The face looks familiar (Alex Rodriguez's home run)

I tuned into the Yankee game on Friday just as Alex Rodriguez was coming to bat, looking for his 3,000th hit. Timing is everything: ARod launched a home run for the milestone. It was the third time a player hit a home run for the magic number, including former teammate Derek Jeter.

The difference is that the fellow who caught Jeter’s home run gave it back with no reservations. He was rewarded with some Yankee merch and tickets for the rest of the season. Sounds nice, but he had to bear the burden of the taxes on the “gift.”

As the cameras focused on the fan who caught Rodriguez’s shot, I thought. “Gee that guy looks familiar.” The next day I learned I was right: it was professional ball-hawk Zack Hample, whom I interviewed for NJ Jewish News in 2007.

So Hample is in the spotlight right now, making the rounds on sports and news shows, discussing his decision to keep the ball. Some people are okay with that, while others have been critical about his “aggressive” methods in securing the memento. (I guess Eddie Fastook was unable to convince Hample to give it up.)

Hample has made a semi-career out of being in the right place at the right time. He’s written several baseball books, including How to Snag Major League Baseballs: More Than 100 Tested Tips That Really Work; The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches; and Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks.

I normally put up a post every Friday about the top-10 baseball best-sellers. Had a hunch, and sure enough, his Watching title is in the top 20 for baseball books.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Zack.

The face looks familiar (Alex Rodriguez's home run)

The Bookshelf Conversation: Rob Fitts

Books have been written about the use of baseball as an imperialist tool by the United States. We send people to foreign countries; they bring baseball with them, and pretty soon the residents of those foreign have embraced the game to a degree even more enthusiastic than back in the good ole U.S.A.

Case in point: Japan. Many fine books have been written about how the game took root in the Land of the Rising Sun, how fans there are so much more enthusiastic than America fans, with organized cheering and other customs.

Rob Fitts, a former archeologist who holds a PhD in anthropology from Brown, developed an affinity for the Japanese game to the point that he now has three books on the subject under his belt. His first, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, published in 2008 (that’s the author with his subject in the photo below), was followed by Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan which won SABR’s 2013 Seymour Medal for Best Baseball Book of 2012, as well as other critical recognition. In this video, he speaks about Moe Berg’s involvement in that tour.

This year, Fitts has published Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer, a fascinating look at the man who opened the door for his fellow countrymen to see if their skills could offer them a career over here (albeit it took almost 30 years for the next Japanese player — Hideo Nomo — to sign with a Major League team).

Fitts will be appearing at several events with Murakami in the U.S. in the near future, including the SABR National Convention in Chicago (June 28), the Royal Rooters Club at Fenway Park in Boston (June 29), Barnes & Noble on East 86th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan (June 30), and the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse (July 1). For more details, click here.

“Show notes”: In the conversation, we discuss the book Sayonara Home Run!: The Art of the Japanese Baseball Card, by John Gall and Gary Engel. I included that title in a 2006 feature on baseball titles for Bookreporter.com.

The Bookshelf Conversation: Rob Fitts

Baseball best-sellers, May 22, 2015

Posting a bit earlier than usual today because Rachel has her second graduation ceremony today. Where did the time go?

NEW STUFF: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So…

Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); because I’m old school.

Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But it’ll be close enough for government work.

Caveat 3: Sometimes they’ll try to pull one over on you and include a book within a category that doesn’t belong. I’m using my discretion to eliminate such titles from my list. For example, for some reason a recent listing included Tarnished Heels: How Unethical Actions and Deliberate Deceit at the University of North Carolina Ended the “The Carolina Way”, which, far as I can tell, is not at all about baseball, at least not in the main. For the sake of brevity, I will be omitting the subtitles, which have become ridiculously long in in some cases in recent years, also at my discretion.

1. Pedro, by Pedro Martinez and Michael Silverman


2. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen


3. Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak, by Travis Sawchik


4. The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes, by Posada with Gary Brozek
   


5. Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington


6. The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers, by Jon Pessah


7. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis


8. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman


9. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams


10. The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes, by Gary Cieradkowski

A book about the Pirates?Refreshing. Have this one on my ever-growing pile of things to read.

Not on either list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. As of this post, the ranking is 235,774, up nicely from last week’s 776,220. Maybe that fifth-grade classmate I re-met on Facebook actually did buy the book. Still, we can do better. If you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. There haven’t been any in awhile. Doesn’t have to be long (or even complimentary, if you didn’t like it), but anything would be appreciated. And thanks to those who have.

 

Baseball best-sellers, May 22, 2015

Author appearance: Jeff Katz (but wait, there are more)

Normally, I post things like this beforehand…

We attended our daughter’s graduation from NYU, held at Yankee Stadium (that’s her on the first base side. Not, not that one; that one, the cute one). Now normally, when a ballgame is over, the fans all skedaddle as quickly as possible. Yesterday, however, was wall-to-wall people, milling outside, trying to meet up with their kids. Actually, milling is probably not the correct word, since it connotes actual movement. And technically, being outside the Stadium, there were no walls, but you get my meaning.

We went out for a late lunch and since I don’t get to Manhattan that much and Jeff Katz, author of Split Season: 1981: Fernandomania, the Bronx Zoo, and the Strike that Saved Baseball,was the featured guest at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse, I decided to stick around. (I recently had him on for a Bookshelf Conversation.)

The event was well-attended. Katz, currently the mayor of Cooperstown, grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, so many of his old cronies showed up for another entertaining session hosted by Clubhouse proprietor, Jay Goldberg.

But in addition, there were a few baseball writers in attendance including Lee Lowenfish and Ed Lucas and his son and memoir collaborator Chris, and myself (apologies if I omitted anyone I’ve never met before). Also on hand, former Major League pitcher Bob Tufts, who appeared in 11 games as a rookie for the San Francisco Giants in 1981 and is now an adjunct professor at NYU where he teaches business development; and Perry Barber, a leading advocate for female umpires in professional baseball.

As it happens, I’ll be in “the city” for the next Bergino event featuring Steve Steinberg, co-author with Lyle Spatz of The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership that Transformed the New York Yankees. Maybe I’ll see you there.

 

Author appearance: Jeff Katz (but wait, there are more)

I don't mean to be critical...

But I’ve often felt that a fair number of these “literary” book reviews were semi-incestuous. That is, the authors travel in a lot of the same circles, went to the same schools, know the same people. It frequently struck me as a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”  quid pro quo kind of thing. That’s how I felt when The Art of Fielding was the darling of the day. I don’t know what this says about me, but I often feel the fault lies within me, that I’m not “getting it” when I don’t agree with the fawning that goes on.

That’s why when In see something like this piece by the New York Times‘ public editor in the Sunday Week in Review section, I’m mollified, if just for a little while.

I don't mean to be critical...

The Bookshelf Conversation: Jeff Katz

When I saw Richard Sandomir’s article in The New York Times last year about about Jeff Katz , the Mayor of Cooperstown who writes about baseball, I thought: there but for the grace of God….

My wife, a veterinarian, had a chance to get a job in Cooperstown way back when our daughter was two. While she had her interview, I sat outside with our daughter and just enjoyed being in the surroundings. I’ve always loved the quiet little town nestled in the mountains of upstate New York, but then I had only ever visited in good weather.

As you probably know, my wife didn’t accept the job so I can only wonder if that could have been me: the Jewish mayor of Cooperstown who’s last name begins “Ka…” and who writes about baseball. What a life.

Katz published The Kansas City A’s and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s in 2007, before he was in office. This year he’s published the well-received Split Season: 1981: Fernandomania, the Bronx Zoo, and the Strike that Saved Baseball.

I had the opportunity to speak with His Honor before his upcoming visit to the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 20. Since I’ll already be in Manhattan for my daughter’s graduation  told you it was way back when), I’ve already made my reservation. I suggest you to the same, since space it limited and the Mayor, who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island will no doubt have a lot of old friends stopping by.

Late entry: The New York Times included another mention of Katz and the book in the May 17 “On Baseball”  column

The Bookshelf Conversation: Jeff Katz

Japanese baseball then and then

Two pieces from Kris Kosaka in The Japan Times on the “national game there and here.

First he tells us about Robert Fitts’ new biography on Masanori Murakami, the first baseball player from Japan to play for a Major League team in the U.S. when he appeared for the San Francisco Giants in 1965.

Then we have a piece on Robert Whiting’s You Gotta Have Wa, which Kosaka considers “the definitive text on Japanese culture seen through the lens of sport.”

Japanese baseball then and then

An unexpected source: The Atlantic

I was listening to a Leonard Lopate interview with Greg Proops, a comic featured on the popular TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway, host of The Smartest Man in the World podcast, and, most recently, author of The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, A Rancorous Reportage, A Concise Curriculum of Coolwhich devotes probably a disproportionate amount of space to baseball.

Proops is a major and knowledgeable fan. The latter is an important distinction. A lot of celebrities say their fans, but Proops walks the walk. I offer to you his “Walkers” episode from 2012 in which he describes how raucous and filthy the game was as played in the late 19th century (warning; LOTS of NSFW language). You can find it within this entry I posted after hearing that podcast.

This is a long-winded way of getting to my point: During the interview, Lopate mentioned an article he had read in the February issue of The Atlantic titled “Making Baseball Less Boring.” When I went to the magazine’s website and typed “baseball” in the search box, I was presented with over 16,000 hits. Granted many of them refer to baseball only tangentially, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there if you have the patience to sift through it. For example, three articles I printed for later reading include “Moneyball 2.0: The New Team-Oriented Study of Baseball” (2014); “A Cultural History of the Baseball Card” (2014); and “Battering the Batter” (2015).

You can find similar thoroughness on the websites of other major magazines. Happy hunting.

In case you were wondering, “The Last of the Pure Baseball Men” the cover story for the August 1981 issue, refers to Calvin Griffith, the late owner of Washington Senators/Minn. Twins.

 

An unexpected source: The Atlantic

A 30-in-30 review

(As opposed to ESPN’s 30 for 30 series).

Once again, Tom Hoffarth of the LA Daily News has done a great service to the baseball reading community with his annual 30-books-in-30-days series on his “Farther off the Wall” blog. I advise going deep into each piece because Hoffarth offers interesting links among his DVD-type “extras.” Did I say extras? This would be considered the special bonus edition.

The only knock — and this is obviously an East Coast bias — is that he leans heavy on Dodgers/California-based books.

Here’s the rundown:

• Day 1:Tommy Lasorda: My Way


• Day 2: Out At Home: The True Story of Glenn Burke, Baseball’s First Openly Gay Player


• Day 3:Perfect: The Rise and Fall of John Paciorek, Baseball’s Greatest One-Game Wonder


• Day 4: The Joy of Ballpark Food: From Hot Dogs to Haute Cusine


• Day 5: 101 Baseball Places To See Before You Strike Out: Second Edition


• Day 6:100 Years of Who’s Who in Baseball


• Day 7: The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life


• Day 8: Bats, Balls, and Hollywood Stars: Hollywood’s Love Affair with Baseball, by Joe Siegman


• Day 9: A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball,by Jennifer Ring


• Day 10: The Hidden Game of Baseball: A New Edition of the Baseball Classic that Ignited the Sabermetric Revolution, by John Thorn and Pete Palmer


• Day 11: Knuckleball: The History of the Unhittable Pitch, by Lew Freedman


• Day 12: Picker’s Pocket Guide – Baseball Memorabilia: How to Pick Antiques Like a Pro, by Jeff Figler


• Day 13: Joe Black: More Than a Dodger, by Martha Jo Black and Chuck Schoffner


• Day 14: Gil Hodges: A Hall of Fame Life, by Mort Zachter


• Day 15: I Am Jackie Robinson, from the series “Ordinary People Change the World by Brad Meltzer


• Day 16: Throw Like A Woman , by Susan Petrone


• Day 17: The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray, and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII, by John Klima


• Day 18: In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball, by Mark Armour and Daniel Levitt


• Day 19: Tony Gwynn: He Left His Heart in San Diego, by Rich Wolfe


• Day 20: A History of Baseball in 100 Objects: A Tour through the Bats, Balls, Uniforms, Awards, Documents and Other Artifacts that Tell the Story of the National Pastime, by Josh Leventhal


• Day 21: Mystery Ball ’58: A Season-Long Whodunit, by Jeff Polman


• Day 22: Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer, by Robert K. Fitts


• Day 23: Handy Andy: The Andy Pafko Story, by Joe Niese


• Day 24: Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary, by Robert F. Burk


• Day 25: I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever, by Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster


• Day 26: The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball’s Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy, by Filip Bondy


• Day 27: Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington


• Day 28: Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story: A Blind Broadcaster’s Story of Overcoming Life’s Greatest Obstacles, by Ed Lucas with Christopher Lucas


• Day 29: A Scout’s Report: My 70 Years in Baseball, by George Genovese, with Dan Taylor


• Day 30: The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes, by Gary Cieradkowski

A 30-in-30 review

Author appearance: Gelf's Varsity Letters

Wish I’d had more advance notice on this, but…

Varsity Letters returns to the Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday, April 23, for a look at all things baseball.

Legendary broadcaster Ed Lucas and his son Chris will discuss their new memoir, Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story: A Blind Broadcaster’s Story of Overcoming Life’s Greatest Obstacles.

They’ll be joined by Matthew Silverman, a die-hard Mets fan and author of Baseball Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Baseball.

The free event will take place at The Gallery at LPR in Manhattan’s West Village, 158 Bleecker St. (between Sullivan St. and Thompson St.), NYC. Attendees must be 21 or older, as per LPR rules. (E-mail michael@gelfmagazine.com if you are under 21 and would like to attend the events.)

Doors open at 7:00. Event starts at 7:30.

Author appearance: Gelf's Varsity Letters

Pursuant to the previous piece re: Paul Auster’s suggestions on how to shorten the games, I offer this reboot of the seventh-inning stretch “anthem”:

Take me out

Buy me some peanuts.

I don’t care.

Let us root root for the laundry;

If they don’t win, meh.

For it’s two strikes, you’re out.

The end.

(Time of game: 2:10)

Upcoming author events

The Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, NJ, will host an appearance by Steve Kettmann, author of Baseball Maverick, tomorrow (April 18) at 2 p.m. Joining Kettmann will be Sandy Alderson, the subject of the book. The program begins at 2 p.m. Cost is $30 and includes admission to the museum for you and one guest and a copy of the book. To RSVP, call 973-655-2378.

The Bergino Baseball Clubhouse (67 East 11 Street, NYC) features several writers in the weeks ahead. First up, Jennifer Ring, author of A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball) on Thursday, April 23. Jim Kaat, former Major League pitcher and current broadcaster will discuss If These Walls Could Talk: New York Yankees on Friday, May 8. The following Wednesday (May 13), Bill Pennington will talk about Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius. A week later (May 20), Jeff Katz, the Mayor of Cooperstown, home to the Baseball Hall of Fame, will be on hand for Split Season: 1981. Steve Steinberg, co-author with Lyle Spatz on The Colonel and Hug, brings the busy month to a close on Thursday, May 28. Admission to all programs, which begin at 7 p.m., are free but reservations are required as the space if charming but limited. Call 212-226-7150 or email the Clubhouse to RSVP or for further information.

By the way, your Bergino host, Jay Goldberg, records all the author conversations and posts them as podcasts. You can find them here under “categories.”

 

 

Upcoming author events

The Bookshelf Conversation: Steve Kettmann

Books about the business and businesspeople of baseball are becoming more available these days; I devote a whole chapter on the topic in 501 Baseball Books.

I think fans tend to forget that the people who run baseball aren’t born to the position. Just like everybody, they grow into the job, based on years of experience. One of the more talked abut titles this year — for various reasons — is Steve Kettmann’s Baseball Maverick: How Sandy Alderson Revolutionized Baseball and Revived the Mets. Kettmann starts with Alderson’s military career as a major point in explaining the veteran executive’s philosophy, expectations, and strategies. Alderson was with the Oakland As and was Billy Beane’s mentor at the dawn of the Moneyball era.

Kettmann has written his own books; worked as a ghostwriter, notably for Jose Canseco’s memoir Juiced; and served as an editor for a Game Time: A Baseball Companion,  a compilation of Roger Angell’s New Yorker essays. I spoke with Kettmann last week about the varying degrees of difficulties in the disparate projects.

Kettman and Alderson will be at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, NJ, on Saturday, April 18 from 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m. Cost is $30 (includes book, admission and one guest). To RSVP call (973) 655-2378. Maybe I’ll see you there. For you west coasters who can’t make it to Jersey, he’ll be at Books Inc. in Alameda in the 22nd. More info on that one here.

Click here for more information about Baseball Maverick.

The Bookshelf Conversation: Steve Kettmann

NEW STUFF: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So…

Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message.

So without further ado, here are the top ten baseball books as per Amazon.com, as of this posting.

Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); because I’m old school.

Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. But it’ll be close enough for government work.

Caveat 3: Sometimes they’ll try to pull one over on you and include a book within a category that doesn’t belong. I’m using my discretion to eliminate such titles from my list. For example, for some reason a recent listing included Tarnished Heels: How Unethical Actions and Deliberate Deceit at the University of North Carolina Ended the “The Carolina Way”, which, far as I can tell, is not at all about baseball, at least not in the main. For the sake of brevity, I will be omitting the subtitles, which have become ridiculously long in in some cases in recent years, also at my discretion.

1. Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington


2. Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades, and Other Thrilling Moments by the Bay, by Andrew Baggarly


3. Baseball Prospectus 2015


4. The Real McCoy: My Half Century with the Cincinnati Reds, by Hal McCoy


5. Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter. (Bookshelf review here).


6. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis


7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams


8. 100 Years of Who’s Who in Baseball, by Douglas Lyons (Bookshelf review here)


9. Championship Blood: The 2014 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, by Brian Murphy


10. Fantasy Baseball for Smart People: How to Profit Big During MLB Season, by Jonathan Bales

Here’s the April list of New York Times sports best-seller list (10 plus 10 more). Jeter Unfiltered rises to number six, while John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball joins the fun at number 12. There’s no indication whether these are hardcover, paperbacks, or combined, but given that the Feinstein title has been out for a couple of years, I’m guessing “combined.” It’s also interesting to note that the books are not linked to a vendor site (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, other). Perhaps the Times thinks it unseemly to to try make a few cents via referrals. I obviously have no such qualms.

Now that the season is under way, there are fewer books that would be used as research material for fantasy teams. Populating the list are bios and memoirs about Billy Martin and veteran sports scribe Hal McCoy. I’ve had a chance to read the Martin book and found it excellent (look for my review as part of a larger baseball book feature on Bookreporter.com in the next couple of weeks).

Not on either list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. It made a brief surge last week to the 123,000 range but has dropped to 637,000-ish since.Ya’ll are gonna do something about that, right? Just one or two purchases can move a book up a couple hundred thousand spots. If you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. There haven’t been any in awhile. Doesn’t have to be long (or even complimentary, if you didn’t like it), but anything would be appreciated. And thanks to those who have.