The Southpaw

A Biography of Phil Rizzuto (to age 34)

The Internet Archive hosts a free, downloadable e-book version of Phil Rizzuto: A Biography Of The Scooter, by Joe Trimble. Trimble was the Yankees beat writer for the New York Daily News, and once even appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" as part of a sports roundtable.

Below is a Rizzuto-themed panel penned by the ageless New York Daily News cartoonist/columnist Bill Gallo, who recalls The Scooter's encounter with a cow on "Phil Rizzuto Day" at Yankee Stadium in 1985.

In Memory of Mark Harris: Watch "Bang the Drum Slowly" here

Mark Harris, who wrote four baseball novels focusing on the trials and tribulations of pitcher Henry Wiggen, died Wednesday at 84. The best known of the four, Bang the Drum Slowly, was made into a well-known 1973 movie starring Robert De Niro. First published in 1956, it received its first screen treatment the same year in a CBS teleplay starring Paul Newman. During his literary career, Harris wrote 13 other books.

It Looked Like For Ever, the last of his baseball books, came out in 1979. In the New York Times Book Review, Donald Hall, our current Poet Laureate and the author of the great, but largely unknown, Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, wrote that it "is not so much about baseball as it is about aging, just as ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’ was not so much about baseball as it is about dying.”

In addition to writing, Harris taught English; his final stint in that capacity was at Arizona State University from 1980 to 1982.

The 1956 version of "Bang the Drum Slowly," starring Newman, is presented below. Enjoy.

David Halberstam, RIP

David Halberstam, the great Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who first made his mark with extraordinary, prescient reporting on the Vietnam War, was killed yesterday in a car crash. He was 73.

When Halberstam, whose output was prolific, wasn't writing books about the history of the Vietnam War (The Best and the Brightest), the titans of the mass media (The Powers that Be), shifts in U.S. foreign policy since the Gulf War (War in a Time of Peace), and other weighty topics, he wrote books about sports. The Breaks of the Game, about the 1979 Trail Blazers, is a terrific read and a basketball classic. Personally, I most enjoyed that book and The Amateurs, about amateur rowers at the Olympic level. The Amateurs doesn't get enough props when the greatest sports books are discussed.

I was never enthralled with his baseball writing, however. Summer of '49 and October 1964 failed to hook me in the way his other works, both sports and non-sports, had. That's okay -- I know plenty of people who've enjoyed those books, and his others on baseball.

For a few years, I had the honor of occupying the same virtual space as Halberstam, on ESPN.com's Page 2. I never fooled myself into thinking it put me in his league, but I still felt good about it. He was journalism royalty, after all.

The New York Times has dug up a slew of material from its archives to give Halberstam a fitting sendoff; the ones I've linked to below are baseball-related, and most, but not all, are book reviews:

July 8, 1993: At the Ball Park With: David Halberstam; Making Legwork (and Edginess) a Virtue

May 25, 2003: The Boys of Winter (book review)

May 8, 1989: Yanks vs. Sox in 'Summer of '49' (book review)

Aug. 14, 1994: Damned Yankees (book review)

And finally, a 2002 Boston Globe article by Halberstam about a day he spent with Ted Williams: Day Spent with One of the Greats

An Interview with J.C. Bradbury, author of The Baseball Economist

On March 15, J.C. Bradbury's book The Baseball Economist will be arriving in bookstores. Bradbury, an economist at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, has been analyzing and writing about baseball issues using tools of the economic trade for years, primarily using his popular Sabernomics blog as a forum for his ideas.

It's a good thing that a selection of Bradbury's wide-ranging essays have made it between hard covers. While many popular bloggers have published books that consist of little more than polished versions of their Web musings, The Baseball Economist consists almost entirely of new studies and new writing.

The range of topics Bradbury covers is impressive. The first chapter is on hit batsmen and how differences between rates iin the AL and NL can be explained by the "price" of hitting a batter (which has changed over the years). The second chapter presents a surprising finding about how much "protection" on-deck batters really provide. The topics then expand in scope, to scouts vs. stat-heads, player salaries, steroids, the issue of whether or not MLB is a monopoly, and finally expansion. This is a book you can dip into at random: each chapter stands alone. And you'll find plenty of variety.

Although Bradbury is an academic, his writing style is fluid and accessible. He doesn't use many technical terms, but when he does, he explains them clearly and briefly, in a fashion that makes the material more easily understood. This is a book that's worth your buck. Let's hope we'll see another collection from Bradbury in a couple of years.

Read my interview with J.C. after the jump.

Robinson vs. Sain: It's a hook, but will it also be a s(t)inker?

As I mentioned yesterday, Lou Brock is writing a book about the Johnny Sain-Jackie Robinson matchup in Robinson's first big league game on Opening Day,1947. It makes some sense to focus on the batter-pitcher rivalry, as a way to shape the book. But I've done a lot of research on Sain, and what's notable is how he doesn't talk about being the first Major Leaguer to pitch to Robinson. If you read enough about Sain you become aware of his place in history, but it goes nowhere. Maybe Brock will fix that, but it's not clear how.

Sain does discuss pitching to Robinson in We Played The Game, an excellent oral history covering  1947-1964. Here's what he says:

I became the first pitcher to face Jackie Robinson. We knew he was going to play although they hadn't announced it, which may be why there were over 6,000 empty seats at Ebbets Field ... I didn't care who I pitched against and was concentrating on what I did against all of the Dodgers, not on an event that would go down in history. There were no incidents or mischief during the game, which is why nobody would remember who pitched to Robinson ... Most of the Braves didn't think Robinson entering the majors was a big deal.

Obviously you can go in a whole lot of different directions with such a book, which seems Brock's only option. It might explain why he was interviewing Ryan Howard on the topic.

Johnny Sain vs. Jackie Robinson: The Book?

Lou Brock is writing a book about Jackie Robinson's first major league at bat -- which happened to come against Johnny Sain on Opening Day, April 15, 1947. While there were many remarkable things about that game, especially Robinson's courage, it almost seems that the Sain-Robinson matchup was the least remarkable. Robinson went hitless; Sain pitched him straight.

But Brock sees it different. He thinks another pitcher would have tried to send Robinson a message, big time. "He [Sain] could have released a missile, but he released a baseball. The question was why? Johnny always said it was because '[he] was a big-league pitcher.'"

Doris Kearns Goodwin on baseball history and the art of narrative

Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the baseball memoir Wait Till Next Year: Summer Afternoons with My Father and Baseball, speaks at the Smithsonian on "History, Baseball, and the Art of the Narrative." Good stuff. This link is to RealAudio of the speech, which also includes some good material about how she got to know Lyndon Johnson after his presidency.

Roger Angell, Still Throwing Strikes

Dave Welch of Powell's interviews the great New Yorker baseball writer Roger Angell. It's a terrific, long interview. Here's an exchange on Tim McCarver:

Welch: A catcher who makes several appearances in Game Time is Tim McCarver. He has interesting things to say about what goes on on the field, but also about the sport's place in our culture.

Angell: Tim is unusual because he is such an enthusiast for the game. A lot of people I know can't stand him. "I just can't stand him," they'll say. "He's always blathering on about baseball." This is not an effort for Tim. He's extremely excited about it and he knows it through and through.

He's in that piece on catching, briefly. He loves situations and he doesn't hesitate to hold back on what he sees out there. This has not always made him popular.

Perfect, Once Removed: An excerpt and interview with author Phillip Hoose

Perfect, Once Removed is a wonderful little gem of a baseball memoir. Phillip Hoose, Don Larsen's second cousin, recalls what it was like to be a third grader -- a new arrival in Speedway, Indiana who loved baseball but struggled with the basics of the game. A boy who seized on his blood relationship with a New York Yankee to gain a sense of belonging, who thrilled that his cousin took notice of him and invited him and his family to see the Yankees play in Chicago and to meet the Yankees.

That Hoose's first baseball memories coincided with Larsen's tremendous feat, the perfect game in the 1956 World Series, make them that much stronger, and more meaningful. Though Perfect, Once Removed has many universal themes relating to baseball, and childhood, and the feeling of being an outsider, that specific connection to Larsen makes the book more than just a paean to the game. It's also history, experienced from a unique viewpoint.

I spoke to Hoose by phone earlier this week. An excerpt from the book follows the interview.

Jeff Merron: What inspired you to write this book. Was it the 50th anniversary of your cousin's perfect game?

Phillip Hoose: Part of it was the 50th anniversary, because I saw it as a chance to shine a bigger, brighter light on Larsen’s game, which I think is the greatest pitching performance in the history of baseball. And it didn’t seem to me that the Yankees were really doing much with it. Certainly the 40th anniversary had not occasioned a lot of fanfare, and I wanted to help make the case.

Another thing was that this was my 50th year in baseball as well. I never stopped playing either baseball or softball. So I wanted to write a valentine to baseball. It was a combination of those things.

JM: The connection to Don that you have is crucial, but that experience, your childhood experience of struggling to just field grounders and popups and become a decent player really struck a chord with me.

Hoose: Even great natural baseball players worry about those ground balls and those popups. The ball's hard and comes at you very fast. It’s a game where being big and strong are assets, but more than football and basketball you can overcome size deficiencies through work and discipline.

Baseball stops at the end of every play – you have a pause, and it’s more a set piece, and you can practice motions and events over and over and over. I’ve taken tens of thousands of ground balls and fly balls in my life, just practicing these things, to the point where they've become part of my muscle memory. So often what happens in a play is determined in the first fraction of a second – it depends on how quickly you recognize what’s going on, how quickly your muscles remember having seen the same pattern before.

JM: You had that one connection – Don is your first cousin once removed – and to me it seems that having some kind of connection makes a huge difference in a fan’s experience of the game. I’m thinking about the kids who come down on the field before the game and get to have their picture taken with a player, or getting to run the bases after a minor league game.

Hoose: I think you’re right. I attended a fair number of baseball games in Cuba, and played with the kids down there. In the Cuban National League, kids run the bases after the game. They think that the best players in the world are the local team’s players. They know them. They get to watch them lift weights between games of a doubleheader. They roll out these barbell sets on wheels and they actually work out, lifting weights between games.

My special connection through having a relative on the New York Yankees meant a huge amount to me. That he would take any interest in me at all, and of course when I actually got to meet the New York Yankees it was just so inspiring to me. And of course later on, when lightning struck with this immortal game, it had coattails for me, too, in my school. I got a popularity bump. People were willing to teach me how to play ball and to hang out with me in a way that they had not been before.

I didn’t have to do anything. He becomes world famous, and I get a little bump. Fine with me! I’ll take it.

JM: After 1956 you saw less of Don.

Hoose: I probably saw him four times after that, before I went to visit him last year for this book. I think we went to see him a couple more times in Chicago when he was with the Yankees. I remember we saw him play in Indianapolis. He got sent down to Triple A, and he was in Indianapolis to play the Indians. It was terrible – there weren’t many people there, and there were some really abrasive, abusive hecklers.

I remember we were sitting in front of them and my dad was getting madder and madder. They were just saying all kinds of garbage. I also remember we went to Cincinnati, when he was with the Giants, and it was a great game. I’ll never forget it. Mays hit two homers to left field. Low, hooking line drives that just clanged against the seats. And then they nursed a slim lead into the ninth inning and Don came out. He was basically their closer, (He pitched in the ’62 Series and actually won a game.) He must have thrown five or six pitches and he retired each batter on long fly balls – warning track fly balls to each field. And that was it.

We waited for him outside the players’ entrance and Mays got into a cab. I had an autograph book and I went running after the cab and I actually got in the cab with him. I was half-in, half-out, and he was startled. He scribbled his name in my autograph book and he kind of tossed it out to me, in the street.

I told Don about this last year and he said, before I told him the whole story,  “I’ll bet it was the worst looking signature you’ve ever seen.” I said, “Yes!” He said Mays’ signatures were always a mess.

JM: How did Don respond when he found out you were writing this book?

Hoose: At first he didn’t respond much at all. He’s probably seen a number of projects come his way over the years. But I think the main thing was when I asked if I could visit. I didn’t know if he would see me or not. He said yes, but then when I tried to nail him down on a date I thought he would slip off the hook, but he didn’t. I think this book really became a reality for him when it came out.

He’s been wonderful. He’s been to two events with me where he’s signed the book. He didn’t have to. He signed hundreds and hundreds of them. He read it, he liked it. He’s been great.

He did two signings, one in the Bronx and one in New Jersey,  and there may be more. He’s been tremendously generous. He’s just a great guy.

JM: What did he think of your story? The book is really about you.

Hoose: He didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, how much that meant to me. He remembered us going to Chicago to meet him and the players. It was something that he did for several of us in that family – he’d either leave tickets or send tickets to us. Sometimes he’d invite people to the Del Prado hotel, where the Yankees stayed.

We just got lucky in that the game got rained out. I was distraught, I thought the whole visit was blown, we weren’t going to get to see the Yankees play and so forth. But my dad called him and he agreed to meet us at the hotel. We spent the whole day with the Yankees. God, it was a great day. These gods were all around us.

JM: How much has Don kept up with his Yankee teammates?

Hoose: He’s close with Hank Bauer, and with Yogi because fantasy camps and autograph card shows bring them together. But you have to remember that a lot of those people have passed on. Don is gong to have a charity event in New York on Nov. 4, and I was asking him who’s going to be invited,  and in addition to everyone who’s pitched a perfect game, he’s gong to invite all the living members of the Yankees and Dodgers who played in his perfect game. There aren’t all that many.

JM: Have you had any response from the Yankees to your book?

Hoose: None whatsoever.

JM: Have you tried?

Hoose: Yes. My publisher has tried several times and not gotten anywhere. It’s been disappointing. They didn’t get behind the 50th anniversary of Don’s perfect game either. It strikes me – if I were the Yankees, and my employee had pitched the greatest game in the history of baseball against a lineup of immortals under such pressure, the fifth game of the 1956 World Series – I’d just think you’d have one heck of a party to celebrate something like that. But they didn’t.

Excerpt after the jump.

Was the 1964 World Series the greatest ever?

Allen Barra writes in American Heritage that the 1964 World Series, with pitted the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the New York Yankees, was the greatest ever. Actually, he doesn't make a terrific case for the Series itself being "great" (although it did go seven games and featured Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle, and Whitey Ford, to name just a few). In a package I co-wrote for ESPN.com, we ranked the 1964 Series the 13th best in the first 100 years.

He does argue, also unconvincingly, that the 1964 World Series was "great" because many of those who participated would later be both outspoken and prolific:

The 1964 Yankees and Cardinals were a microcosm of the changes that were whirling in professional sports. Bouton and Flood, most notably, exemplified the new breed of articulate professional athletes who were skeptical of authority and unafraid to challenge traditions. In truth, it seems that nearly every member of the two teams had something to say. Bouton, Berra, Mantle, Ford, Kubek, Pepitone, Flood, McCarver, Gibson, and Uecker are credited with 22 books among them, which makes them the writingest teams ever to play in the World Series. Just as the year changed the nation, so its World Series changed American sports.

This is a tremendous logical leap. Some of the players would later be radically (for sports) outspoken (and that only applies to Bouton and Flood). Others wrote many books -- not any surprise, considering some were Hall of Famers, others broadcasters, and half of them Yankees. But I'll be darned if I can recall Berra, Mantle, Ford, Kubek, Pepitone, or McCarver writing anything that created anything more than a brief and minor ripple in baseball, much less sports in general. Berra's funny and his words are memorable for that reason, and have had some larger cultural impact, in a Jerry Seinfeld kind of way.

1964 World Series, cultural watershed? Not even close. Great series? Yes. But not the greatest by any stretch.

Perfect, Once Removed: Don Larsen's cousin pens a memoir

Don Larsen's cousin, Phillip Hoose, has just published Perfect Once Removed: When Baseball Was All the World to Me. He writes about being 9 years old when his uncle pitched his perfect game in the World Series, and meeting his Yankee heroes. NPR has this interview with Hoose, and an excerpt from the book. Hoose writes of meeting Casey Stengel:

Don spotted Yankee manager Casey Stengel entertaining a cluster of baseball writers in the corner of the lobby. "Go on ... tell Casey you're my cousin." …

I stepped in front of him and introduced myself. His eyes widened. "You're Larsen's cousin, eh?" I nodded. The skipper grabbed my arm and pulled me close to his side. "Well, Larsen's a good man, no matter what you read." Reporters chuckled. …

"I just finished reading your biography, Mr. Stengel."

He broke up laughing, as if this was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

"Lies, all lies!" he cackled. "Written by guys like these. ,,, Take a good look at these faces, son," he said. "Look at 'em hard. Now let me give you one piece of advice. Whatever you do, don't grow up to be a writer."

PinstripePassion.com recently interviewed Larsen about the perfect game and other Yankee matters. The Deadball Era has this recording of the last out of the game.

Raiders Night

One of the terrific journalists (and people) I had the pleasure of meeting and working with while at ESPN.com was Robert Lipsyte, the former New York Times sports reporter and columnist. I'd always admired Bob -- by which I mean that as a regular reader of the Times since about 1970, his reporting and commentary struck a chord. Lipsyte did a terrific job of covering Muhammad Ali, which he wrote about in a terrific ESPN.com piece, "Ali and Me," and also covered, in a sympathetic but straightforward fashion, other controversial sports figures, like Jim Bouton.

What I was unaware of until a few years ago is that Bob also writes "Young Adult Fiction." His latest book, Raiders Night, about high school football, is terrific reading -- even if you're past the "Young Adult" stage of life. It tackles (no pun intended) a lot of high school sports issues head-on -- sex, steroids, stardom -- and, most disturbingly (to me), hazing.

It's a charged book, brutally honest and candid. I recommend it highly, either as a gift for children who are, say, 12 or older, or as a book for class discussion. I remember, in seventh grade, our class read Lord of the Flies. It had a huge impact on me, because through that book, I became aware of the possibilities of literature; that besides storytelling, the best writing provides plenty of grist for the mind mill, lots to talk about. And that's what Raiders Night does quite well (besides being a good story, with very believable characters).

Remembering Syd Thrift

MLB.com has a nice package on Syd Thrift, who promoted and directed the Royals' baseball academy:

Claire: Baseball was better with Thrift
Royals remember innovator Syd Thrift
Leyland recalls Thrift: Former GM gave Tigers skipper first big-league chance

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Collier: Thrift went his own way
Cook: Thrift's best days were with Pirates

From the Kansas City Star:
Baseball loses a visionary

Thoughts on Thrift from Baltimore Sun reporter Roch Kubatko

And a brief book review of The Game According to Syd Thrift

Jim and Johnny

Ball Four is, by far, my favorite baseball book, and even that may be praise too faint: it's one of my favorite books. And I read an awful lot.

I first read Ball Four not long after it came out; probably around 1972 or 1973, when I was 11 or 12 years old. I wasn't an especially advanced or "cool" kid about matters carnal, and I don't recall being surprised or disenchanted when reading about the drunken escapades of famous ballplayers. Mickey Mantle wasn't my hero, but even if he was, he didn't seem diminished by what Jim Bouton wrote about him.

The man who I thought was the true exemplar of so much that seemed stupid and silly about baseball was