Just A Minor Perspective: Through the Eyes of a Minor League Rookie
By Benjamin Hill of MLB.com
Released. For Eric Pettis, that word took on entirely different meanings within the span of one tumultuous week.
On March 25, the 23-year-old right-hander released his first book. Entitled, Just A Minor Perspective: Through the Eyes of a Minor League Rookie, this online-only tome chronicles Pettis’ 2010 campaign as a member of the Class A Short-Season Williamsport Crosscutters. It’s the sort of account that Minor League Baseball fans should lap right up, chock full of anecdotes about what life in the lower ranks of professional ball is really like.
And what it is is an inherently awkward existence, in which “home” means sleeping on balloon-adorned sheets in a host mother’s basement and “road” equals claustrophobic bus rides and hotels of questionable hygienic standards. Perhaps the only true constant in the midst of this surreal lifestyle is a steady diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Dodgers: From Coast to Coast
Reviewed by Ken Gurnick of MLB.com
The Dodgers, as part of the 50th anniversary of Dodger Stadium, will release an official illustrated coffee-table book this year called “Dodgers: From Coast to Coast — The Official Visual History of the Dodgers.”
The book, with an introduction by legendary broadcaster Vin Scully and a foreword by Hall of Fame former manager Tom Lasorda, will be released on April 10, the Dodgers’ home opener, and will be available for purchase at Dodger Stadium merchandise locations and online at dodgers.com/book for $40.
The 256-page book includes original essays told by former Dodgers Ron Cey, Tommy Davis, Roy Gleason, Shawn Green, Eric Karros, Wally Moon, Wes Parker, Steve Sax, Mike Scioscia and Steve Yeager as well as Ann Meyers Drysdale, wife of the late Hall of Famer Don Drysdale. More
‘Guaranteed’ to make you look
I included “Guaranteed to Last: L.L. Bean’s Century of Outfitting America” in our spring review sampler on MLB.com because the New England company has paralleled the national pastime as an American outdoor institution with especially key ties to their beloved local Red Sox. We liked the book so much that we are going to share a few pictures that the company has graciously made available to us. Not all of them are in the actual pages but are in their massive archives.
A rare 1934 Babe Ruth signed photo. The Sultan of Swat, who wears a pair of Bean boots in the book, calls L.L. Bean “a hunter’s delight. Ruth was at the end of his career, hitting 22 homers and making one last All-Star team in his final year as a Yankee legend, before coming home to Boston as a frail National Leaguer in a 1935 Braves swan song.
This is what a Bean Brothers’ baseball bat looked like. Look at that grip!
Republished from the book, this letter is the very definition of Ted Williams swagger. He tried to make Bean an offer he couldn’t refuse, but alas the company was not sold to the outdoorsy Splendid Splinter.
– Mark Newman
The Rotation: A Season with the Phillies and the Greatest Pitching Staff Ever Assembled
Jenn over at Phillies Phollowers has posted a book review of The Rotation: A Season with the Phillies and the Greatest Pitching Staff Ever Assembled.
Here’s an excerpt:
The new Phillies book, “The Rotation: A Season with the Phillies and the Greatest Pitching Staff Ever Assembled” was written by Phillies beat reporters Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com and Todd Zolecki of “The Zo Zone.” The book offers an inside view of the much-hyped 2011 Phillies starting pitching staff led by Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels.
As an avid Phillies fan, the two major things I look for in any book about the team are as follows: 1 – Does it tell me anything that I did not already know? 2 – Is it entertaining? Both of those questions, I can answer with an emphatic, “Yes.”
Spring 2012 Baseball Books Roundup
Reviewed by Mark Newman of MLB.com
Opening Day is not only the pageantry and celebration of real Major League Baseball games returning to packed ballparks, but also the discovery of a new spring selection of baseball books. It is all about the traditional turning of a page, literature and national pastime, so let’s take a look at some of most recent fare worth a read, in addition to R.A. Dickey’s first offering. Among those we especially like are:
Pinstripe Empire by Marty Appel. The first truly definitive Yankees franchise history since DiMaggio was playing.
The Rotation: A Season with the Phillies and One of the Greatest Pitching Staffs Ever Assembled by Jim Salisbury and Todd Zolecki. See what life was like in 2011 for Halladay, Lee, Hamels and Oswalt.
Guaranteed to Last: L.L. Bean’s Century of Outfitting America by Jim Gorman. See how Ted Williams tried to buy them out and look at the Bean Boots that Babe Ruth wore — part of a parallel century of two pastimes.
Driving Mr. Yogi by Harvey Araton. The New York Times 1A story is now a charming book. Ron Guidry picks up Yogi Berra at the airport every Spring Training and their annual duet is a priceless read.
The Baseball Hall of Shame: The Best of Blooperstown by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo. They’re back, 20 years later. And they haven’t changed a bit. No one is safe.
Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball
Reviewed by Mark Newman of MLB.com
“I like adventure,” R.A. Dickey writes in his book Wherever I Wind Up, which hit bookstores on Thursday. He is talking on page 289 about spending part of his first Mets season in 2010 at a condo in Greenwich, Conn., belonging to former Met Shawn Green.
Dickey, his wife, Anne, and their three young children toughed out five sweltering days without power because the management company evidently wasn’t told he was coming. . . . Read More
You’re Missin’ a Great Game
Reviewed by Larry Dierker of MLB.com in his Dierk’s Dugout MLBlog
I always thought of Whitey Herzog as a happy, almost carefree guy. Now that I’ve finished his book, You’re Missin’ a Great Game, I realize that he is good natured, but he is also desperately in love with baseball, and righteously distressed about the way it is heading. In that sense, we are alike.
The thing that seems to bother him most is the schedule. Scheduling Interleague games creates a strength of opposition problem, which he believes is unfair. It is, and I said the same thing when I was managing. We had to play our in-state “rivals,” the Rangers in a series at home and in Arlington, while the Cardinals did the same thing, playing the Royals. Read More
The Baseball Book Expanded Edition
I first began subscribing to Sports Illustrated in late 1971, as a 12-year-old Indiana boy coming into his own awareness of major sports, immersive fan passion and respect for sports journalism. It began with two college covers: “Irresistible Oklahaoma Meets Immovable Nebraska” (football) and North Carolina State’s 7-4 Tom Burleson (hoops preview). I would always think of S.I. from then on as all-sports, and still do.
This came to mind because I am flipping through the oversized pages of SI.’s fabulous The Baseball Book Expanded Edition ($29.95 hardcover) — with 80 pages of updated material to modernize the NYT bestseller of five years ago. It’s funny: After looking through all the photos and essays, what shakes me up the most is the page opposite the Contents, showing 14 S.I. baseball covers through the ages. It puts you in relive mode and I love that.
No matter how old you are, pages will shatter your present-day calm and reshape your mindset with a flood of memories. If you’re in your 50s, it might be a double-truck image of Boog Powell hitting the dirt after a brushback pitch, or a classic intensity pose by Don Drysdale on the mound. If you’re a young-un now, it might be the sight of Derek Jeter performing his jump-throw in a 1999 action shot — knowing he was leading the Bombers to four titles in his first five years. The past always meets the present throughout the book.
My favorite shot is the page 166 double-truck of an exhausted Bob Gibson walking off the mound with an arm around his catcher, Tim McCarver, following Gibson’s complete-game victory over the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1964 World Series. I spent 15 minutes just staring at this image. It is a reminder that nothing really ever changes about baseball, except the people and to some extent the styles.
You expect beautiful and iconic photography from S.I., and the book delivers that in the oversized tradition of the gorgeous “Rare Air” books of the 1990s. You also expect classic writing, and this features essays by such scribes as Frank Deford, George Plimpton, Rick Reilly, Peter Gammons and Richard Hoffer. There are nine new stories, including Tom Verducci’s look at Tim Lincecum and S.L. Price on Ozzie Guillen. The only knock is that it already feels dated now that arguably the greatest finish to a baseball season has been witnessed in 2011, but you can’t have everything and this will keep you busy. It would make a great holiday gift, and look for more ideas from the MLB.com Shop DVDs & Books area. – Mark Newman
Nobody’s Perfect
Reviewed by Mark Newman of MLB.com
“I can disagree. I can question. But I cannot argue because I cannot complain. I am filled with so many blessings, so here is what I do: I smile. I have not done anything wrong. Instead, I have done everything right.” -Armando Galarraga
“It’s probably the most difficult thing to do on a baseball diamond, keep the other team from getting on base, and here this big, sweet kid from Venezuela had done just that.” -Jim Joyce
It is one year since history was robbed, human imperfection magnified, class measured, emotions wrought and two unlikely book co-authors inextricably linked.
“Nobody’s Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History,” released on Thursday, is the captivating account of Galarraga and Joyce, written with Daniel Paisner, that sheds substantial new light on the events and thought process before, during and after Joyce, the umpire, blew a call that cost Galarraga, the Tigers pitcher, a perfect game on June 2, 2010, at Comerica Park in Detroit. Read more
Click here to buy “Nobody’s Perfect.”
The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter
Reviewed by Mark Newman of MLB.com
In the fall of 1998, after the Yankees secured their 114th and final regular-season victory on the way to an eventual World Series sweep of San Diego and Major League Baseball’s last run of consecutive titles, Derek Jeter said: “It makes no difference what we did in the regular season.”
He distances himself from what’s already happened and looks toward the next, and ultimate, goal. That attitude has worked for him in the postseason and now he’s hoping it will work with off-the-field distractions as he tries to distance himself from Ian O’Connor’s unauthorized biography, “The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter.”
The book is scheduled to be in bookstores on May 16, and although Jeter wants it made clear that he had “nothing to do with the book,” there are enough new stories and anecdotes to pique any fan’s interest. Read more
Click here to get the book.
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