My Review of Lucas Mann’s Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere

 Baseball stories mix into town stories mix into stories about love, about shenanigans, about specific moments when everybody in a neighborhood that doesn’t really exist anymore would go from house to house, stopping to sit on lawn chairs out by the street, every door open, the nights endless.

With Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere Lucas Mann weaves a season, and in passing references, beyond the season, of  real life people and their stories as he reveals the intimate relationship between a baseball team, the Clinton LumberKings and the town it has played in for nearly 60 years, Clinton, Iowa.

The result is a mixture of biography, autobiography, and personal journal as Mann talks about the players- their hopes, dreams, failures, and success at a lower level of minor league play; the core of fans who support the team season in and season out and whose chronicles and memorabilia show a love of a team that has stayed constant though the life and death of loved ones and friends as well as the state of Clinton itself amid the town’s ups and downs. In fact to me it becomes as much a story about Clinton the town as it does Clinton the team.

Overall I liked this book but at times Mann would switch settings and time frames that made it hard to follow. The ending left me up in the air though I think that the references to the unseen buffaloes at the out of the way Buffalo Bill’s farm serve as a symbolic reminder of the talent that has come and gone through Clinton. But it was an interesting read.

I rate this book as a ‘good’ read.

Note: I was given an uncorrected proof via the Amazon Vine review program in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review.

Review of Lefty: An American Odyssey

Lefty Gomez is both one of the best-known and one of the least-known stars in baseball history. To the public and press, he was “El Goofo,” a unique combination of high-velocity fastball, affable eccentricity, and irreverent wit; a free spirit and natural clown who was so relaxed on the mound that he paused during a World Series game to watch an airplane fly over the Polo Grounds…His friends and teammates, however, knew a far different person. And a more complex one. Lefty Gomez was widely considered the glue of the Yankee clubhouse throughout the 1930′s…Teammates confided in him and asked his advice…

Prologue to Lefty: An American Odyssey

When I think of the New York Yankee’s of the 1930′s only two names come to mind: Gerhig and Ruth. Granted there is DiMaggio as well but with a solid and full of stories, lore, and history book, Vernona Gomez and Lawrence Goldstone, have done a great job of introducing me to another key player of that Yankee dynasty – Vernon “Lefty” Gomez.

To be published by Ballentine Books next month, Lefty: An American Odyssey takes the reader on a world wide journey of baseball and life which begins in Rodeo, California, northeast of San Francisco, in 1908 when and where Gomez was born to a working class family. His competitive nature asserts itself as he begins to play baseball in fields that are barely diamonds, the school teams, then semi-pro teams and then, given the fact that the closest major league city of that day was St. Louis, with the famous and highly talented San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Gomez (his daughter) and Goldstone then chronicle his purchase by the Yankees and his introduction to New York and his rise to fame.

The picture they paint of Gomez is, I believe, a human one. They tell story after story of Gomez’s wit and charm in the clubhouse and on the streets of New York and elsewhere. But they also share the dark side: the sudden and mysterious “divorce” to June O’Dea and the later in life battle with alcohol.

Along the way, Gomez and Goldstone take the reader on a journey literally around the world, that begins with a trip by Gomez, Ruth, and a host of other baseball greats to Japan to play against the top line Japanese teams. And then, as Gomez’s arm begins to wear out, we follow him down the path of decreased effectiveness and then his unconditional release by the Yankees in 1943.

I liked this book for a couple of reasons. First, it gave me a peek at baseball on the American West Coast in the early decades of the twentieth century. By the time I was born, the Dodgers and the Giants had just left New York for LA and SF and had yet to play their first season there and the shape of west coast baseball was to forever change. But teams like the Seals and the Hollywood Stars were the drawing card to west coast and western baseball back then.

Second, Gomez’s story is well told. The names and places he knew and went, read like a ‘who’s who’ list of American personalities and events. It is rich in detail and scope as the reader takes a stroll through eight decades of American, and world, history. And even when he died nearly 50 years after his playing days were done, the outpouring of love and respect, even by the neighbor kids, tells you something about this man and his love of people and the game he played.

On my very unscientific rating scale, I rate this book an ‘outstanding’ read.

Note: I received and advanced reader copy of this book via the Amazon Vine review program in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review.

Review of Paul Dickson’s Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick

Note: This book is based on a galley copy that I received via http://www.netgalley.com The final draft of the book will be released on April 24th.

If you take a trip to a major league ball park today or if you grab a schedule and look at the various “nights” that feature either freebes for the kids or any fan, or if you listen to the game on the radio (or these days, on an iPad you might be using now to read this review); or if you are grateful for the fact that men like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Tony Gwinn, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and Curtis Granderson played (or plays) the game; some how, some way, you have to thank the late Bill Veeck  (as in, Wreck) the maverick owner of the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox of the American League and the Milwaukee Brewers of then minor league fame as well as several other clubs in both the majors as well as the minor leagues. For such events and actions that brought people to the ball park in droves in the 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70′s as well as breaking down the long standing color barrier in baseball, were part of his legend, his lore, with the game we call America’s past-time.

Paul Dickson has done us a favor by bringing a new read to today’s fans and baseball  aficionados of a man that was loved by the fans and players but despised and even hated by his fellow owners who he felt were more concerned with tradition and money that the game that was played on the field. He was the first to sign an African-American player, Larry Doby, to an American League Team, the Cleveland Indians in the same season as Jackie Robinson came to bat for the then Brooklyn Dodgers. His marketing antics brought life to the game that he loved and crated unforgettable moments that Dickson notes as follows:

In the popular mind, there are two bookends to the life of Bill Veeck. The first is Eddie Gaedel and the other is Disco Demolition Night.

Gaedel was the midget that Veeck signed to bat in a game with the St Louis Browns in August 1951 and the unforgettable disco night brought a stop to a doubleheader with Detroit in July 1979 with the Veeck owned Chicago White Sox. Gaedel walked and was replaced with a pinch runner and the second game with Detroit was forfeited because the damage done to the field at Comiskey Park.

Dickson’s book also reflects a changing America and is filled with references to Al Capone (who had seats at Wrigley Field), Ray Croc who sold paper cups to Veeck during his time as part of the Cubs management team in the 1930′s and who later became the founder of McDonald’s and an owner of the San Diego Padres, a young minor league manager named Tony LaRussa who became part of the White Sox’ on field leadership in the mid-1970′s, and Veeck’s encounters with Fidel Castro and the Cuban baseball dynasty.

This is an honest yet sympathetic portrait of Veeck as Dickson focuses on the man, really a whirlwind of activity despite a serious war wound that would cause him problems  as he aged, who loved the game of baseball and wanted it to succeed and thrive. As a result, and one reason I really liked this book, is that it is a look at baseball through its golden age into the modern period of the latter half of the 20th century.

Dickson is also able to show that as the nation changed that baseball changed as well. And though it became racially integrated in the late 1940′s, it too, like our nation, struggled to allow African Americans to become full participants in the game and in the accommodations that the white players enjoyed. And as a new generation of players came on the field in the 1960′s the long held labor traditions were broken which ushered in free agency that interestingly enough Veeck supported and yet, as his fellow owners also experienced, caused him to lose good players to higher playing clubs as well.

This is a book rich in description and detail and also provides us with an outstanding view of the game from an owner and front office man whose career spanned decades and during which the shape and face of baseball changed in many ways. I am glad that I read it.

I rate this an ‘outstanding’ read.

Note: I obtained a galley copy of this book from NetGalley.com and was not required to write a review.

On the Book Table and Under the iPad Glass

Good Easter Sunday evening!

This week I will be posting two reviews of two legendary baseball men, Vernon “Lefty” Gomez and Bill Veeck (as in Wreck). The book on Gomez is written by his daughter Vernona and Lawrence Goldstone and the Veeck tome is written by Paul Dickson. The former is an ARC copy from Amazon Vine and the latter is a galley copy from Net Galley. Look for them this week and the books to be out in late April (Gomez) and early May (Veeck).

On the book table this week is an ARC from Thomas Nelson of a book that is already published but I am enjoying a great deal. It is Jared Herd’s More Lost Than Found: Finding a Way Back to Faith. Jared has much to say about faith and the church. Will be posting a review soon.

Under the iPad glass has a variety of books that I am reading. Some science fiction, some biography, a still to be finished book by NT Wright, and… well I have four reading apps and so I have quite a few to read.

And speaking of reading, Larissa Hammond, I need to update my journey in the 2012 Genre Fiction Challenge! Hopefully a post this week!

See you behind the page!

Review of Jim Abbott and Tim Brown’s Imperfect: An Improbable Life

“Dad, do you like your little hand?”

Jim Abbott pitching during a 1998 Calgary Cannons minor league baseball game. Released upon request by John Traub, General Manager of the Albuquerque Isotopes Baseball Club (the successor to the Calgary Cannons), June 21, 2008. This image was moved from File:Jim Abbot Cannons.jpg; move approved by: Common Good (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Imperfect: An Improbable Life is not a standard sports biography. In fact, I argue that it is a book about a man who happened to play baseball, and play it well, and not the other way around. Published by Ballantine Books, Imperfect weaves the first person narrative of a rare sporting achievement, pitching a “no-hitter” (which means no one on the other team got a hit) in a professional baseball game and as a New York Yankee with larger story of how he got there.

Born with a physical defect which left him without a right hand, Jim Abbott, pitched his way out of Flint, Michigan, into the University of Michigan, then into a gold medal win at the 1988 Summer Olympics for the USA baseball team and finally into major league baseball where he achieved a pitcher’s dream of throwing a no-hitter. Along the way he learned how to handle the constant barrages of ridicule, simple fascination, and silent stares of his right hand and come to terms with his limitations and who he was and who he was not.

What I appreciate about this book is that it is more than a “baseball biography.”  It is both an outer and inner narrative of someone who did not let a disability determine what he could and could not do in life. It contains a honest, even modest, honoring of his parents who supported him throughout his growing up years, his wife Dana, and others along the way who saw not someone with a disability but someone who had the drive and the talent to play baseball. And did.

One of the more moving sections of the book, which I will admit moved me to tears, is contained in chapter 13, where Abbott speaks about all the children and parents who would show up at the ballparks hoping for a kind word:

I had an idea – an inaccurate one, it turned out-that reaching the major leagues would be a personal finish line. I was never going to have two hands, but I assumed the story would grow old, and some other sparkly object would come along to catch the eye of the sports world and, anyway, by then I would have proven the game was not different for me… I was wrong. The attention from the media was, at times, stifling. The labels remained. The headlines in the local papers in every city we played were unchanged…And even that wasn’t what I was so completely wrong about. I was wrong about the children. I didn’t see them coming, not in the numbers they did. I didn’t expect the stories they told, or the distance they traveled to tell them, or the desperation revealed in them. They were shy and beautiful, and they were loud and funny, and they were, like me, somehow imperfectly built. And, like me, they had parents nearby, parents who willed themselves to believe that this accident of circumstance or nature was not a life sentence, and that the spirits inside these tiny bodies were greater than the sums of their hands and feet.

If you are looking for a different kind of sports book get this one. It will give you something to ponder in a good way. With the help of a veteran writer, Tim Brown, Jim Abbott tells a wonderful story of overcoming and being successful in all the right ways.

I rate this book a ‘great’ read.

Note: This book was an uncorrected advance reader copy via Amazon Vine program. I received a copy of the book in exchange for a review of it. I was not required to write a positive review.

On The Book Table and Under the iPad Glass

Good Sunday evening!

Well it is Holy Week and it is Opening Week for baseball and I will be busy on both counts this week.

And speaking of baseball, two reviews will be coming from the book table and the iPad…

On the book table…

is Jim Abbott’s,  autobiography, co-written with Tim Brown, entitled Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Abbott won a gold medal in baseball with the 1988 USA Olympic Team and threw a no-hitter in 1993 as a member of the New York Yankees and did so with a deformed right hand and arm. To be released this week by Ballantine Books, I will be posting my review on it on Tuesday which is it release date. Please note that my review will be based on an Advance Readers Copy that is uncorrected and came from the Amazon Vine review program.

Also on the book table is another ARC which is uncorrected and also from the Amazon Vine review program. Titled Lefty: An American Odyssey it is biography of New York Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez and is written by his daughter Vernona and Lawrence Goldstone. Also to be published by Ballantine Books in May.

Under the iPad glass...

is Paul Dickson’s biography of the lively and innovative owner, the late Bill Veeck (as in Wreck) . I read a galley copy of the book which is titled Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick that I received via Net Galley. A review will be posted later this week. It is to be published by Walker Publishing.

see you behind the page and at the ball park!

Sunday Sports Edition of On the book table and under the iPad glass

Wrigley Field Panorama (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

<Cue ESPN Sports Center theme song here>

Well it is getting closer and closer to that time of year when two of my favorite words in the English language are spoken

“Play Ball!”

And so while anticipating those two words and the subsequent action of the start of this year’s professional baseball season, I share what’s on the book table and under the iPad glass this week!

on the book table…

is Jim Abbott’s and Tim Brown’s book about Abbott’s life growing up and then playing in major league baseball with a disability that only allowed him to pitch left handed while placing his glove on the stump of his right arm. Titled, Imperfect: An Improbable Life it will be published by Ballatine Books next month. I am 75% through the book and I am enjoying it.

Soon to join Abbott and Brown’s book is Verona Gomez and Lawrence Goldstone’s to be released in May volume on Gomez’s father, a Yankee legend, Vernon “Lefty” Gomez. Titled, “Lefty: An American Odyssey and will also be published by Ballantine Books.

Both of these books are via the Amazon Vine review program and are advance reader copies.

Rounding out these two is a re-read of a book I have had for eight years. Brad Snyder’s Beyond the Shadow of the Senators. It is the history of the Homestead Greys, a Negro League team, who moved from Pittsburgh to Washington DC and would often draw larger crowds that the Washington Senators. But is also about power, race, and intgration.

under the iPad glass…

is a galley copy via Net Galley of Paul Dickson’s new biography on one of the showiest, and most innovative, baseball owners of all time, Bill Veeck. It will be released in late April and will be published by Walker and Company. I am about a fifth into the book and it is both a history of the game and the US. So far, so good.

See you behind the page!

On the book table and under the iPad glass

Image via Wikipedia

Good Sunday afternoon everyone!

Well my mind and my body is getting back to normal after a breathtaking two month reading frenzy and encounter with ‘the crud’ that left me wiped out for almost two weeks.

Glad to be somewhat normal again!

This is one of my favorite times of the year as NASCAR, F1, and Indy Car racing returns to our national calendar. (In case you are wondering, I am a fan of Dale Earnhardt, Jr; F1 Team Mercedes AMG Petronas (Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg), and am excited to see Rubens Barrichello join Tony Kanaan the KV Racing team for this season of Indy Car Racing!)

But another reason I love this time of year is contained in two words

Play Ball!

So while I will be working to finish Andrea Hiott’s Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle on the iPad …

over on the book table I will be starting a re-read of Brad Snyder’s 2003 book Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball which I read in 2004 and I am awaiting the arrival of Jim Abbott’s Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Born without a right hand, Abbott mastered throwing a baseball left handed, won a gold medal as part of the 1988 US Olympic baseball team, and, as a New York Yankee, threw a no-hitter in 1993!

So while I am never far from a good book of fiction, or an interesting memoir, I am going to be taking time for the next couple of months and focus on my favorite game – baseball.

See you behind the page!

Related articles

• F1 veteran Barrichello to race in IndyCar (news.smh.com.au)

Review of David Lamb’s Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball’s Minor Leagues

Everytime a town’s name came up on my screen, the image of a specific ballpark slipped into sharp focus. What I remember most clearly was not home runs or dazzling plays or even who was a prospect and who was not; it was the faces of the people who happened to play baseball for a living, each fighting his own private war, each wanting not much more than what we all aim for-to look back at the end of a day or a season and be able to say, “I gave it my best shot.”

And David Lamb, who travelled the world as a foreign correspondent in places of danger such as Beirut, Lebanon, tells the story of those who played baseball for a living in places such as Stockton, California; El Paso, Texas; Bluefield, West Virginia, Elmira, New York; Salt Lake City, Utah, and Helena, Montana. Not major league cities and teams to be sure, but the places out of which those who play in the Big Show must pass through first.

While written in the late 80′s (and published in 1991) Stolen Season could be written today with different names, and in some cases different teams playing in different stadiums. (For example, Lamb makes a visit to the Salt Lake City (UT)Trappers who are now the Ogden Raptors and whose old stadium Derks Field was torn down to make way for the current Salt Lake City team the Salt Lake Bees who play in the Spring Mobile Ballpark. The Trappers were an independant affliate of the Pioneer League. The Bees are the LA Angels of Anaheim’s AAA team of the Pacific Coast League)

And while Lamb traverses the US in his motorhome dubbed 49er, there is a common theme of love for the Braves most notably the Boston/Milwaukee linage of the current Atlanta franchise. For his travels puts him across the paths of several childhood baseball heroes notably Eddie Matthews and Warren Spann among others.

Lamb’s ability to describe the diverse, yet similar, landscape of baseball whether it is in the over-the-top confines of the Dudley Dome in El Paso, home to theDiablos, or in the simple, almost turn-of-the-century (the 20th century) locales of Bluefield and Elmira, brings home both the regional and national flavor of our national pastime.

I really enjoyed this book and for the baseball fan in your life it would be a great addition to their library. And though it is 20 years old, it tells the stories of places and people, now gone, who make baseball the game that it is.

I give this book a 5 as it is a great read for baseball fans everywhere.

Note: I borrowed this book from my local library to statisfy my love of baseball.

A related article of note: 

http://utahcommhistory.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/community-park-to-derks-to-franklin-covey-to-spring-mobile-a-94-plus-year-history-of-salt-lake%E2%80%99s-diamond/

Tuesday Book Review

Cover via Amazon

Good evening everyone!

With this post I am beginning to add a rating system to my reviews. They are very unscientific and definitely not given to a particular rubric used in reviews. But I thought they might be helpful for readers. The scale is a simple 1 to 5 with 1 being a bad read, 2 being an so-so read, 3 an ok read, 4 a good read, and 5 a great read.

Here are the first three books to be rated with my new system, two having to do with my favorite sport – Baseball!

The first is  The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam. With the final ride down the east coast by two of them to see their dying teammate, the legendary Ted Williams, as a backdrop, David Halberstam writes of four Red Sox legends and friends who remained that way for the rest of their lives: Ted Williams, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr.

As they travel, Halberstam weaves in their individual stories as well as their stories as teammates on the Boston Red Sox of the 40′s and early 50′s, into the narrative and highlights both the before, during, and after of their lives as players and their unique personalities. Honest yet somewhat sympathetic, Halberstam, presents an interesting tale of men who played the game in a different era, under different circumstances, and yet remained committed to one another as time, and the game they loved to play, moved on.

What finally stands out to me is how one stood above the rest (Williams) and yet had great affection for the others who in turn had great affection for him.

A “good read’ book – 4.

The other baseball book is Yogi Berra’s When You Come to A Fork in the Road, Take It!

Written, in my opinion,  in the fast paced and clipped style of Berra, this book is a compilation of  some of Yogi’s sayings (and how he got the nickname Yogi) and what he meant by those wonderful sayings. My favorite saying in this book is, “Little League Baseball is a good thing because it keeps parents off the streets and the kids out of the house.”

One might tire of the common themes he returns to again and again – family, hard work, being grateful, and the like – but he makes his point about the value of education (he stopped at eight grade) and how he is glad that his children have earned good education. And you cannot argue with his unique insights into the personalities and game that he played in what is considered by some ‘the golden years of baseball.’

Another “good” book – a 4.

Now for a book that I read in an afternoon and whose story line and characters just gripped me from the beginning and it is not a fiction story. It is a true story from the pen, and life of well known science writer David Dobbs.

Entitled, My Mother’s Lover, this e-book that I purchased via the Atavist’s iPad app, is about the unexpected and bittersweet story he discovers, after his mother, reveals a name in her final days, that Dobbs and his family had never heard before. A man’s name.

I am not going to reveal anything else about the story except that it grabbed me from the start and I was caught up in Dobbs’ search for the truth about his mother and another man in a distant time.

A “great read.” A 5

Here is the Amazon Kindle link for this book:

My Mother's Lover (Kindle Single)

and here are some of Dobbs’ remarks at wired.com about the book and its composition:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/my-mothers-lover-my-new-story-in-the-atavist/