December 17, 2002
COME OFF IT:
The Top 100 Sports Books: If You Read Them, They Will Come (DERMOT MCEVOY, 12/13/2002, Publishers Weekly)This week Sports Illustrated listed its "Top 100 Sports Books of All Time." Of course, such a listing is meant to cause controversy and is totally subjective. But in my years covering the sports publishing industry for PW, I found many of my favorites, unfortunately, were buried deeper than the special of the week, the search for Hitler's Bismarck.There is no arguing with the top three: The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling, The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn and Ball Four by Jim Bouton. But thinking of Bouton, I had to search to #19 to find The Long Season by former major league pitcher Jim Brosnan. I can just hear the Starbucks crowd now. Jim Who?
In 1960 a relief pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds named Jim Brosnan turned the baseball world on its ear when he published The Long Season, a memoir of the 1959 campaign. Although he didn't know it then, Brosnan had published a book that years later would make titles like Ball Four and The Bronx Zoo possible. Brosnan is the granddaddy of the tell-all baseball memoir. And 42 years later, The Long Season , I'm happy to say, is back in print from Ivan R. Dee.
Last spring I asked Brosnan about the reaction from the notoriously conservative baseball establishment in 1960 when his book was published. "Not good," he says succinctly, then laughs heartily. "Not even from my own teammates. When it came out, Larry Jackson and Ken Boyer were asked about it and Boyer just dismissed it with a sniff and Jackson, who was more articulate, said, I wasn't a good enough pitcher to write that book!"
It's not possible to take seriously a list that isn't headed by Red Smith and Roger Angell, plus Ball Four is a piece of junk that owes its notoriety to the titillation factor. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2002 9:59 PM
I wonder if Farewell to Sport, by Gallico, made it. It is about as timeless and spicy and informative and readable as one could dream for. Nice referral, thanks.
Posted by: Neil at December 17, 2002 9:45 PMI certainly have happy memories of reading Brosnan's The Long Season when it came out and am glad to know he is still around. In 1959 the L.A. Dodgers were World Champions and I was just the right age that, by studying baseball cards and the daily box scores, my friends and I could memorize the stats of just about everyone in the league. I think I still have my copy of the book around somewhere. I'll have to dig it out.
-Kevin in L.A.
The Brosnan book is excellent, as are the couple sequels he wrote.
Posted by: oj at December 18, 2002 7:06 AM"Piece of junk?!" Ball Four?! Say it ain't so, Judd!
I read in when I was in 7th grade and re-read it again when I was an adult. And I read the sequels. It was a sweet book and one that I still think about on an almost monthly basis--more frequently during baseball season. Take it back!
The only way it could be saved is if Yogi actually did with Phil Linz's harmonica what he threatened to do.
Posted by: oj at December 18, 2002 12:46 PMI liked "Ball Four" all right, but I was a teen-ager when I read it.
No question, the best baseball novel is "The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop." by
Robert Coover, the premier stylist among American writers of this generation. (Though, homage
a Orrin, his politics stink.)
But the No. 1, all-time, all-league sports book, in
English, is Sassoon, "Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man."
Sassoon first, the rest nowhere, you might say.
J. Hernny Waugh is terrific for a hundred or so pages but then he has no idea what to do with the story.
I found what I think may be a first edition of the Sassoon book, but I'm afraid to read it.
It's a trilogy. The next two volumes are not
about sports and no fun at all.
We have had quite a tussle in the sports
department about the list, though "Sweet
Science" gets raves from all.
Years ago, when I was a sportswriter, we got
a manuscript over the transom with a
covering letter that began, "Dear sirs, I have
wrote a book."
We threw it away. Pity.
The Sweet Science is actually fairly mediocre but always wins these things because Liebling was the great writer about the press.
Posted by: oj at December 19, 2002 10:12 PM