TBBBC Book 4 review

We're four months into the baseball season, and I'm four books into my summer-long one-man book club. July's book of the month was The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski.

Most baseball fans know the story of O'Neil, a former Negro Leagues player and manager who was the first black man to coach in the Major Leagues. Of course, he could have played in the bigs if not for the rampant racism that stained the game through the late 1940s when Jackie Robinson broke the color barier, and he could have managed in the bigs if not for the still problematic racism that stained the game through the mid-1970s when Frank Robinson shattered that glass ceiling.

But O'Neil carried on and became one of baseball's greatest ambassadors and the most notable historian of the Negro Leagues. He came to national prominence when his commentary was featured heavily in Ken Burns' baseball documentary that aired on PBS in 1994.

Posnanski, a Kansas City Star columnist, got to know O'Neil over the years and always thought there was a book waiting to be written about O'Neil and the Negro Leagues, but he never could figure out just how to approach it. Finally, he came to the realization that spending a year traveling the country with the great story-teller would be the best way to capture the essence of the man.

And I'd have to say, he was right. There are so many lessons to learn from Buck O'Neil. I've always been amazed that he wasn't bitter, because he had so many reasons to be. He was kept from doing the one thing that he most loved to do because of "my beautiful tan," as he liked to put it. But O'Neil lived his life 180 degrees from bitter. I think this book gets to the heart of that question.

I won't spoil it for those who want to read the book, but basically, O'Neil wasn't bitter because he got to play baseball, travel the countryside and befriend literally thousands of people whom he wouldn't have met if not for the Negro Leagues. He didn't view the league as sub-standard or a lower level of the game. It was different, yes, and the accommodations weren't as nice, but he also was given the opportunity to experience joys he wouldn't have likely seen in the bigs. For example, he tells the story of the time he and Duke Ellington entered a jazz club on 18th and Vine in Kansas City (now the home of the Negro Leagues museum, his great passion in his post-retirement life) and stumbled upon a kid playing the saxophone like he'd never heard it played before. Turns out the kid was Charlie "Bird" Parker, one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

"People feel sorry for me," he said. "Man, I heard Charlie Parker!"

O'Neil's life is an object lesson in appreciating what you have, which is different than just blind optimism. O'Neil was no pollyanna. He saw the dark side of life and understood it for what it was -- hatred. That's a word that comes up a lot in this book. O'Neil often said racism comes directly from hatred, and bitterness comes from the same source.

"Where does bitterness take you?" he said when asked about how he can avoid being bitter. "To a broken heart? To an early grave? When I die, I want to die from natural causes, not from hate eating me up from the inside."

O'Neil approached the changes in the game the same way. Throughout their journey, he and Posnanski ran into many people who said they were disillusioned by the big salaries and ticket prices, the steroids, the superstar attitudes that they say have changed the game. But his response was always the same: "It hasn't changed," he told an older fan who said he hadn't been to a game in years. "We've changed. We got older. You ought to go see a game. You're a baseball fan, man. Do your heart good. Help you get young."

The point being, there's always an upside, and the game is bigger than all the petty problems that crop up in every era. The game survives. The human race survives. And life is good.

One of the blurbs in the book compares it to Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie, and I'll admit that when I read that blurb I shuddered a bit. But then I remembered my initial reaction to Tuesdays. I loved it. I blubbered like a baby. It changed my attitude about life, for a while at least. It stayed with me. I think the backlash came only after Albom's succeeding books proved him to be something of a one-trick pony. You couldn't hlep but wonder how much he gilded the lily in his story of Morrie, given that the rest of his books were couched in so much overwrought schlock.

So I guess if Posnanski follows The Soul of Baseball with a string of books about one-eyed Olympic archers who run three marathons a month to raise money for Costa Rican orphans, maybe I'll re-think this review. But The Soul of Baseball hit me hard, right where I needed it. It'll stay with me. And the lesson of Buck O'Neil will help me the next time I'm feeling sorry for myself.

TBBBC rating: 5 fungoes (out of 5)

Now batting: The Dixie Association (Voice of the South) by David Hays

On deck: October 1964 by David Halberstam

See also:

• TBBBC Book 3 review, Crazy 'o8
  
• TBBBC Book 2 review, The Entitled
• TBBBC Book 1 review, The Last Real Season

TBBBC Book 2 review

Time for TBBBC Book 2 review. The May entry was Frank Deford's The Entitled, a Tale of Modern Baseball. It's a bit of a lofty title, but then again, Deford is a bit of a lofty writer. One of the true living legends of the sportswriting biz, Deford has dabbled in the fiction world before, most notably with Everybody's All-American, a tale of a college football hero's rough transition into the real world. And much as that book was about characters who happened to play football, The Entitled is another character study that just happens to be set in the world of Major League Baseball.

The two central figures in this book couldn't be more different. The protagonist is baseball lifer Howie Traveler, a guy who parlayed a minor-league baseball career into a comfortable life as a major league coach before finally landing his first managerial gig as the skipper of the Cleveland Indians. His star player is five-tool outfielder Jay Alcazar, a cosmopolitan celebrity athlete who seemingly has the world by the tail at every turn.

The drama centers on an incident that takes place in the first 20 pages -- as Traveler wearily returns to his hotel room, his job hanging by a thread after another string of listless play by his Indians, the door to Alcazar's room flies open. A woman appears to be struggling to leave, but the star player roughly yanks her back into the room and slams the door. Will Howie go to the police? Will he cover for his star player and use the situation to his advantage to save his job?

The rest of the book plays out in a series of flashbacks the tell the backstories of Howie and Jay, how they reached the point where their futures are indelibly intertwined, and a deeper examination reveals that each man is not quite what he seems to be on the surface.

Because Deford deals with real-life athletes in his A job, and because he uses actual MLB teams in the story, it's tempting to draw comparisons to the figures you see on ESPN and in the sports pages on a daily basis. Alcazar has a lot of A-Rod in him -- multi-talented on the field, an enigma off it, a man obsessed with his image and endorsements who doesn't really know who he is when you strip away the uniform and sportscars and mansions and designer sunglasses. The incident at the hotel has overtones of the Kobe/Colorado case, although sadly, it's probably even more common than we know.

Traveler reminds me of a cross between Tom Kelly and Joe Madden -- TK in that he had a cup of coffee in the majors before making it back to the bigs as a coach and manager, and Madden in that he didn't get his first shot a running a club until he was well into his 50s, so he swore to do it his way no matter how unconventional his methods appeared.

I found it to be a quick read -- lively prose, an engrossing story -- and Deford's characters are far from the one-dimensional stereotypes that we imagine professional athletes to be. If you're looking for a good beach novel this summer, The Entitled should work for you.

TBBBC rating: Four fungoes (out of five)

Now batting: Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy

On deck: The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski

See also: TBBBC Book 1 review, The Last Real Season

The Baseball Bunch Book Club

Do you remember The Baseball Bunch? It was a syndicated show that ran (in our market) on Saturday mornings during the summer, often as the lead-in to This Week in Baseball, followed by the NBC Game of the Week. Johnny Bench and a weekly special guest star offered instructional tips to apple-cheeked Little Leaguers, highlights and bloopers got their share of airtime, and Bench tried to hone his acting chops in some amazingly awkward skits with the San Diego Chicken.

Ah ... memory lane. Anyway, I thought I'd spend the summer of 2009 resurrecting the spirit of The Baseball Bunch right here on WHIH. Of course, now that I'm an adult, the idea of laying about on a Saturday morning watching aging Hall of Fame catchers and grown men in mascot suits doesn't really appeal to me. But reading baseball books does. So I'm starting The Baseball Bunch Book Club.

I've picked out six titles for the inaugural TBBBC, and I welcome anybody to join me in this pursuit. I'll read one book per month and discuss it here on WHIH. Or on your web site. Or on Facebook. Or in a bar. Or on a train. Or in a plane. Or on a boat, with a goat. Just not on Twitter -- we're going to get a little deeper than 140 characters will allow.

Here's what's on tap for TBBBC this summer:

April -- The Last Real Season by Mike Shropshire -- I absolutely loved his book Seasons in Hell, which chronicled his time covering the Texas Rangers in the early 70s, back when Ted Williams and Billy Martin made for more interesting copy off the field than Mike Hargrove and Toby Harrah made on the field. The Last Real Season is a look at the 1975 baseball season, so dubbed because it was the final year before free agency blew up the entire economic structure of the game. I started it today and the intro, by Earl Weaver, is a great read. I hope the rest of the book follows suit.

May -- The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball by Frank Deford -- Hard to go wrong with Deford, and I wanted to mix a little fiction into the syllabus. The Entitled is the story of a Tom Kelly-like manager (minor league lifer who gets his shot at managing in the bigs, although much later in life than TK) who has to handle a superstar who sounds like a mix of A-Rod, Barry Bonds and Albert Belle. Don't know much about it, but it's gotten good reviews.

June -- Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy -- This book got crazy-good reviews when it came out a year ago, and I suppose I should have read it last summer as it was the 100th anniversary of this seminal season in baseball lore. From the World Series champion Chicago Cubs (!) of Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance fame to the New York (!) Giants of Christy Mathewson and John McGraw and beyond, this is a book every baseball historian should enjoy sinking his or her teeth into.

July -- The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski -- Again, if Posnanski's name is attached, you know it's going to be a good read. And Buck O'Neil has always fascinated me, because if anybody had a right to be a bitter, angry, sour old man, it was O'Neil, who missed out on fame and fortune because of the color of his skin. But he was always the classiest, most gracious ambassador the game has ever had, so when he and Posnanski spent the summer of 2005 traveling the country together, exploring and ruminating on baseball, it had to produce a compelling narrative.

August -- The Dixie Association (Voice of the South) by David Hays -- I don't know much about this one either. I was looking for another novel and since I've read most of the big ones (I did my senior thesis on baseball fiction back in my salad days at the U of M), I'm taking a flier on this, based on Amazon's description: "Meet the Arkansas Reds, the oddest, craziest, wildest bunch of sluggers ever to step out of a dugout. An ex-con first baseman named Hog chronicles a season with the Reds as they travel from one seedy southern ballpark to another--always one step ahead of the small-town sheriffs and right-wing evangelists who think the Reds are an insult to 'America's game.'" Sign me up!

September -- October 1964 by David Halberstam -- A true literary lion, Halberstam looks at the dying days of the Yankees dynasty as the Bombers battle the upstart St. Louis Cardinals, the first team with led predominantly by African-American stars. I love books that look at sports within the context of society, and nobody was more up to the task than Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize winner who got elbow-deep in every major news story from Vietnam through Iraq. I think I'm saving the best for last, plus it will be a good teaser for the World Series.

So there you have it: the inaugural TBBBC syllabus. Please let me know if you're interested in reading and discussing any or all of these books with me. If you're not, too bad -- you're going to get my unexpurgated thoughts and opinions whether you like it or not. Or you won't, if you ignore my posts. But that's not what WHIH is all about, right?

Never too early to start your Christmas shopping

Just found out that my book is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Feeling kinda weird right now ... I mean, I knew this day was coming, but to see it out there after all the work we did is very, very rewarding. It certainly adds a new dimension to my egosurfing.

Book review: The Devil in the White City

Just wrapped up Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City," a look back at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the heinous crimes of America's first known serial killer, H.H. Holmes.

My wife read it first and highly recommended it, so that might have established unrealistic expectations, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the pace of the book. First of all, it's hard to categorize it, because it's neither fish nor fowl. It's a novelization of the actual events surrounding the World's Fair, including tremendous detail (even excruciating detail) on the process the fatcats of Chicago went through to gain the rights to host the fair and the construction of the buildings and preparation of the grounds.

I say excruciating, because unless you're an architecture wonk, the first 200 or so pages are going to be a bit of a bore. I love history and true crime stories, so I thought this would be a great fit for me, but instead much of it read like the minutes from a series of committee meetings. Larson tried like hell to get me interested in the lives of the various architects and barons of the Chicago business community at the turn of the century, especially Daniel Burnham, the man he describes as most responsible for the fair's success.

But the problem is, this was really two books. The story of the fair takes up about 75% of the text, while the rest centers on the fascinatingly creepy Dr. Holmes. Larson generally alternates chapters, with one focusing on Burnham and the fair and the next on Holmes, with the pacing of the story leading me to expect some kind of great intersection of the two plots.

Alas, there's precious little payoff there. I was hoping there would be a big chase scene through the fair, or an American version of Sherlock Holmes tracking the devious killer through the "White City," but it just didn't happen that way. The murders took place at the same time as the fair, and many of the victims were lured to Chicago by the fair, but they really didn't have anything to do with the fair.

In the end, I realized that I learned a lot about what made the 1893 Chicago World's Fair such a historically significant event, but I wanted to know even more about the killer and his evil deeds. I guess I'll have to wait for the movie, which is supposed to be coming out next year. If it focuses as much on the architects as Larson did, it will make "Ishtar" look like "The Matrix."