Hardball havens
A new lineup of books finds some unexpected angles into the history, dysfunction, and beauty of baseball
The season opens today, but baseball books have been pouring off the presses for weeks. "The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field," edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers (Rounder, $19.95), appears among us to mark the anniversary of the Red Sox' astounding capture of the American League pennant 40 years ago and, for that matter, Carl Yastrzemski's achievement in gaining what may prove to be the last major league triple crown. This was the season that "rescued the franchise," according to Richard Johnson in "Saviors," one of the book's many essays contributed by over 40 writers. Its pages include biographical pieces on the players, coaches, and manager Dick Williams, as well as hundreds of photographs, a detailed season timeline, and an account of the World Series contest with St . Louis, doughtily played until lost in the seventh game.
This year also marks the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first season as a Dodger and the breaking of American history's most notorious "gentleman's agreement," that which established professional baseball's color bar. This story has been pored and picked over innumerable times, but Jonathan Eig pulls it all together again in "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season" (Simon & Schuster, $26 ). He investigates and sometimes debunks the iconic incidents of this nation-changing season, separating myth from fact, and showing again the sort of courage and determination Robinson displayed on the field and off it.
Few baseball men have shaped the business as Branch Rickey did, not only in putting Robinson in a Dodgers uniform but, earlier in St . Louis, in instituting the farm system, signing players cheap to "let them ripen into money" -- as he put it most characteristically. Then there is his crucial role in the late 1950s in setting up the ultimately unrealized Continental League, which, nonetheless, propelled the major leagues into expansion. "Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman," by Lee Lowenfish (University of Nebraska , $34.95), provides a thorough account of the life, character, and exploits of this teetotaler Ohio farm boy, the grandson of a horse trader, and a true "conservative revolutionary."
Peter Morris's short but masterly "Level Playing Fields: How the Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Shaped Baseball" (University of Nebraska , $24.95) looks at the development of professional baseball and, indeed, at Americans' changing image of their society, from a much-neglected angle, that of the material conditions of play. The careers of Tom and John Murphy were pivotal. Tom, coming to carve the field for a newly aggressive Orioles team in 1893 , made "home field advantage" a ruthless strategy (the "Baltimore chop" can be chalked up to him, as can, most likely, the pitcher's mound). John, on the other hand, a virtuoso of drainage and beautiful, idiosyncratic landscaping, represents the spirit and reality of the "level playing field." The infield fly rule can be said to be one of his legacies. This book is packed with insight and telling detail on both baseball and the American temper.
Branch Rickey and Dizzy Dean share the loosely knit, anecdote-loaded center of John Heidenry's "The Gas House Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-From-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series -- and America's Heart -- During the Great Depression" (PublicAffairs, $ 24.95). The subtitle pretty much sums up the book's plot and dramatis personae. Heidenry calls the 1934 Cardinals (who acquired their sobriquet only after the World Series) "the most colorful team in the history of baseball." Debatable -- but this is a book of jubilant superlatives, a love song to old-fashioned baseball.
"Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits," by David Ortiz with Tony Massarotti (St. Martin's , $24.95), brings us the life and thought of the greatest clutch hitter in Boston memory. Ortiz, who was signed at age 17 out of his native Dominican for $7, 500 by the Marlins, tells a tale of hard work, burgeoning confidence, and gratitude toward his parents and others who helped him on his way. Among them is Pedro Martinez , who championed him after his release by the Twins and well into his career as a Red Sox. Massarotti contributes a few summary sections, but this book is Ortiz's , complete with his own account of the Sox' stupendous victory over the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, in which he played, in our view, the role of a god.
Dan Valenti's "Under a Grapefruit Sun: Red Sox Spring Training a Quarter Century Ago" (Rounder, $27.95) is a slim, colorful volume of memories, interviews, and photos depicting "spring training as it was and never will be again." Valenti has compiled the book from material he gathered as a free lance reporter and broadcaster during the 1980s. The sight of the modest park and human-size players fills one with nostalgia, as do interviews with a fresh, young Roger Clemens in 1984 and Wade Boggs in 1982, both in their first years as Red Sox.
Bill Lee, literary maverick and professional odd ball, continues in form this year with "Baseball Eccentrics: A Definitive Look at the Most Entertaining, Outrageous and Unforgettable Characters in the Game" (with Jim Prime, Triumph, $22.95). Baseball, he says, attracts eccentrics, though many upon whom he confers this distinction are more notable for their curious utterances, practical jokes, dissipation, flamboyance, and superstition -- or are simply possessed of discernible personality. Ted Williams gets two slots . The book is filled with Lee's port-sided pensées, baseball lore, anecdote, reminiscence, and strong language. "If there are children present," he cautions at one point, "please avert their eyes."
"The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America," by Joe Posnanski ( Morrow, $24.95), finds the author, a Kansas City sports columnist, on the road with one of the great players and managers of the Negro League and the first African-American major league coach. O'Neil, who died last October, was 94, still a fount of energy and optimism. Here he reminisces on those he knew and played with, rolling out stories about the wily, irrepressible Satchel Paige, as well as Willie Mays, Dan Bankhead, and other legendary players. He offers scouting tips, rules for living, and glimpses into a vanished era.
"How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball by Colleagues, Critics, Competitors and Just Plain Fans," edited by Gregory F. Augustine Pierce ( ACTA Sports, $19.95), consists of 13 essays and a number of brief observations on the work of one of the game's true revolutionaries. This is the place to go if you wish to grasp James's impact or can't make up your mind if it has been for better or worse -- and I'd be very surprised if you concluded the latter.
In "The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed" (Dutton, $24.95), J. C. Bradbury combines statistics and economic modeling to whisk away the emotional partiality that prevents, he believes, our determining the "Golden Era" of baseball. He hopes in this way to measure the effectiveness of scouts vs . "stat heads," to judge the worth of players, to show that steroids had little to do with the home run plague of the last decade, to measure the parity between big and small-town teams and more. His conclusions are dubious when they're not obvious. This is a book for the fan who will welcome an appendix called "A Simple Guide to Multiple Regression Analysis."
In "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs : Recrowning Baseball's Greatest Slugger" (Carroll & Graf, paperback, $16.95) Bill Jenkinson concludes that had the Babe played under today's rules and outfield dimensions, he would have knocked out 104 home runs in 1921 -- and "only" 91 in 1927. Jenkinson arrives at this through an exhaustive use of statistics, measurements, and the weighing of variables. He further explores Ruth's handicaps of that year: the rigorous traveling conditions, heavy bat, clunkier ball, and no Gehrig in the lineup to discourage intentional walks. It's all ridiculously hypothetical but demonstrates, if demonstration were needed, that Babe Ruth, "gifted beyond rational expectation," was truly the greatest.
In "Dropping the Ball: Baseball's Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them" (Scribner, $25), Dave Winfield (with Michael Levin) brings a deep-dyed baseball and community-oriented sensibility to examining the game's dysfunctional state. As far as players are concerned, the problem can be summed up in the sense of privilege and lack of hustle represented by the replacement of "locker room" with "clubhouse." For the owners, it is a pursuit of a profitable marketing image and neglect of systematic community relations, especially among American blacks, who are disappearing from the game. This is an eloquent plea for decency and loyalty from one of today's premier ambassadors of the game.
"Is This a Great Game or What: From A-Rod's Heart to Zim's Head -- My 25 Years in Baseball" (St. Martin's, $24.95) is Tim Kurkjian's extended expression of love for baseball, the game that he has spent his entire career covering. Each chapter amounts to a big, juicy stack of stories, opinions, analyses, and even conundrums. Why, for instance, should the tie go to the runner? Kurkjian conveys a sense of the game's ineffable wholeness, instead, as is becoming too common, dissolving it into abstract elements. 