Two of Baseball Royalty, But Little Duke

In New York City's 1950s there were three grand centerfields where baseball was played at the highest level. In Allan Barra's Mickey and Willie the lords of two of those fields, the Yankee and the Giant, are remembered and re-celebrated. The mere Duke of the other field, the Dodger Snider, receives little love of a similar vein, perhaps just because when the journo was young — as he tells the story in his preface — and his father brought home four packs of Topps cards and gum, Mantle and Mays cards fell from one and Snider was nowhere to be seen, which is more or less how he figures in the dual bio Barra wrote to answer for himself why he once worshipped them.


Publicly gracious, each player praised the other as the greater. Neither offered Snider (and his Brooklyns) as the equal of the Manhattan CFs  — although Donald Honig did celebrate the three equally a few years ago in Mays, Mantle and Snider. For most who care about those days and players, the only real question to be answered is whether Willie was better or the Mick was. (In appendices, Barra seems to side with those who believe Mays better in performance and Mantle better at their ultimate best.) Snider, however, gets short shrift ... perhaps all because his mug didn't fall out of a card and gum package.

Could it be true that upon such turns of fate sports journalism turns?

Club Footed Horse Likely to Outduel Derby Thoroughbreds

The 2013 Kentucky Derby thoroughbreds will shortly be making their long left hand turn at full speed. They will be fast, beautiful and surely inspire love if they pay off at the Churchill Downs ticket windows.  Those that don't win will fade, "their" stories those of trainers, jockeys and owners. Not so for  Joe Layden's Ghost Horse.

That horse, true story, is a one-eyed, club footed nag and beloved by its trainer for many reasons including that it connects him to his late wife. It never wins on the track to the extent it does in the heart ... but what kind of racehorse is that?

One whose story is a far better gamble to eventually pay off on movie screens than any of those taking the track today.

Selling Seles Serially

What might be up with the first in a projected series of YA novels from Monica Seles, The Academy: Game On? Although Seles started out with her dad at her tennis Virgil, she was soon enveloped within the orbit of Nick Bollettieri, who pioneered the modern academy lifestyle in Florida. But if we fear, fear and wonder about one of the biggest problems with movies about tennis is that they get the tennis wrong, then could it be a harbinger of doom that her publisher is promoting her book (set to release June) with a trailer depicting two lasses who neither look, nor play the part of up-and-coming tennis juniors.



Lack of muscle tone, laughable strokes, a missing determination to win. Pretty as they are, the video girls are certainly no true echo of  the great Monica.



One can only hope that the person and people helping her pen a tale of girl squabbles, competition for boys and (we hope most of all) tennis can channel a little bit more of what really made her special, what she really knows and experienced but often won't share onto the pages of the series. (Not that we want it to include anything as horrific as the attack blowing forever-dark clouds into Seles' life.)  She might well be having fun (?) since retirement, but one can't but help but wonder what she lost, is she lost and how that can possibly show up on a page.

Subtitling Hammerin' Hank Greenberg

Subtitles have two usual uses. They can explain some phrase the author found particularly clever so potential buyers can know what the hell the book is actually about, or they can take their stab at helping to hype the book, most often in these cases promising more than they deliver.

To the second category assign "The Hero of Heroes," the pitch for John Rosengren's Hank Greenberg. The biography chronicles the ways the famed slugger for the Detroit Tigers served, too, as a Jewish icon. (A space in the public imagination he continues to dominate, if one notes the Mark Kurlansky Hank Greenberg bio of two years ago and this month's "special edition" DVD re-release of The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.) His career was Hall-of-Fame worthy, with league dominating hitting; and his cultural impact was such that one of America's leading anti-semites, car czar Henry Ford, put aside personal distaste to enlist the batsman in moving more of his metal.

So, great player, good guy and aspirational figure? Absolutely. But H of Hs?. While inherently true about anyone famous that among that person's admirers are other admirable folks, it still seems just a step too steep to declare Henry Benjamin Greenberg. Hopefully it sells at least a few more books, nonetheless.

Crowd Goes Wild, Individual Fans Go Crazy

Why worship your dog of a team year after year? Can't help it. It's testosterone (obviously more for obsessed male fans); it's social conditioning; it's hormones (obviously more for the obsessed female fan); it's physical and natural science. It's complex, but whether or not it makes you feel better it's not them it's you ... and you can't help it.

The whole megillah, to the best current science can put explain its collective analytic/empirical wisdom, is explained in Eric Simon's Your Brain on Sports. Basically, watching others play makes you feel you're playing, stimulates pleasurable (even when painful) brain activity, compels behavior that is -- viewed on its own -- ridiculous and absolutely helps define us as human.Why and how it does that is part explained by others and part by author Simon's experience. Your results and explanations may vary.

A Backhand Tzimmes

Imagine a book as a tzimmes — Yiddish for an overly complicated production, a confusion or, most often the much sweeter and more enjoyable stew of mixed root vegetables and or fruits, currently featuring in numerous meals served during the Passover holiday ending sundown, 2 April.

Might you have in it issues of modern Jews in Germany living in shadows of past harms? What about overtone of cold war politics during its dying days as the Berlin Wall falls? Definitely you'd be looking for the potential of love to redeem a lost soul, say a 30-something writer (perhaps vaguely resembling author Marshall Jon Fisher, who wrote of the fated Davis Cup match between American Don Budge and German Baron Gottfried Von Cramm  in A Terrible Splendor). And since that is not enough for a true tzimmes, add in the ingredient that the writer wasn't quite good enough to make a mark as a touring tennis pro and is learning to earn his keep as a teaching pro. Keep adding and sweetening and tasting and adding and at some point you just might wind up with Fisher's novel, A Backhand Gift.

Let's Just Say Baseball Began in 1946

Every season finds baseball's history (re)told. For 2013 (beginning Sunday night), there's Robert Weintraub's  The Victory Season,  taking fans back almost 70 years to 1946 and the sunset of The Big One.

It was a year when America was taking its victory lap after defeating the German-Japanese alliance, when many of baseball's elite could return to playing in front of fans rather than, as author/producer Weintraub tells it, being part of exhibitions to entertain their "fellow" military men while some lesser known would not be returning to take up their bats and balls. And it was a time when the push began to let Americans of color participate in professional baseball equal to their participation in defending their country. In short, 1946 was a year perfect for an historian and baseball fan, the sort of person always looking to define an age, or at least year in the past when "it all started" (whatever "it" is, which in this case, according to Weintraub, was "the birth of baseball's golden age.").

Semi-Autobiographical Novel of a Hockey Good, In No Way Great

At some point, in some way, with some passion, everyone is The Kid Who Missed the Bus, the novel by former not-quite-NHL-ready defender Matt McCoy. Well, they aren't McCoy's kid, the semi-autobiographical first generation Canadian, good (not great) hockey junior, and girls (not ladies) man not quite good enough to stick at the highest levels of his game. Still, the prime metaphor of the stars taking off (on a youth team's bus, in this case), moving up the  pyramid of talent and opportunity, while the fodder remains behind to dream and cheer is a good one. In everyone's life there was a time they coulda been a contender, could have been somebody



instead of a bum — which is how they'll think of themselves when the 2.17 a.m. dark thoughts afflict them. At which point, in case this book never gets turned into a movie, it might be time to stream Slapshot or perhaps Hoosiers in order to lift one's spirits.

Fish 'Tide Fish

Except perhaps deep in the YellowHammer State (and honestly even there, mostly) it's difficult to imagine the natural audience for The Ultimate Guide to Alabama Fishing. It's fishing. It's Alabama. It's Ultimate (as in close to three pounds and a door-stopping 320 pages of maps, charts, and fishscribe advice).

But everyone, everywhere can get behind an underdog. So help out author Mike Bolton — not to be confused with singer Michael Bolton. Even if you're not willing to lay down your $24.95 to buy your copy, it still wouldn't kill you to drop by the book's Facebook page and give a click. Even the worst book deserves more than 65 likes (as of this morning) and that while the potential audience may not be wide, this is absolutely not the worst book, particularly if you happen to have a hankering for reading about fishing and fishing 'Bama waters.

And the Desensational Winner Is...

Anyone want naming rights to a new prize for sports books? Not all the details have been firmed up, but the general concept is to recognize and reward authors whose work lowers the volume of discussion on a particular controversial subject: desensationalizes the sensational, if you will.

If the award were to be given today, for example, when the spotlights came up, the music was turned down and the envelope ripped open, the winner would be Australian academic and Monash U. prof Deb Waterhouse-Watson for her Athletes, Sexual Assault, and "Trials by Media": Narrative Immunity. ASA and TbM is the latest of the (to-date) quartet of works on the legal, societal and cultural issues surrounding Aussie footballers gone a bit too far rogue.

The outrage is real and subject explosive, but you have to accept that a sentence reading, "Representation and discourse, therefore, are far from being conscious, intentional and unconstrained choices, but are governed by rules which constrain what can be said, where and by whom" will work to temper the flames of a bodice-ripped-from-the-tabloid-headlines tale. Neither the cover nor $125 price do much to set passions aboiling either. Plaudits and kudos all around.