Book Reviews

[AussieYank]

Just finished reading the “Gashouse Gang” by Heindry. Absolutely loved it.

Dizzy Dean is a legend. Professional sport today would be better off if there were more lovable rogues like him. His antics & the things he said are classic. Just to give one example, & this is basically how the book ends. After the Cards took the World Series in ‘34 speculation was rife that the team would be sold. This is what he told reporters:

“I may buy the team myself. Me ‘n’ Paul ought to have enough money pretty soon to buy it, & before I get through with all these conferences I may make Sam Breadon an offer he can’t refuse if he’s half the business man I think he is. I wouldn’t mind owning a ball club with a couple of pitchers on it like me ‘n’ Paul”

This is just one of many hilarious quotes.

Ol’ Diz aside it’s also a thoroughly fascinating pennant race & World Series.

I’m sure many on this forum have read the book but I thought I would throw my piece in. Highly recommended.

Can anyone recommend particular biographies on Dizzy Dean? I know a few have been published.

[Bill Burgess]

Just wanted to give everyone a head's up to a great Ty Cobb book.

Ty Cobb: Safe At Home, by Don Rhodes, 2008. It's a great read and is extremely well-written. Has great photos, too. It won an award for 3rd best sports book for 2008.
If one uses www.bookfinder.com you can pick up a copy at a good price, starting at $5.66, including tax. Give it a shot!

I liked it so much I decided to put Don in my Meet The Sports Writers thread. Here is the link to his profile.---Don Rhodes

Here are some book reviews of Ty Cobb: Safe At Home. I enjoyed reading them, too.
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories...s_190728.shtml

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/...14539557.shtml

http://www.metrospirit.com/index.php...0605&Year=2008

http://www.amazon.com/Ty-Cobb-Safe-a.../dp/0762744804

http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/c...35&context=glq

http://savannahnow.com/nathan-domini...uth-perception

http://www.seamheads.com/2010/08/25/...ns-to-georgia/

HERE ARE SOME OTHER ARTICLES Don Did ABOUT COBB:

http://chronicle.augusta.com/content...s-field-dreams

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories...t_279236.shtml

[metrotheme]

http://www.examiner.com/baseball-his...years-baseball

Anyone who is involved in the game of professional baseball for 65 years is more than lucky; they’re blessed. Eddie Robinson, now 90, recounts his lengthy career as a player, coach and executive in his autobiography, “Lucky Me: My Sixty-Five Years in Baseball,” which is currently available via SMU Press.

[BaronSamedi]

I heard someone just wrote a new biography of Branch Rickey. Has anyone read it yet?

[icee82]

I read the reviews on "The Bullpen Gospels". I was fortunate enough to meet Dirk Hayhurst last night in Durham where is a member of the Durham Bulls. He gladly signed my book along with drawing the "garfoose" for me!!! He is a really great guy!!!

[BaronSamedi]

To me, the Hall of Fame candidacy of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are open and shut cases. Both are arguably the best players of all time at their positions - Bonds is the all-time home runs leader, has 514 stolen bases, and won eight Gold Gloves, twelve Silver Sluggers, and a whopping seven NL MVP awards. Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards which compliment 4672 career strikeouts and a 3.12 ERA in his 354 wins. Both of them need to be inducted on their first year of eligibility, and if they're not the Hall should be burned to the ground as a fraud. Oh, what, are you going to attack them on account of them being cheaters and terrible role models? Well, too bad, because for every argument you can make against the infallible credentials against Bonds or Clemens, I can yank at least three names out of the Hall of Fame which I can use to say "He's in there, and he did this! Why NOT Bonds or Clemens?" I have no respect for the Hall of Fame voters who are attacking Bonds and Clemens because, all things considered, their entire argument usually boils down to one simple idea: "I don't like him!"

It's cases like that which cause me to be as openly dismissive of the Hall of Fame as I am. I figured out a long time ago that this institution is about as sacred as a flag in an anarchist convention. It tries to get away with lying about baseball's origins, its admitted dozens of people who have been detrimental to the game at some point or another, admitted countless people of dubious morality while claiming that character is essential for induction, and the people who do the voting aren't exactly shining beacons to humanity themselves. If the Baseball Writers' Association of America includes such blowhards as Woody Paige or Jay Mariotti (who was arrested last August for domestic abuse - after decades of calling for the heads of any athletes who were accused of that themselves) they better be praying with all their might the public doesn't find out.

Cooperstown Confidential by Zev Chafets is an ugly display of just how deep the corruption can run. Chafets makes a deeper case against the Hall of Fame, one that goes far beyond the standard questions of eligibility. The players themselves are merely tapping fouls in Cooperstown Confidential.

Of course, with the players being involved here, Chafets does attack the question of just what good character can be. Everybody gives Ty Cobb a hard time because he was a racist, but his particular brand of racism was very common in America at the time, one could actually bestow Cobb a pass for that if you consider that Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby were both members of the KKK. Hornsby, in fact, could easily rival Cobb for the spot of supreme prick of baseball. Chafets also points out that a good example of exemplary character changes from generation to generation. And the character attacks take a few unexpected angles - Chafets also writes about sportswriters who keep various players out of the Hall because players like Steve Garvey, who were genuinely well-liked, clean characters, turned out to have secret dark sides. The issue of racial politics - specifically the image of the "bad negro" - is addressed for the part they may have played in keeping players like Dick Allen out of the Hall.

Those, however, are not attacks on the Hall of Fame so much as they are the standards and a few of the players and voters. They comprise only two of the eleven chapters in Cooperstown Confidential.

One of the more interesting chapters deals with the amount of money a public engagement is worth when a player becomes a Hall of Famer. The amount goes up significantly, which explains why so many players are so intent on receiving induction into the Hall. There are some a-list baseball stars like Yogi Berra and Sandy Koufax, Chaferts explains, who will always reel in a good profit for a public appearance. But for a b-lister like, say, Paul Molitor, that right to put the initials "HoF" next to a signature can be a real meal ticket. Money, it turns out, is also suggested to be a huge factor in why the Veterans' Committee so rarely votes new people into the Hall - since profits are split evenly among the committee, it means less money to go around for the vets.

Chafets also tells the tales of the story of baseball's origins - which was corrected by the Hall in the absolute loosest possible context - and the tale of Marvin Miller, who helped instigate the fight for free agency when he backed Curt Flood. He later led the players' strike of 1972, and his contributions to the rights of the players basically put him on the unspoken blacklist - even the Veteran's Committee keeps voting him down. Miller himself has no illusions about ever being enshrined, despite his contributions to the rights of players to go from one team to another and create bidding wars for their services.

Chafets never loses sight of what his point is - to take the Hall of Fame to task for all of the ugly politics that are hidden behind it. He constantly criticizes its owner, Jane Forbes Clark, and he hits the Hall for a number of the relics that it contains, citing that there is a lot more memorabilia in the Hall than is on display. At times, though, his writing can really blind him to a truly objective viewpoint. He suggests that inane politics is what is keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall. Now, I'm okay with cheaters and people of low character appearing in the Hall, but the exclusion of Pete Rose is completely justified. Many players cheat, but even then, there is very little incentive to prevent players from playing their best, or cheating at their best in an attempt to win. Gambling comes with the implication that you're going to do stupid things on purpose. More importantly, gambling with the wrong kinds of people can tie baseball up to seedy underworld characters and nasty legal waters. The sport really isn't that pure as it is, but bringing the underworld or the government - or both - into it could mean bad things for those who play and manage the game. It would involve bringing hell onto people who got into baseball just to be close to it, and allowing them no real safe exit if things got too hot.

Chafets also takes the Joe Jackson-is-completely-innocent belief, which is a little redundant nowadays. Jackson didn't perform quite as well in the 1919 World Series games the White Sox lost. Are we really to believe he was just that inconsistent? Or at least the Cincinnati pitching was that inconsistent?

On racial matters, Chafets seems to bite off more than he can chew. Race is always harsh territory, and the vast majority or people who wade into racial waters do it more guided by their outrage more than clearheaded thinking on the issue. Even a lot of prominent academics abide by a definition of racism which is blurred, broad, and flexible. Chafets attacks the Hall for including Jackie Robinson for being an all-time great player, instead of on recognition of his achievement breaking the race barrier. It would seem to me that taking this approach would demean Robinson's accomplishments as a ballplayer and simply designate him as "that black ballplayer." Is placing an emphasis on color more than baseball accomplishments something Robinson himself, a fierce proponent of integration, really would have wanted? Chafets also explores the Hall's idea of inducting Negro League players in proper proportion to their counterparts from the pre-integration AL and NL.

When Chafets is consistent, he's on and insightful. When he's not, his criticism just flares out in all directions. Either way, you'll learn a lot of interesting facts about the real - and very questionable - character of the Hall of Fame.

[bhss89]

Great review, thank you. I'm out the door to Barnes & Noble . . .

[Bill Burgess]

When Chafets is consistent, he's on and insightful. When he's not, his criticism just flares out in all directions. Either way, you'll learn a lot of interesting facts about the real - and very questionable - character of the Hall of Fame.

Nice reviewing, BaronSamedi. Good job. Nice work. You're an excellent book reviewer.

[ol' aches and pains]

Chafets attacks the Hall for including Jackie Robinson not for being an all-time great player, but on recognition of his achievements as a player.

Can you please explain this sentence to me? Because it isn't making sense. Thanks.

[BaronSamedi]

bhss89 and Bill Burgess, thank you!

Can you please explain this sentence to me? Because it isn't making sense. Thanks.

Well, whenever I read about Jackie Robinson, I always get put under the impression that Robinson would rather be known as a great baseball player first, and the first black ballplayer of the modern era second; placing Robinson's statistics in front of his color might have meant his abilities as a player would have been recognized as more important than his color.

Wait, I think I see what I did wrong. I meant to say "recognition of his achievement breaking the race barrier." My head wasn't going the same speed as my fingers. Thanks for pointing it out.

[metrotheme]

http://www.examiner.com/baseball-his...es-people-play

Bill White, the former All-Star first baseman, National League president and New York Yankees broadcaster recently released his memoirs, Uppity: My Untold Story About the Games People Play. White speaks openly about his lengthy multi-faceted career in baseball and why he has distanced himself from the game. The above link includes a full review plus video of White speaking at his booksigning in New Jersey.

[metrotheme]

http://www.examiner.com/baseball-his...-city-monarchs

Wilber Bullet Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs.

[BaronSamedi]

Jane Heller is a great fan. Or maybe the worst fan in the world. It really depends on who you asked in reference to a letter she once wrote to a newspaper, announcing her intention to divorce herself from her favorite team, the New York Yankees. This letter set off a firestorm of differing reactions. Some loved her and said they understood. Others blamed her for being the stereotypical Yankee bandwagon fan. But the fevered messages she received in return all contributed to her setting out to learn about real fandom and weather or not she really loved her Yankees as much as she claimed to.

The speed of this doing is somewhat shocking, even if Heller has written a handful of bestselling romantic comedies and has her publisher's full confidence. Although it's certainly nice to see her experience her troubles in getting it done. I say that not to be malicious, but because it helps humanize the difficulty of the writing process (something I'm probably going to learn about myself fairly soon - I'm writing a book, but have no connections) instead of making her look like just another fan in a position of privilege. Her publisher expects her to receive locker room access, player interviews, and the whole nine that goes with sportswriting. But Heller's author advance is what gets her into games - she doesn't receive tons of free tickets to luxury suites, she never sets foot inside the locker room, and she scores one interview which comes mostly because Doug Mientkiewicz was a nice guy who she happened upon a chance encounter. Quotes from her interview with Mientkiewicz prelude every chapter in the book, and they appear at the beginning of each new section in the last few chapters.

Confessions of a She-Fan takes us through Heller's motions through the course of the 2007 season. She gets fed up with the team, writes the letter, gets the response, gets the book deal, and jet-sets the team, chasing them all over the country. Along the way, she worries about her husband, tries to get interviews with people on the team, muses about how well the Yankees are doing, and observes the fans.

The book is basically divided into two parts. It's actually divided into three parts, but it feels like two parts. The first part is Heller watching the Yankees on TV, getting frustrated, writing her letter, and getting inspired to write the book. The second part is her following the team from city to city, observing, having her experiences, and trying to land that elusive interview. There is a rather obvious dividing line between the parts because the way Heller writes suddenly becomes more drawn out and incisive. While she's watching the games from her home, Heller simply writes about her frustrations. On the road, she seems less frustrated and more curious and fascinated.

Heller says it's fan behavior which is particularly interesting to her. In her journeys, she visits Detroit and writes about a group of hecklers she sees at a Tigers game who offend her sensibilities. The Detroiters target a fan in a Seattle Mariners jersey and shout things insults, calling him "Ichiro," and asking if he eats sushi. On the other end of the spectrum, she meets fans of the Tampa Bay Rays, and is moved by the way they show up at Yankees games to support their team instead of boo the Yankees. Of course there are anecdotes about Boston fans, whom Heller confesses not being able to stand. In one encounter, she takes delight in reminding one errant Red Sox fan that Boston's payroll isn't exactly comprised of chopped liver. But in another, she asks why Boston fans are so pissed off at the Yankees since they won the World Series in 2004, and in that scene you can really wonder what planet Heller has been living on. There are lots of illegitimate things Red Sox fans say about the Yankees, but the Yankees have owned Boston so bad over the decades, they might as well keep the deed to Fenway Park in New York City. One championship isn't going to make Boston fans simply forget a decades-long grudge; in that respect, Boston's hatred of the Yankees is perfectly legit.

In her quest to interview a player, Heller's mishaps are more fun to read about than any interview would have been. She gets to talk to a number of people with the team and the media, including Suzyn Waldman, and she has a chance encounter with Michael Kay. But getting exclusives requires her to leap a lot of hurdles, especially the hurdle named Jason Zillo. (I'm tempted to say he's the Yankees PR guy, but I really don't remember his exact position.) The interviews Heller manages to get don't reveal quite as much about her interviewees so much as they do things about herself. This is a woman who just loves baseball and the Yankees and is thrilled to have a chance to be close to them. She confesses trying to be a hardcore baseball groupie when she was young, telling young French people she was engaged to Mickey Mantle, and trying on numerous occasions to get a job with the team.

Some people receive the advice to wear a smile on their voices, but whenever Heller receives an interview, you can almost see her writing wearing a smile of its own. It's easy to feel her frustration as well, especially in the introduction when she asks her husband to follow Alex Rodriguez into a Toronto restaurant men's room and strike up a conversation with him. As you can probably guess, he objects. (Ladies, men REALLY DON'T TALK in restrooms. AT ALL.) In between, she still finds the time to write summaries of a lot of games and what she thought of the performances of certain players. This is not a mix that should go together, but Heller's quick, flighty prose makes it all flow naturally.

There's a reason Heller's blog is on my blogroll. Unfortunately, she's not writing in that blog anymore - she transferred her Yankees blog to her personal website, so it can only be accessed through there. It's definitely worth checking out, as is Confessions of a She-Fan, even though she compares herself to Elizabeth Gilbert. (Which isn't quite accurate, but that's an article for a different blog.)

[metrotheme]

http://www.examiner.com/baseball-his...uglas-williams

Jim Coates "Always a Yankee" by Doug Williams

[BaronSamedi]

The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals are considered one of the greatest teams to ever go onto a baseball diamond. It took 73 years before an author, John Heidenry, finally gave the team known as The Gashouse Gang the immortalization it deserves.

The Gashouse Gang had some legendary characters: Pepper Martin, Leo Durocher, and Dizzy Dean. You learn a little bit about Martin and Durocher in The Gashouse Gang. You’ll be learning a lot about the last one, because The Gashouse Gang is so centered around Dizzy Dean that it might as well be a biography of him. That and his brother, Paul. Branch Rickey shows up in The Gashouse Gang a lot too, but he is of course relegated into the background, which I guess is an understandable move. After all, Rickey is only the guy who forever changed the face of the entire damn sport two separate times!

Okay, maybe that observation about Rickey in Heidenry’s book is a little bit unfair. He was the owner of the team, after all, and Heindenry and an essential part of any Magic Season chronicle is the buildup explanation – the culmination of conditions which resulted in the season at hand. And the St. Louis Cardinals, despite their legions of fervent worshippers, have always been a rather low-budget operation. At least, they’ve been comparatively low-budget when compared to the big-spending powerhouses, but one way or the other they’ve always been a model franchise. They’ve been successful in every aspect of baseball. On the field, only the New York Yankees have ever won more titles than the ten possessed by the Redbirds, and their 17 Pennants place them among baseball’s most dominant teams of all time. If they had a top five – or maybe even a top ten – budget, it’s scary to think of just how powerful the Cardinals could have been.

As far as the Magic Season trope goes, The Gashouse Gang is pretty generic. Even with the presence of Dizzy and Paul Dean – Diz being one of the funniest and most colorful characters to ever stand atop a pitcher’s mound – The Gashouse Gang is really, really played down. It doesn’t present us with any of the small-time incidents that would make the team come off as fun, loose, or rowdy as baseball mythos leads us to believe, and that is a massive strike against The Gashouse Gang.

The Gashouse Gang should have been a better – or at least a more fun – book than it is. I can’t think of a lot of other baseball books that I wanted to like as much as I did this one. The Cardinals are one of my favorite National League teams, and so I’m pretty steeped in their legacy and was looking forward to being regaled with anecdotes unique to this amazing powerhouse. But the execution of The Gashouse Gang, aside from revolving almost solely around one player, is blase. It’s like one of those summer popcorn movies that you don’t remember ten seconds after stepping out of the theater.

During the initial buildup to the 1934 season, The Gashouse Gang reads like a good overview. Heidenry writes brief biographies of a handful of the important players on the team, and more in-depth biographies about Rickey and the Dean brothers. After Around the third or fourth chapter, the team overview takes a holiday as the zoom lens focuses in on the brothers Dean.

The REAL shame of The Gashouse Gang is that you don’t learn very much about them, either. Heidenry leaves you with the unfailing fact that Dizzy was the definite star of the team. But as far as the descriptions of Dizzy’s on-field antics go, Bill Lee’s book Baseball Eccentrics contains more details about the Dizzy Dean we all know and love. We get a glimpse of the Dizzy Dean who wittily claimed he was marrying a woman who had slept with half the city because he was one of the people she slept with (the marriage, by the way, lasted for 43 years despite her reputation) and the Dizzy Dean who rebelled halfway through the season, trying to go on strike because he felt like he wasn’t being paid enough. Heidenry writes at one point that his teammates saw him as a good guy with a penchant for mischief, and that’s how he comes off, even in spite of his apparently constant feuding with Branch Rickey.

Very few of the other Cardinals players are so much as mentioned with regular frequency. Pepper Martin gets a little bit of face time, and Leo Durocher is pointed at once or twice. But for the most part, Heidenry rarely changes his angle of Dizzy Dean, Dizzy Dean, Dizzy Dean until the Cardinals begin their final push for the Pennant. Dean still figures prominently into the narrative, but the team is finally moved more into the forefront.

The unfortunate addendum is that this is one of those books in which the World Series is really dragged out. The coverage lasts for about 50 pages, okay, so I guess it FEELS more dragged out than it actually is. But it comes as a bit of a shock because we Heidenry starts giving out more details of the games, which he doesn’t do a whole lot of in the rest of the book. I think too many details will slow the book down; there’s a thin, fine line between too many details and too few details, but Heidenry doesn’t write like he’s trying to walk on it. It could be that I’m not remembering correctly because the Dean coverage keeps getting in the way, but I don’t think there was as much effort put into it as warranted.

As I said, I really wanted to like The Gashouse Gang, but it was a disappointment. On the upside, if you’re looking for a good biography about a year in the life of Dizzy Dean, you won’t find one better than this.

[GaryL]

56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

I'm glad I read this book, but I have to say I was more than a little bit disappointed, especially considering the rave reviews on the back cover, which are what prompted me to buy it. An obvious criticism of the book is that there are no footnotes and so the conversations are, as far as we can tell, unverifiable. How does the autor know what Joe and others were thinking at various times, as he claims to know? For all we know, he was making it up.

The book starts as a biography of Joe, and then, for some unknown reason, ends abruptly at the end of the streak. Since it ends so abruptly, a good epilogue or summation chapter is sorely needed, but instead the included epilogue is one of the weakest I've ever read. His premise in this chapter was to show how the streak is still alive in the minds of people today. OK...I'm with you so far. But then it's almost as if the author just googled "Joe DiMaggio-streak" and then just copied some of the bland contemporary quotes he found. Apparently he thought he needed an epilogue, but really didn't feel like doing any more research. Here's a typical example, a quote from current ballplayer Adam Dunn: "That streak" Dunn said, "pretty much makes it so that DiMaggio won't ever be forgotten." Gee...How profound!...Couldn't the author have done any better that this? I'll bet Adam Dunn was shocked to actually see his totally innoculous quote become the final sentence in a highly-touted new book about Joe DiMaggio! And that's about as deep as he gets in this so-called epilogue.

There's very little new information here if you've read any other books about DiMaggio or the streak, and my overall impression is that it was a superficial rendition of this important chapter in baseball history. Other books cover it in much more depth and detail. Although I have to say I did enjoy the info about George Sisler and Wee Willie Keeler, two forgotten former streak record holders and Hall-of-Famers who Joe passed up on his way to 56. I also enjoyed the character development of actress Dorothy Arnold, Joe's first wife who is often overlooked in the shadow of second wife, Marilyn Monroe. From the information provided about Dorothy Arnold, it seems Joe would have been much better off sticking with her - a beautiful actress who was willing to give up her career to be a good wife and mother - rather than getting mixed up with the troubled Monroe. But that's hard to say for sure, since the book ends so abruptly, and we don't know why the marriage broke up (other than that Joe became "more distant") or what ultimately happened to Dorothy or Joe Jr. I'd sure like to know, but you won't find it here. Also, the photo selection was rather sparse and could have been much better.

Books about certain personalities are almost automatic best-sellers: Lincoln, Kennedy, and DiMaggio come to mind. As such, it's often times hard to cut through the hype and critically analyze the quality of the book. So if you're into all things Joe D., then you'll probably like the book. The fact that the author is apparently a senior editor for Sports Illustrated certainly adds to the automatically generated hype. But if you're a bit more discerning in the books you read about baseball greats, I have a feeling you might be just a little bit disappointed, as I was.

[Captain Cold Nose]

The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals are considered one of the greatest teams to ever go onto a baseball diamond. It took 73 years before an author, John Heidenry, finally gave the team known as The Gashouse Gang the immortalization it deserves.

The Gashouse Gang had some legendary characters: Pepper Martin, Leo Durocher, and Dizzy Dean. You learn a little bit about Martin and Durocher in The Gashouse Gang. You’ll be learning a lot about the last one, because The Gashouse Gang is so centered around Dizzy Dean that it might as well be a biography of him. That and his brother, Paul. Branch Rickey shows up in The Gashouse Gang a lot too, but he is of course relegated into the background, which I guess is an understandable move. After all, Rickey is only the guy who forever changed the face of the entire damn sport two separate times!

Okay, maybe that observation about Rickey in Heidenry’s book is a little bit unfair. He was the owner of the team, after all, and Heindenry and an essential part of any Magic Season chronicle is the buildup explanation – the culmination of conditions which resulted in the season at hand. And the St. Louis Cardinals, despite their legions of fervent worshippers, have always been a rather low-budget operation. At least, they’ve been comparatively low-budget when compared to the big-spending powerhouses, but one way or the other they’ve always been a model franchise. They’ve been successful in every aspect of baseball. On the field, only the New York Yankees have ever won more titles than the ten possessed by the Redbirds, and their 17 Pennants place them among baseball’s most dominant teams of all time. If they had a top five – or maybe even a top ten – budget, it’s scary to think of just how powerful the Cardinals could have been.

As far as the Magic Season trope goes, The Gashouse Gang is pretty generic. Even with the presence of Dizzy and Paul Dean – Diz being one of the funniest and most colorful characters to ever stand atop a pitcher’s mound – The Gashouse Gang is really, really played down. It doesn’t present us with any of the small-time incidents that would make the team come off as fun, loose, or rowdy as baseball mythos leads us to believe, and that is a massive strike against The Gashouse Gang.

The Gashouse Gang should have been a better – or at least a more fun – book than it is. I can’t think of a lot of other baseball books that I wanted to like as much as I did this one. The Cardinals are one of my favorite National League teams, and so I’m pretty steeped in their legacy and was looking forward to being regaled with anecdotes unique to this amazing powerhouse. But the execution of The Gashouse Gang, aside from revolving almost solely around one player, is blase. It’s like one of those summer popcorn movies that you don’t remember ten seconds after stepping out of the theater.

During the initial buildup to the 1934 season, The Gashouse Gang reads like a good overview. Heidenry writes brief biographies of a handful of the important players on the team, and more in-depth biographies about Rickey and the Dean brothers. After Around the third or fourth chapter, the team overview takes a holiday as the zoom lens focuses in on the brothers Dean.

The REAL shame of The Gashouse Gang is that you don’t learn very much about them, either. Heidenry leaves you with the unfailing fact that Dizzy was the definite star of the team. But as far as the descriptions of Dizzy’s on-field antics go, Bill Lee’s book Baseball Eccentrics contains more details about the Dizzy Dean we all know and love. We get a glimpse of the Dizzy Dean who wittily claimed he was marrying a woman who had slept with half the city because he was one of the people she slept with (the marriage, by the way, lasted for 43 years despite her reputation) and the Dizzy Dean who rebelled halfway through the season, trying to go on strike because he felt like he wasn’t being paid enough. Heidenry writes at one point that his teammates saw him as a good guy with a penchant for mischief, and that’s how he comes off, even in spite of his apparently constant feuding with Branch Rickey.

Very few of the other Cardinals players are so much as mentioned with regular frequency. Pepper Martin gets a little bit of face time, and Leo Durocher is pointed at once or twice. But for the most part, Heidenry rarely changes his angle of Dizzy Dean, Dizzy Dean, Dizzy Dean until the Cardinals begin their final push for the Pennant. Dean still figures prominently into the narrative, but the team is finally moved more into the forefront.

The unfortunate addendum is that this is one of those books in which the World Series is really dragged out. The coverage lasts for about 50 pages, okay, so I guess it FEELS more dragged out than it actually is. But it comes as a bit of a shock because we Heidenry starts giving out more details of the games, which he doesn’t do a whole lot of in the rest of the book. I think too many details will slow the book down; there’s a thin, fine line between too many details and too few details, but Heidenry doesn’t write like he’s trying to walk on it. It could be that I’m not remembering correctly because the Dean coverage keeps getting in the way, but I don’t think there was as much effort put into it as warranted.

As I said, I really wanted to like The Gashouse Gang, but it was a disappointment. On the upside, if you’re looking for a good biography about a year in the life of Dizzy Dean, you won’t find one better than this.

You forgot how Joe Medwick was hard to deal with. I think that was mentioned about five times in the book, which is about as often as Medwick was mentioned.

[BaronSamedi]

You forgot how Joe Medwick was hard to deal with. I think that was mentioned about five times in the book, which is about as often as Medwick was mentioned.

The operative word there is most definitely "forget." I DID forget that Joe Medwick was even in the book, perhaps because he is only mentioned about five times.

[Captain Cold Nose]

The operative word there is most definitely "forget." I DID forget that Joe Medwick was even in the book, perhaps because he is only mentioned about five times.

Right, and the word used to describe their great hitter each time just came to me. Surly. Every time they mentioned him he was surly Joe Medwick. No examples of said surliness, just he was surly.

I am right with you on the book. it was very informative when discussing the Dean Brothers and Branch Rickey. The author did kind of forget the "gang". But it was an interersting book.

[BaronSamedi]

My friend Matt told me this story: Understand that Matt is a major fan of the New York Mets. In 2009 he became a father for the first time, and one day he decided it was time to introduce his daughter, Satchel, to the fine sport of baseball and to his favorite team. So he placed Satchel down in front of his television during a Mets game and exclaimed “These are the Mets!” As if on cue, Satchel began to cry.

If his goal was to turn her into a Mets fan at an early age, I would say he succeeded.

The New York Mets have had an underdog mentality since they first drunkenly lurched across a baseball diamond back in 1962, and although they’ve been the most successful of Major League Baseball’s expansion teams, they still have a daddy complex with the crosstown Yankees. In Amazin’ Peter Golenbock tells their story through the players and owners who lived it. Well, some of them anyway. Amazin’ is an oral history, and it’s rife with plenty of interesting anecdotes about the little things. But there aren’t many people there to tell their views. The full final six chapters, in fact, fly by with but a single voice – Al Leiter – telling you about the Mets. The lack of people to tell the story makes me wonder if Golenbock really put thought into Amazin’ or if he was simply trying to rush through it so its release in 2002 could coincide with the Mets’ 40th anniversary.

Golenbock goes through pains to develop a context at the beginning of the book. He writes his first chapter about the original New York Metropolitans, a team formed in the 1880′s which lasted only a few years. Afterward, he takes us through brief histories of the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers, interviewing fans of both teams in order to give us an idea of how badly they were missed upon leaving New York City. We get a bit of the politics behind the creation of the Mets and an explanation as to why the early Mets were so bad: The National League owners were allowed to reshuffle their rosters before the owners of the Mets and the Houston Colt .45s drafted from their rosters.

After this, Golenbock takes us through a snoozefest of six chapters, consisting of over 70 pages just to introduce us to a small handful of players from those initial teams: Rod Kanehl, Ron Hunt, Ron Swoboda, general manager Bing Devine, and finally, Tom Seaver. Those looking to read more about the wonderful adventures of 60′s fan favorite “Marvelous” Marv Throneberry will barely even find his name in Amazin’. Fortunately, the book picks up again after this once the reign of Gil Hodges begins and the 1969 Mets make their run. Intrigues hits again as we get a detailed explanation as to why free agency killed any chance at dominance the Mets had in the 70′s, and how their old school owner couldn’t adjust to the idea of players being able to go from one team to another. Golenbock spends a lot of time in the 80′s, but he really kind of rushes through the 90′s. Once Bobby Valentine arrives to manage the Mets, things really grind to a near-halt. And the only thing that kept me reading through the final few chapters was the fact that they were so close to the end of the book, and I wanted to do this job properly.

Golenbock also uses a bit more space than usual to write between his characters speaking.

With all of the characters who have played for the Mets over the years, the real disappointment of Amazin’ is how vanilla the quotations Golenbock picked up are. Sure, the anecdotes are interesting, and some of the people do have flashes of personality. Darryl Strawberry has plenty to talk about, Dwight Gooden apparently nurses delusions of grandeur about how good he actually was (he accuses the Mets of disrespect when he whines about the 1986 team never being formally invited back to Shea stadium – this was before the 20 year reunion of the 1986 team – and about the Mets giving his number out to another player, which is ridiculous). A lot of the 1986 teamers, in fact, tell great stories. But a lot of the other people who are quoted in Amazin’ carry the kind of image Hank Steinbrenner tries to force onto the Yankees: They really ARE aw shucks types. A lot of them are underdogs too, but you would not expect a book about the Mets to be full of people so bland. The Mets who came along in the early 60′s are just insufferable Tom Brady types. And Gary Carter’s denial that he knew about any of his 80′s teammates drug habits feels ludicrous, especially in contrast to Jeff Pearlman’s account of the 1986 team in The Bad Guys Won!

One of the things I loved about Bums, Golenbock’s book about the Brooklyn Dodgers and quite possibly the best baseball book I’ve ever read, was that Golenbock pulled accounts out of Dodgers fans who had nothing to do with the workings of the team. Golenbock does this in Amazin’ too, but only through the first few chapters! I love accounts from fans because it gives us an idea of the local color of the diehard followers and provides descriptions of a lot of the local makeup. But Golenbock seems to blatantly favor the Dodgers and Giants fans, because the chapters about the Giants and Dodgers are the only ones with accounts from fans. No wonder Amazin’ comes off so milktoast. We are given nothing at all about the makeup and character of Queens, or Shea Stadium.

A lot of the inner workings of the Mets, for all Amazin’ includes, are missing. We don’t learn any little details that really humanize the players. There aren’t very many accounts of rivalries, petty jealousies, pranks, controversies, or anything of that nature. Tom Seaver gets his his say about why he left for Cincinnati, and the prevailing divisive issue is free agency and money. This is a world away nowadays, in an era with astronomical salaries and people complaining that ballplayers need to be reined in. Only, again, the 1986 team has anything resembling characters or human beings.

All in all, Amazin’ is decent. It certainly isn’t up to the high level of Bums because Bums basically described a mindset, an entire world, and maybe it was wrong for me to hold Amazin’ up to such lofty expectations. Amazin’ merely describes the team. It isn’t the worst gift for a Mets fan, but there’s so much more that could have been told. A book about the 1962 Mets (which my father recently described as “the farm team of Major League Baseball) could probably be nearly as long as Amazin’s 626 pages.

[metrotheme]

http://www.examiner.com/baseball-his...ee-clearly-now

Ryne Duren’s vision might have been blurry, but his thoughts were crystal clear. This clarity for Duren; however, didn’t come without hitting rock bottom. Blessed with an arm that fired 100-MPH fastballs, Duren went full throttle with everything in life and that included his forays into alcohol usage. Multiple times, the bespectacled flame-thrower tried to take his own life to numb the pain of his alcoholism. Fortunately, for Duren, his family and his fans, he overcame his addiction to alcohol and spent the rest of his life helping others recover from it.

I Can See Clearly Now: Ryne Duren Talks from the Heart About Life, Baseball and Alcohol, co-authored by Winning Beyond Winning President and SABR member Tom Sabellico, opens a door into the deepest and darkest moments of Duren’s life and career.

[BaronSamedi]

I missed almost the entire Jose Canseco era, so I’m not sure exactly what everyone seems to hate about the guy. What I know is that the hatred and distrust ran deep enough for everyone to write off a book called Juiced that Canseco wrote around 2005. I’ve only read a few snippets of Juiced, and I don’t know enough about Canseco to try to be a judge of character. All I know is what I learned in the aftermath of the publication of Juiced: First, that he was a raging douche bag without a shred of credibility to his name. Second, he was an honest man who was right all along. I picked up his second book, Vindicated, in order to try to have some of it explained.

Judging strictly on the reputation of Juiced, I can say that Vindicated is part epilogue to everything Canseco said in that book and part middle finger extended to all the journalist hacks who tried to write it off. It’s a rub-in, a big I-told-you-so to the people who tried their hardest to keep their heads buried in the sand, oblivious for the sake of keeping the Great Keepers of America’s Pastime deified. And you know what? Canseco has every right to say it. No one wanted to listen to him, but Uncle Sam landed on his side and now we don’t have a choice. Jose Canseco takes some great satisfaction in telling us off, and he’s earned the right to say it all.

Vindicated is an angry rant disguised as the story of what happened to Canseco after the publication of Juiced. Juiced is basically the focal point of Vindicated. Canseco writes about what he had to put up with and the things he did, including lie detector tests, to prove that he was telling the truth. He even covers the notorious incident in which he offered to keep Magglio Ordonez’s name out of the book in exchange for something, going as far as to take a lie detector test for that too, and placing every question he was asked during every lie detector test into Vindicated.

Jose Canseco writes Vindicated with a huge chip on his shoulder, and that’s apparent even from the first chapter when he writes about the hacking of Roger Clemens’s name from Juiced. Disrespect is the recurring theme of Vindicated. Throughout the book, Canseco reiterates the fact that although the media and baseball tried to write him off, the fans loved him for writing Juiced. He also mentions fairly frequently that he wrote Juiced in order to get back at baseball for blacklisting him. Again, he has every right to do that because Juiced caused more controversy within the mighty halls of the reigning gods of Major League Baseball. But the fact that Canseco was blacklisted doesn’t need to be constantly mentioned. It’s more of a public secret than anything. People who follow baseball, whether they love or hate Jose Canseco, already know MLB forced him into retirement by blacklist. The same thing happened to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. If there are people who couldn’t figure it out then, you bet your ass they figured it out when Canseco was voted down by the Cooperstown committee.

Speaking of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, Canseco is notorious for his almost rabidly promotional views on steroids. That’s one of the few sections of Juiced that I did read. So it was a little surprising to find him taking such a repentant stance toward them in Vindicated. He acknowledges what he wrote in Juiced, saying that it may be that maturity got to him, and directly takes back what he said earlier. He doesn’t come off as completely anti-steroid, but he does say that he wouldn’t take steroids if he could do it all over again. He also brings up his days as the Godfather of Steroids, although he doesn’t write at length about it.

Surprised I was again at the way Canseco writes about baseball itself. The final chapter of Vindicated, in fact, is a rave about how much he loves baseball and why. It does a lot to remind people who may hate Canseco that he, like most people, got into baseball because he loves it. It’s Jose Canseco being sentimental, a mode of him we’re not used to seeing, and he writes about his joining a Sunday league and a minor league just for fun after his time in Major League Baseball is over. Even when he writes about steroids, you can tell he has a deep love for the game and the way it feels to hit a home run. And when he writes about hitting home runs, he always mentions that he bulked up to be a home run hitter because the fans love home runs.

That’s really all there is to say. Canseco writes in a very breezy, easy-to-read fashion with a matter-of-fact tone. Otherwise, Vindicated is a fun little story to read on a short airplane flight. It lacks meaningful substance, but it isn’t bad. In order to get anything out of Vindicated, it would probably help if you look at it like an epilogue to Juiced. Of course, having not read Juiced, I’m not in a position to say that for sure.

[Bill Burgess]

Norman Macht has finally come out with the second installment of his Connie Mack opus. It came out this year.

Connie Mack, the Turbulent and Triumphant Years, 1915-1931. Apparently, Norman has made an editorial decision to turn this into a trilogy, with the last installment covering the 1932-1955 period.

This present installment, due to being so new, is listing for $27.22 on buy.com and amazon.com.