Boys of Summer Reading - Playoff Edition: Chasing Steinbrenner

By simultaneously showcasing the 2003 Red Sox and Blue Jays from the perspective of the front office, Rod Bradford takes on the difficult – and unusual – task in hid recent book, Chasing Steinbrenner: Pursuing the Pennant in Boston and Toronto. For readers who have recently left the cave in search of baseball sustenance or Johnny Damon, 2003 was the year that sabermetrically-inclined wunderkind general manager Theo Epstein began assembling another Moneyball team in the A.L. East, and thus joined Billy Beane disciple J.P Ricciardi, G.M. of the Blue Jays, in trying to knock the Yankees out of first place. It didn’t work. Although many a chair was reportedly sacrificed to appease baseball’s angry Fates, Aaron Boone and Grady Little helped add another year to Red Sox fans’ misery. The Blue Jays continued their rebuilding (merrily whistling as the 2004 debacle came hurtling toward them), flirted with idle rumors of a possible wild card run, and ended the season in third.

With the 2004 playoffs upon us and another epic Red Sox-Yankees match-up possibly looming, this may be the year the Red Sox push through the superstition and self-fulfilling prophesies to finally slay their Jabberwock. If they do, Epstein will have partially validated the philosophy that oh-so-many dinosaur sportswriters tried to bury with the A’s late-season collapse. As Bradford charts out in Chasing Steinbrenner, the brightest new minds in baseball share a philosophical family tree comparable to the genealogies of some families in the Ozarks. This is not a clubhouse book, instead it revolves around the adventures that management-types face over the long haul, and how their decisions sometimes pan out or implode.

Steinbrenner himself gets little ink aside from his marquee placement. Nevertheless, you can almost smell the Bronx air wafting up from every page – the Yankees being the ultimate fear factor in this game. The book’s backdrop, however, is Red Sox Nation, an ideal setting for viewing the inner workings of a major league franchise. Bradford offers numerous examples why Boston epitomizes obsessive baseball fandom.

Bradford goes into considerable and absorbing detail about how the dots connect between the participants that make up Beane’s Army. Ricciardi, a native of Worcester, Mass., was previously the Athletics’ player personnel director. He was offered the Toronto position after then Oakland assistant GM (and now Dodgers GM) Paul DePodesta turned it down. Before Epstein took the top post in Boston, Ricciardi had offered him the assistant post with the Blue Jays. Later, Epstein asked the Blue Jays about Ricciardi’s availability when the Red Sox’s GM post came available. Beane was wooed by Boston and agreed in principle to be their GM, but had a change of heart a day later. Epstein became Boston’s general manager almost by default after exploring other avenues for the team. Essentially, Theo wasn’t his own first choice. Although Beane-town was close to a reality, Sox fans still got a bona fide Beane clone in young Theo.

This intricate network of the superminds is how the book takes off, an encouraging way for things to get going. The nagging issue of sorting out the Boston and Toronto laundry as the season goes on, however, is difficult for the author to reconcile. Bradford juggles the two teams’ side-by-side plots systematically enough. Whether the reader’s consciousness can follow the flight of the rotating balls is another matter. For some, the mental energy required to make sense of the intertwined two-ring circus act may be too excessive for a casual read.

The early pages promise a glimpse into the Epstein’s mind. While his swift rise up the ranks of major league offices, beginning with San Diego, is a story in itself, the lack of first-hand accounts as Boston’s resident guru-in-charge is a drawback. Although this is true in other places in the book, it is most evident in Epstein’s case. Instead of discovering what Epstein is thinking directly, readers have to eavesdrop via scattered statements attributed to him and settling for possibly disputable interpretations.

Toronto is the cousin along for the ride in this journey. Using the Blue Jays as a prominent subplot might have worked better than having the two teams share in the main plot. Bradford gives roughly 175 pages to the Red Sox and 115 to the Blue Jays, with just three of the ten chapters being exclusively one or the other.

Ricciardi is among the new wave of GM’s, and essentially half the book is his story. The book shows how his innovative ideas got him to where he is and how he’s using them to reformulate Blue Jay baseball. The book draws J.P. as a likeable charmer If you ever got tired of rooting for your own team, his charm might convince you that the Jays are a club you could turn to and support.

Testament to Ricciardi’s approach, the Blue Jays tried a four-man rotation in 2003 until injuries interrupted that plan. At Ricciardi’s coffee table, Bradford thumbed through Earl Weaver’s Weaver on Strategy and discovers that Ricciardi adheres to many of Weaver’s maxims: a) The easiest way around the bases is with one swing of the bat; b) Your most precious possessions on offense are your 27 outs; c) If you play for one run, that’s all you’ll get; and d) The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won’t hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game.

The genuine highlights of the book – and what gives it its personality – are the behind-the-scenes anecdotes about player signings, near-signings, trades, scouting trips, drafts, and miscellaneous adventures. A few years from now some of the players might turn into household names, so the book has potential for more lasting value in that respect. There’s a lot of name-dropping and surely one of these no-names could to turn into an All-Star.

Bradford lends insight into Boston’s courting of Cuban defector Jose Contreras and the lengths contending teams go to one-up each other. Money is always the bottom line, but diplomacy carries considerable weight and can sometimes be the deciding factor. Contreras’ defection is given the full treatment, adding depth to the account of his near-signing with the Red Sox and eventual signing with the Yankees. Other entries in the Boston what-might-have-been department include prize pitcher Javier Vasquez, who, despite all but being crowned with the B cap, is also now found in pinstripes.

Coverage of the travails of outfielder Kevin Millar captured the essence what it can take to finally get a player you’ve coveted for a long while. Millar, the poster boy for the new Boston approach (take a pitch and then take another one), joined the carmine hose after appearing to be one of the least likely to get on their payroll anytime soon. A team from the Japan League had already signed him, but Boston’s persistence landed them their reward.

A mid-season trade with Arizona for Byung-Hyun Kim takes an interesting path, going through several unforeseen stages before culminating with the sell. After all the Red Sox’s effort earlier in the season, the Kim deal practically fell in their lap when they weren’t trying. Well, it seemed like a real nice coup at the time.

We learn of the ins and outs of Toronto’s scouting and drafting of shortstop prospect Aaron Hill. In fact, the Blue Jays used reverse psychology to draw attention away from Hill in the final weeks leading up to the draft. And then they nabbed him as the number twelve pick.

Bradford’s account of Toronto unloading Raul Mondesi and half his $13 million contract was an enlightening tale of regrettable signings. Ironically, this time it was the generous Yankees who bailed out the Blue Jays. Ricciardi even termed fixing their mistake “probably the most important thing that happened to us.”

Unfortunately, most of the attention in Chasing Steinbrenner goes to the teams’ new signees. On the Boston side, Pedro, Manny, Nomar, Ortiz, Damon, Nixon and Varitek get bypassed. It’s difficult to imagine that Boston season without including these players in the mix. Likewise, in Toronto Carlos Delgado is off the map. Vernon Wells is only mentioned briefly - his signing of a long-term contract merely gets noticed. Roy Halladay garnered a few pages and was one of the few high-profile players on either of the two teams that got more than a passing mention. These players’ inner lives also get overlooked. While the tone of Chasing Steinbrenner is upbeat despite the New York presence lurking in the shadows, we don’t get to see the angst expressed by the chasers. As the Twins are finding out at this moment, Yankees are a true frustration rather than just a target, and this aspect is glossed over.

To convey some of the book’s unevenness, Boston’s first game of the 2003 season versus Tampa Bay inexplicably warrants a full 26-page chapter – and the game was a loss. Such erratic detail gives the feeling that Bradford milked every firsthand opportunity he could, and that those opportunities were limited.

Other weaknesses in the book include its distant point of view and lack of general cohesiveness. Bradford employs the third-person storytelling format acting as a fly on the Green Monster, which often puts the reader at a distance from the subject. One may yearn for George Will-type narrative along with these instances to give them more detail. The stories would be better served having an increase of direct quotes and analysis in place of the gamut of overheard conversations.

As a final oddity, Bradford omits mention of Bill James, an unusual oversight since James is not only the grandfather of the sabermetric movement espoused by the book’s two feature GMs, but also became a controversial front office employee of the Red Sox during the time period covered by the book. Perhaps Bradford came to the grim realization that trying to frame such an accomplished writer in a few blurbs would be like turning a Van Gogh collction into a coloring book. There’s no substitute for the full package, and, alas, James can’t be taken in small doses.

Small doses, however, is what Bradford should have done to his repetitive catch phrases. By page 200, you will have memorized the fact that Brandon Lyon is “the world’s greatest snowboarding waiver claim,” the redundancy leaves the reader screaming, “We get it!” In addition, Bradford throws in random pop culture references with the abandon of Peter Gammons at a Midnight Oil concert. These non sequitors are apparently included to prove that the book and/or author is hip.  They don’t.

Despite the flaws, Chasing Steinbrenner has its merits and will find a readership. Sox fans, Jays fans and Beane fans will engender the highest enjoyment quotient since they’re already on board. Others may develop an appreciation for the front office personnel of the two franchises and their inner workings, but there’s a chance these readers could get lost in the minutiae.