week and a half ago, and I have taken nearly any opportunity I could to review it. Not only because I promised the senior Frommer that I'd get this review out in a timely fashion for once, but also because as a Yankee fan myself, there are few endeavors more satisfying than reading about the histories of my favorite team, its closest rival, and their competition with each other.

Having had the good fortune to have been raised a Yankee fan (and the good sense not to switch alliances when they started to suck in the early '90s), this book was and is a pleasere for me to read. Its pages are filled with stories of Yankees and Red Sox games and series, players and trades, fans and fights, quips and quotes, playoff wins and losses, heartbreak and joy for both teams. OK, so mostly heartbreak for the Red Sox.

Frommer starts the book with a timeline that starts with the birth of Babe Ruth in 1895 and ends with the acquisition of Curt Schilling by the Red Sox in November of 2003. The book then provides an entire chapter on the Red Sox and Yankees rivalry as it was played out in the 2003 playoffs, which, while incredible to watch, somehow was not nearly as exciting to read about only a few months later. The chapter, however, like the rest of the book, is well writen, interesting in its own right, and very readable. I expect that ten or twenty years from now, I shall be able to pick up this book and find it an excellent resource as I recount my own memories of that exciting seven-game series to my own children or (God help you) yours. The book, like the rivalry it recalls, will stand the test of time, I expect.

I know this because the very next chapter focuses especially on the 1978 season, and it is a great read. The Yankees and Red Sox were both vying for the AL East title and were forced to play a one-game playoff to win it, which the Yanks did, even though they had been down as much as 14 games in the standings as late as July 18th. From that huge deficit, to Reggie getting benched for dogging it, to Billy Martin getting canned to Ron Guidry's 25-3 record to Bucky-Effing-Dent, there is no dull paragraph in the chapter. Harvey and/or Frederic J. Frommer could have made a great living as a beat writer, had they not gone into slightly more prestigious careers as an Ivy League professor and a political journalist, respectively.

Moving on through the book, the Frommers spend chapters focusing on the general histories of the teams, the cultures and moods cultivated by the Rivalry, the merits and limitations of the respective ballparks, special games between the two clubs, a collection of quotes from various players, fans ad others, and list of statistics and trivia about the two teams. They even devote an entire chapter to perhaps the greatest rivalry between players on these two fabled teams, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Frankly, this is one area in which I think the Red Sox have a decided advantage, though I doubt if many of my fellow Yankee fans would back me up on this.

As you may have deduced, the Red Sox don't have many advantages in this rivalry, and therefore I would venture a guess that this book doesn't offer nearly as much for them as it does for Yankees fans. In fact, the title, "Red Sox vs. Yankees", is about the only time that Boston has gotten first billing in this struggle for the last three quarters of a century. Personally, I can't imagine being very excited about spending hours on end reading about the myriad disappointments and seemingly endless heartbreak associated with my chosen team, thankyouverymuch. But maybe that's just me.

Regardless of your particular bent, Red Sox vs. Yankees is still a very well-done book. As a coffee-table book, it offers large, whole-panel pictures, many of them in vibrant color, to appease the eye, and solid writing to appease the mind.

And even the price is right!

The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
By Nicholas Dawidoff

Nicholas Dawidoff might better have entitled this book “The Sad Life and Death of Moe Berg.” For a man so known and so beloved in the public eye, a man with such talent and potential inside him, a man like Moe Berg, to have met his pathetic and prolonged demise in such manner does not seem appropriate. And yet, whether we like them or not, these are the facts. At least in so much as Dawidoff was able to discover them.

Dawidoff must have taken years to compile all of the information necessary to write this book. Given the seemingly pedantic nature of some of the minutiae he includes in the text, the reader must wonder at some point whether or not Dawidoff omitted anything he discovered in his interviews and research. The book’s epilogue is comprised of a list of everyone he interviewed or relied upon for information for the book, and a list of notes on his sources of quotations, which takes up over about 80 pages! At least nobody can accuse him of not being thorough.

The chosen subject, Morris Berg, would seem at first glance to be an exceedingly interesting catcher. His 15-year career as a major league catcher places him among the elite in almost any conversation, despite that he only managed to hit .243 in said career, but that’s just the beginning. Moe was Ivy League educated, graduating magna cum laude BA in modern languages from Princeton, where he was a star (not a third-string) shortstop. He also graduated from Columbia Law School and passed the bar exam, making him perhaps the first player who was truly qualified to represent himself in free agency, if such a thing had existed at the time.

As if this were not enough, Moe Berg retired from an exclusive and exciting existence as a professional athlete to embark upon perhaps an even more elite and exciting career: He became a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, precursor to the CIA) during the Second World War, and traversed Europe in search of secrets regarding the German Atomic Bomb Program.

And sprinkled throughout this interesting juxtaposition of occupations, Berg somehow found the time to learn to speak or write (by varying accounts) Latin, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Sanskrit and/or Swahili. Hence the old joke that, “Moe Berg could speak a dozen languages but he couldn’t hit in any of them.”

Indeed, Berg could not hit, or perhaps would not hit much in the majors. He was not a bad player, but he was fortunate to have laid claim to his position in a time when good-hitting catchers were the exception and not the rule, as today. Interestingly, the author reports that Berg’s status as a third-string catcher was by his own design, that Berg sought the freedom and privileges of life afforded to ballplayers, but did not desire to make himself a standout amongst them, at least not for his play. Berg seemed to prefer sitting in the bullpen, chatting up the pitchers and other players, impressing them with his knowledge of law, history, art, language or other trivia, rather than actually playing consistently. Dawidoff posits the theory that Berg chose to play only when he felt spry, in an effort not to shame himself between the white lines. Ironically, it could be argued that a man of such obvious talent in college might have been a better player overall if ha had allowed himself a bit more practice. Or, as Berg feared, he might well have been washed-up before he was ready to leave, and forced to do something rash, like work for a living.

Berg’s career as a spy is able to be presented in detail by Dawidoff for two reasons: First of all, it turns out that the Germans had no more progress on the Atomic Bomb Project during WWII than they did on their Time Machine Project or on their Perpetual Motion Machine Project. If any project existed at all, it was at worst a ruse, a failed scheme-turned-distraction-to-the-Allies at best. Secondly, Berg was not a very good spy. Virtually everyone who knew him, even in his own times, knew he was a spy, and he was always doing silly things like hushing people for mentioning certain issues or hiding behind beech saplings with no leaves when someone he didn’t want to see walked by. This is not a good spy. If either of these things had not been true (i.e. if Berg had been a good spy or if the Nazis really had developed an A-Bomb) we would not be allowed to know what berg did during the war. That we can know these things is simultaneously enlightening and distressing.

But the greatest distress to be derived from these pages lies in the story of Bergs pitiful life after the War. This man of such varied talents and skills, with such a background as his, could have chosen virtually any occupation he wanted after returning from the war. Let’s face it: There aren’t many people out there who could list two Ivy League degrees, a barrister’s license, a Medal of Freedom and a baseball career spanning almost two decades, on their resumes. But Berg would have none of it. Instead he squandered his waning years, traveling constantly, dropping in on old friends unannounced, staying until he had worn out his welcome (sometimes longer), and moving on. Always moving on. He never found an occupation that suited him as well as either baseball or espionage had, and so he apparently gave up trying, and live out what would be his remaining 25 years or so in a vagabond's life, charming hospitality out of anyone he could.

The book is a comprehensive, well-written piece, but even the greatest of writers could not have made this a thoroughly interesting book without embellishing the facts a little. To Dawidoff’s credit, he provides only the facts, and does little to suppose that he knows what any of the characters was thinking at a given moment in Berg’s history. But this lack of interpretation leaves something of a void for the reader. Where you had hoped to find answers, it turns out that there may only be more, unanswerable, questions.

And even if you have the penchant for minute details that I do (to an irritating degree sometimes, my wife will tell you) this book was hard to get through at times. It took me nearly a year to finish it, and even though it was a year busy with other responsibilities, any avid reader will tell you that they’ll make the time to finish a great book. This one was merely good.

The Last Good Season: by Michael Shapiro

The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together
by Michael Shapiro

"Everyone wants to stay except for me...so we're going."
- Former Dodgers' Owner Walter O'Malley

Michael Shapiro's book, The Last Good Season, describes, as the sub-title indicates, the events surrounding the Brooklyn Dodgers' concurrent pursuit of what would be the franchise's 12th (and last for Brooklyn) National League Pennant and their owner's pursuit of a profitable venue in which his team could play. The Dodgers faced stiff competition all season from the Cincinatti Reds and upstart Milwaukee Braves, with the pennant being decided on the last day of the season, rather than in a landslide as they had in 1955.

And O'Malley faced perhaps even stiffer competition from New York City public official and all-around super-meddler, Robert Moses (who becomes the villain throughout Shapiro's account of the tale). The traditional lore of the events surrounding the Dodgers' move west to Los Angeles before the 1958 season has it that Walter O'Malley was just a "greedy bastard" who couldn't stand to only make millions of dollars in Brooklyn, so he sold his ballpark (Ebbets' Field) to a developer, his team to the City of Angels, and (probably) his soul to the Devil, to make millions and millions in Los Angeles. Reality, as it often turns out, is quite a bit more complicated than that.

Faced with declining attendance at Ebbets Field, the mass exodus of their traditional constituency to Long Island and New Jersey, and the advent of television (a considerably less profitable means of showing games at that time than now), O'Malley had a choice to make: Try to stay in Brooklyn, which would require a new stadium with sufficient parking and access roads, or move to another city. Everyone knows what he chose, but until now, only a select few have know why O'Malley chose to flee Brooklyn for a city he had never previously seen, 3,000 miles away. Shapiro does a wonderful job of setting the record straight.

Shapiro is a refreshingly eloquent writer, especially in light of the fact that his subject, baseball, or even sports in general, does not often inspire such eloquence. Certainly, there are Roger Kahns and Richard Ben Cramers out there, but for each of these it often seems that there are about four or five writers who choose more common vernacular to describe their subjects. This doesn't make such people poor writers, just a different style of writer. This Ernest Hemingway vs. Charles Dickens. It's a pleasant surprise to run into a book written so well about a part of New Yawk known for its vulgar accent and total disregard for the rules of the English language.

This can be a bit overdone at times: In one description of an equipment manager's attitude toward the Dodgers players, Shapiro describes him as "deferential to the point of being obsequious". Lovely. But I had to look up both words just to make sure that the phrase really meant "ass-kisser". It did. But generally speaking this trifle of trouble was worth it not to read "...he hit the ball really hard" for once in a baseball book.

The appeal of The Last Good Season is that it provides a somewhat different perspective, namely Walter O'Malley's, from the traditional view of this subject. But Shapiro knew that the warped viewpoint of a wealthy, out-of-touch, eccentric owner like O'Malley would only hold the attention of a commoner like you or me for so long. So, to add a more universally appreciated perspective to the tome, he added the warped viewpoints of the wealthy, out-of-touch, eccentric players to the mix. And just so nobody feels left out, he even included some normal people in the discussion. Initially, his interjected descriptions of Brooklynites' lives, people of whom you've never heard, appears somewhat ill-placed and slightly confusing. But once you realize what he's doing, namely providing a more easily related perspective, it fits perfectly and adds a flavor that many "sports history" books miss: Vanilla. That is, what the ordinary people thought and felt about the comings and goings of extraordinary people and events.

Superb writing, thorough research and a tremendous sense of his audience make Michael Shapiro's The Last Good Season an informative, touching and enjoyable acocunt of the last glory days of 'Dem Bums.

Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier
by Harvey Frommer

"I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."
- Branch Rickey

Harvey Frommer's Rickey and Robinson, recently re-released in paperback (Taylor Trade Publishing, $18.95), has lost none of its poignancy in the two decades that have elapsed since the first edition in 1982. The new forward by Hall of Famer Monte Irvin underscores the history lesson that none of us should ever forget: Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey made Michael Jordan and Jim Brown and Wilt Chamberlain and a host of other African-American athletic superstars' careers possible.
Sure, the color line was bound to fall at some point, but this story is more than just a case of being in the right place at the right time. As Frommer details in Rickey and Robinson, Branch Rickey spent years planning the 'stunt' he pulled on 15 April 1947. He had a seven-step plan that started way back in 1943, that had been carefully orchestrated, with the player painstakingly chosen, at the expense of great financial and other resources, to maximize the possibility of the Experiment's success.

Frommer's book outlines not just the events of the meeting of these two men, but starts you out with their respective upbringings, their backgrounds and histories, so that the reades has the feeling that he has at least known, if not lived, some of the joys and hardships of these two mens lives even before the events that would forever associate their names int he record books. You get to learn about Robinson's family history in Georgia, and upbringing in southern California, as well as his exploits in collegiate sports and the Negro leagues. You get to learn about Branch Rickey's country bumpkin background, his religious and political convictions, and his achievements in St. Louis before he ever came to Brooklyn. You even get to learn what each of them did after they left the Dodgers organization, how their passions drove them to strive for what they believed in even when most ordinary men would simply have conceded to diabetes, or retirement.

For that matter, you may get a little too much in the way of details. Make no mistake, Frommer's thorough and engaging research is a trademark of his work. His quotes from Rachel Robinson, Roy Campanella, Walter O'Malley, Irving Rudd, Mal Goode, Pee Wee Reese, Monte Irvin, and so many others help the reader to feel like he's getting a first-hand account of the events from those who lived them. Heck, I guess you are. But if you start reading the book hoping only to learn what Jackie's first year was like, you'll be in way over your head. Besides, you should know better than to think that Frommer would leave you with so truncated an account of such a significant occurrence in American History. Shame on you.

The book, as always, is well written. Eloquent without being excessively verbose (I suppose I could learn a thing or two about writing from Frommer myself!), Frommer is nothing if not a great author, and shows no disdain for the vernacular. But he also has a sense of the importance of his subject, and does not leave stones unturned where there are questions. He doesn not play up mythological events (like Reese's alleged gesture of freindship toward Robinson in Cincinnati) and does not seem to take a side on most of the political and personal conflicts depicted in the book. In all, this seems a fair and even-handed account, if not without Frommer's (also trademarked) slant toward new York sports. Can't say that I blame him.

Now more than thirty years after Robinson's death at the age of only 53, more athletes, not just the black ones, would be well served to remember the debt they owe these two great men.

Reading Rickey and Robinson would be a good start.

Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life
by Richard Ben Cramer



Two Christmases ago I bought a copy of Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life for my mom, who is also an avid Yankees fan. Mom did not have the pleasure of having seen Joe D. play, as she was not yet five years old when he retired, but she is well aware of his status and legend among Yankee greats of her time and in history. She really enjoyed it, and I borrowed it to read it myself shortly thereafter, having had no idea what to expect, but being both delighted and dismayed at the results.

This was, without a doubt, one of the best books I have ever read, for content, writing style, entertainment value and character development. Cramer seems to appreciate DiMaggio's abilities as a baseball player, and his significance to New York and the Yankees as a player. He discusses each year of his career in moderate detail, with increased depth for events like the 56-game hitting streak and the weekend he returned from an injury to personally bury the Red Sox pennant hopes. But Cramer also describes DiMaggio's associations with gamblers, his efforts to amass as much tax-free wealth as possible through his celebrity, and his disdain for the box into which the media, the 'hero machine' had placed him. He may have hated it, but he also understood how to manipulate it, making sure that no pictures of him were ever taken with people (or in places) of ill repute, speaking little so as not to make a mistake, perpetuating the 'gracefully aloof' aura that the newspapermen furnished for him.

Cramer goes into excruciating detail as he tells of DiMaggio's life, from growing up near Fisherman's Wharf, to playing for the San Francisco Seals (the Yankees of the 1930s Pacific Coast League), to spring trainings and seasons in New York, to his reclusive existence after baseball. The author details some of Joe's exploits on the field, but even more of his life away from the ballpark, where the accomplished, graceful, heroic son-of-immigrants everyone admired and envied proved to be a greedy, self-absorbed, paranoid, jealous, vindictive son-of-a-bitch.

You could not ask for more development of supporting characters in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. And these were all real people. I learned more about Marilyn Monroe, 'Longy' Zwillman and the pals with whom the Jolter grew up than I probably would have learned reading their autobiographies. Not surprisingly, much of what I learned endeared neither Joe himself nor his choices of associates to me. The author spent five years interviewing old friends, enemies and acquaintences of the Yankee Clipper, generally without DiMaggio's permission, and certainly without DiMaggio's slimy lawyer, Morris Engleberg's, permission. The hard work paid off, providing Cramer with numerous bits of gossip and tales of the baseball icon's failed marriages, disinterested fatherhood, and his use of the spotlight he abhorred to pursue the wealth he hoped would make him happy where his relationships never did. If nothing else, his endless pursuit of money may have somehow numbed the pain he felt from the losses of Marilyn and his son, or compensated for his distrust of...well, basically everyone.

If there is a problem with this book, it is that Cramer perhaps too often presumes to know what his subjects were thinking. It is one thing to observe that DiMaggio did not enter the service during WWII until his wife (Dorothy Arnold) presented a divorce ultimatum. It is quite another to presume that Joe was more concerned with losing his wife for the public spectacle it would cause than because he actually cared about her. But then a book full of observations with no conclusions drawn is a documentary, not a biography.

Cramer's villainizing of DiMaggio's lawyer and supposedly trusted friend, Morris Engleberg, has brought the author quite a lot of controversy, including lawsuits and now a book-to-counter-the-book from the slimeba..err..lawyer himself. Engleberg's exploitation of the Yankee Clipper, his time, money and image, his playing on Joe's paranoia to the point that people like Barry Halper were eternally shunned for requesting an autograph, is detailed thoroughly in The Hero's Life. This last section of the book could have aptly been named "The Hero's Death" as not only does the man himself finally pass on, but any naievete we might have held as fans of the hero met its demise as well. A sad state of affairs, but then heroes' deaths are rarely as glamorous as their lives were.

Joe DiMaggio was a man whose skills at baseball and determination to succeed we should all admire, but he was a man, just the same, as full of malice and selfishness as the beat writers would have had you believe that he was full of grace and professionalism. He was admired by millions, but known by few, loved by even fewer, and even betrayed by a trusted friend. The Hero, the Yankee Clipper, is not lost on Richard Ben Cramer, though some have said that the author misses the point by focusing so much on the man's flaws and glazing over his feats. I would argue that the opposite is true: that a man is defined not merely by what he can do, but by what he can't.

So continue to admire the Jolter's baseball talents and career, aspire to his success at business. There's no shame in admiring excellence. But learn the Hero's lesson: Don't take your eyes off the more important things of life, the things that eluded this media-made Hero: Friendship, Love, Happiness.

You only get one chance at Life.

Growing Up Baseball
An Oral History
by Harvey Frommer & Frederick J. Frommer



Harvey Frommer and his son Frederick must have had a fantastic time writing Growing Up Baseball (Taylor Trade Publishing, Hardcover $23.95). Together this tandem collected dozens of stories of major leaguers for this unique piece of literature. From A to Zeile, from Hall-of-Famers like Jim Palmer and Ralph Kiner to relative nobodies like Ed Yarnall and Lazaro Ramon Gonzalo "Cholly" Naranjo, there is something for everybody here.

There are interesting little tidbits of information here, like that Dale Berra's dad never really played catch with him, "That's what you've got brothers for." Even more surprising is that this reality did not turn young Dale off to baseball. Dom DiMaggio used to hide his coke-bottle glasses whenever scouts would come around, so as not to bias their opinions of him. Think how good he could have been if he could see!

What This Book Is: A collection of charming little vignettes about growing up as a baseball fan and/or a baseball player. Some of your favorite baseball personalities relating how they managed to grasp a small slice of the American Dream. Easily read and comprehended pieces of times gone by, and some fairly recent memories, related so comfortably that you can almost see the succession of men in your own living room, taking their turns in your easy chair and telling their own stories.

Perhaps the most engaging aspect of this book is that it really isn't written by Harvey and Frederick Frommer as much as it was dictated to them by the individuals featured in the book. Each little (Fred Lynn's is not so little) story is told in the first person as they dictated it to the authors, so you can almost hear Nolan Ryan's Texas drawl or Manny Mota's Dominican accent as you read, and you can tell from his speech that Bobby Brown is quite an educated man, even before he tells you that he was a cardiologist and spent a great deal of time as President of the American League.

What This Book Is Not: Well, it's not really a book that lends itself to being read straight through. There are almost seventy mini-chapters here, and many of them relate similar details: Several of these men were accomplished athletes during their youths, often in sports other than baseball as well. Many of them had to work hard at another occupation, or grew up in relatively meager circumstances before striking it rich in the majors. Almost all of them feel compelled to tell you that whatever they signed for was "a lot of money in those days." And I'm sure it was. But you don't want to have to read that sixteen times.

You're better off taking this slowly, reading a story or two at a time, in your leisure. Savor these stories. Enjoy them, instead of trying to wolf them all down in order to get a timely review written, like I did.

You'll thank me later. When you grow up.

Wait Till Next Year
A Memoir
by Doris Kearns Goodwin



Wait Till Next Year became the mantra for Brooklyn Dodgers fans everywhere, as their favorite team was so often within reach of the ultimate prize, a World Series Championship, without ever actually getting there. Next year turned out to be 1955, when 'Dem Bums finally beat the hated Yankees. The phrase also entitles Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir of growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and '60s.

What This Book Is: Kearns-Goodwin doesn't only focus on baseball (no accounting for taste), but also writes of the relationships she established in her formitive years with neighbors and friends, discusses some of the religious hangups that accompanied her Catholic upbringing, relates her views of the racial issues of the day, and of course, talks about how gut-wrenching it was to follow the Dodgers of the late 1940s and early 1950's. As I mentioned previously, 1955 became 'next year', the season in which those Dodgers finally won it all, and the celebration after this historical win (Brooklyn's only World Championship) marks the climax of the book. But relentless time would not evel allow her to savor that for long, as her mother's death, the departure of Walter O'Malley's Dodgers for Los Angeles, and the changing world around her forced young Doris to grow up much sooner than she would have preferred.

This book made for an interesting reading experience for me. The primary threads seen throughout the tapestry of Kearns-Goodwin's childhood are her cultural heritage (Irish-Catholic), her relationship with her father (a sometimes distant but very affectionate husband and father, who was also a successful businessman) and mother (a loving but often sickly woman), and her love of baseball, particularly the Dodgers. This left me with almost nothing of common value from my own childhood with which to relate to her tale, requiring me to entirely trust her story-telling skills to help me understand what it must have been like to be a female, Irish-Catholic, Dodgers fan growing up in 1950s Rockville Centre with a father who loved her. Thankfully, this male, Baptist, Euro-Trash, Yankee fan, product of divorce got the picture just fine.

What This Book Is Not: The other issue, at least for me personally, was the lack of a plot. This I think, is more my problem than the author's though, as she does state right on the cover that this is a memoir, not a novel. So don't be too disappointed when the 'bad-guys' don't show up right away, or if you don't immediately see the conflict. The bad guys are the Giants and Yankees, and the conflict is the classic struggle of time against humanity.

But you and I can still escape to a simpler time and place by curling up with your favorite blanket, a cup of hot tea, and a copy of Wait Till Next Year.

Don't wait. Go get your own copy soon.

A Yankee Century
A Celebration of the First Hundred Years of Baseball's Greatest Team
by Harvey Frommer

From the introduction by erstwhile Yankee rightfielder Paul O'Neill to the pages of famous and infamous quotes, to the lists of firsts and feats and statistics, Harvey Frommer's A Yankee Century ($26.95, Berkley, hardcover) is a joy to read. Frommer includes not only the accomplishments that have made the Yankees the most successful franchise in the history of professional sport (26 World Series titles, more Hall-of-Famers and retired numbers than any other team) but also the more dubious accomplishments (the embarrasing last-place finishes, off-color quotes and pre-mature trades, especially early in the Steinbrenner Era). The book allots the reader a view from almost any imaginable perspective: A timeline and a separate list of memorable moments, to review the details of specific occurrences; a history of Yankee Stadium, the shrine at which every New York boy's major league hopes are or were once laid; a who's who and discussion of the best and worst teams, the heroes every kid growing up around the Big Apple idolized; even lists of nicknames, significances of certain numbers, and a 100-question Yankee quiz. (I got a 72% - pretty sad - but I'm gonna study and re-apply next week!)

What This Book Is: A Yankee Century is well written. An Ivy-League professor, who ought to be able to convey his thoughts well, Frommer makes the book enjoyable by making it simultaneously eloquent and readable. Its sections fall in more-than-manageable chunks, making it easy to read through, or to take in small sections, as time allows. Like, in the bathroom, for instance. Numerous black and white photographs grace the pages, adding to the sense of nostalgia, reminding you both how handsome Mickey Mantle was and how funny Bernie Williams looked with those big old square glasses. It even contains nifty little surprises like a dictionary for interpreting Casey Stengel's verbal diarrhea and the entire text of Mickey Mantle's Hall of Fame acceptance speech. My wife will tell you that I know everything about baseball and about the Yankees (She's wrong, of course, but I like to let her believe it...) and even I learned a few things from A Yankee Century.

What This Book Is Not: Frommer seems to know quite a lot about baseball, both from the historical/human interest side and from the statistical analysis side of things. While he uses and cites a lot of numbers, this is not a sabermetric book. Only occasionally does he make reference to things like slugging pergentage or home run ratio, but of course, this isn't necessary for such a work. Despite the great B&W photos, this is not really a picture book. The focus is much more on the writing, and the liberal but tasteful use of pictures never becomes overwhelming.

A Yankee Century makes a great coffee table book for the old Yankee fan to reminisce, the young Yankee fan to marvel, or the aspiring baseball fan to help solidify his choice of the greatest baseball team to follow in history.