Boys of Summer Reading: Summer Grab Bag

The summer is slow time. Time for family vacations. Time for lazy Saturday afternoons, curled up with a ballgame on in the background and sometimes, a good baseball book in the foreground.

If you are like me, your first stop when you walk into your local Barnes & Noble or Borders is the sports section, and specifically the baseball section. Baseball tends to lend itself to prose, more so than any other sport it seems. Over the next few weeks and months, the Baseball Think Factory staff hope to take you through some of the titles out there and offer some guidance in this increasingly crowded area of the bookstore.

The Bad Guys Won!
Author: Jeff Pearlman

Most of us will remember Pearlman as the Sports Illustrated writer who penned the piece John Rocker wishes we’d all just forget. The magazine writing style suits Pearlman well, who seemed to craft each chapter as a magazine cover story. This makes this in my mind a perfectly crafted book for summer reading. A chapter here, a chapter there and bang, you are done.

The book covers one of the most intriguing teams of the last half-century, the 1986 New York Mets, a team that the books subhead calls: “the rowdiest team ever to put on a New York uniform--and maybe the best.”
In reading any book, it is important to consider the author’s biases, or potential biases. Pearlman tells us in the forward and on the book’s promotional Web site (http://www.thebadguyswon.com) that he grew up a Mets fan, idolizing the members of that 1986 club. Pearlman also reveals that he left Sports Illustrated in 1993, disillusioned with baseball. These biases help explain some of the reverence with which he writes about the team and its members.

That isn’t to say Pearlman goes easy on the team. In the book, some of the players (namely Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden) come out looking very, very bad.

A lot of folks in sabermetric circles will look at Gooden’s record after his first two years, point to high pitch counts and say that was a big strike against him. The book suggests that Gooden’s well-known bouts with drugs started sometime during the 1986 season, and were the reason that Doc was notably absent from the post-World Series victory parade and rally.

Darryl, by the book’s account was a decent enough guy – when he wanted to be, which wasn’t all that often. I never was a huge Strawberry fan, even when he was with the other New York team, and I guess my instincts were right.

All in all, for me, this book passes both my tests. It was a brisk, enjoyable read, but more importantly, I learned some things about team I thought I knew about. Among them, despite claims to the contrary, Kevin Mitchell likes cats; even the clubhouse manager for the Mets thought Game Six was lost because he changed into a Boston jacket and was ready to charge out onto the field and that the fact the team didn’t win more was as much a testament to bad management (trading Kevin Mitchell, among other moves) as was to wasted talent (see: Gooden, Dwight and Strawberry, Darryl).

On the whole, The Bad Guys Won! gets a Primate, not a Milo and would be a fine addition to any collection.

Indian Summer
Author: Brian McDonald

McDonald is probably best known as the author of My Father’s Gun, a historical memoir of three generations of New York City police officers, but in this tome, he takes a crack at baseball and the tragic tale of Louis Francis Sockalexis.

The book is a stark contrast from the easy reading The Bad Guys Won! in that it reads like a history book. Which isn’t to say it isn’t engaging, it’s just, well, heavy.

The story, perhaps unfamiliar to some, is of one Louis Sockalexis – an Adonis-like Penobscot Indian from Maine, who first patrolled the outfield of Holy Cross College, then for the Cleveland franchise of the National League.

For part of one season, Sock played like he was the toolsiest of five-tool ballplayers. His throws, his speed and even his prodigious home runs (even in the deadball 1890s) were the stuff of legend and myth. He hit .338 and legged out eight triples in his 66 games for Cleveland in 1897.

However, Sock, much like Gooden and Strawberry, frittered away his talent in Cleveland’s many saloons. In 1898, he slumped badly and was out of the majors for good by the next year.

McDonald does a good job putting Native American-government relations in perspective, which helps the narrative, but doesn’t do much to lighten the read.

Not knowing Sockalexis’ story before I read it, I did learn quite a bit (for instance, McDonald makes the case that the Indians moniker now tied to the Cleveland franchise is a result of Sockalexis’ short time at League Park) but as I said before, I certainly wouldn’t call it an easy read.

For history buffs, and especially for those Primates who frequent the Hall of Merit, I would recommend this title, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a must-read. It gets a Milo, but just barely… it could be Primate for some readers.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cooperstown
Authors: Mickey McDermott with Howard Eisenberg

Ever had that book you liked to read, but never could find the time to finish? Well for me, this was it – except, I finished it.

A Funny Thing is a very light, very funny (except for the last chapter, in which McDermott does some soul bearing to the reader) look at one of the games great characters – one Maurice McDermott.
The quote on the top of the book probably says more about McDermott than anything in the book: “The two greatest athletes I ever saw play baseball were Ted Williams and Mickey McDermott.” ~ Warren Spahn.

In his own words, McDermott was an all-world talent. He was a left-handed power pitcher, who also hit for power, and on top of all that… he was the funniest, wittiest, drinkingest guy in the room. And those last three – particularly that last one did in his career.

It was a career that took him from the heights of success – capped off by an 18-win season for Boston in 1953 as a 24-year-old in which his ERA (3.01) matched his batting average (.301) – to washing out before his 30th birthday.

Mickey writes pretty candidly about his drinking, which in his mind, and perhaps in fact, was one of many things that kept him from achieving baseball immortality. McDermott died last August – he reportedly told his wife he was dying a publicity stunt for his book.

The book is a solid read, though the first-person style can take some getting used to, and I’d recommend it without reservation.

As a sidelight, I suspect Mickey would fit right in on the ’86 Mets. It gets a Primate.

The Summer that Saved Baseball
Authors: Brad Null and David Kaval

An oldie (published in 2001), but a quickie. This is a great road trip book, mostly because it’s about a road trip. More specifically, a road trip most of us wish we had taken. Thirty ballparks in 38 days.

Null and Kaval scam, borrow and scrounge their way from San Francisco to Kansas City, by way of the other 28 major league cities and Cooperstown.

Its not a high-stress book, nor is it going to look great and impressive on your shelf or coffee table – but is a, for lack of a better word, cute book. One could easily blow off an afternoon of yard work reading this by the pool or on the way to the ballpark.

Another Primate.