A biography on one of baseball’s great pitchers and characters.

Here’s a trailer about the book:

From Amazon:

A baseball legend distinguished by his competitive nature, quick wit, and generous spirit, Lefty Gomez was one of a kind. Told for the first time, this is his remarkable story. Born to a small-town California ranching family, the youngest of eight, Vernon “Lefty” Gomez rode his powerful arm and jocular personality right across America to the dugout of the New York Yankees. Lefty baffled hitters with his blazing fastball, establishing himself as the team’s ace. He vacationed with Babe Ruth, served as Joe DiMaggio’s confidant, and consoled Lou Gehrig the day the “Iron Horse” removed himself from the lineup. He started and won the first-ever All-Star Game, was the first pitcher to make the cover of Time magazine, and barnstormed Japan as part of Major League Baseball’s grand ambassadorial tour in 1934. Away from the diamond, Lefty played the big-city bon vivant, marrying Broadway star June O’Dea and hobnobbing with a who’s who of celebrities, including George Gershwin, Jack Dempsey, Ernest Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe, George M. Cohan, and James Michener. He even scored a private audience with the pope.

 

And even when his pro ball career was done, Lefty wasn’t. He became a national representative for Wilson Sporting Goods, logging over 100,000 miles a year, spreading the word about America’s favorite game, and touching thousands of lives. In 1972 he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Three baseball fields are named for him, and to this day the top honor bestowed each year by the American Baseball Coaches Association is the Lefty Gomez Award. Now, drawing on countless conversations with Lefty, interweaving more than three hundred interviews conducted with his family, friends, competitors, and teammates over the course of a decade, and revealing candid photos, documents, and film clips—many never shown publicly—his daughter Vernona Gomez and her award-winning co-author Lawrence Goldstone vividly re-create the life and adventures of the irreverent southpaw fondly dubbed “El Señor Goofy.”

“I’d rather be lucky than good,” Lefty Gomez once quipped—one of many classic one-liners documented here. In the end he was both. A star-studded romp through baseball’s most glorious seasons and America’s most glamorous years, Lefty is at once a long-overdue reminder of a pitcher’s greatness and a heartwarming celebration of a life well-lived.

 

With the U.S. Open at Olympic Club this week, there has been plenty of talk about one of the greatest upsets in sports history, not just golf: Jack Fleck, a little-known club pro, beating the great Ben Hogan in an 18-hole playoff to win the 1956 U.S. Open at Olympic.

You can get the complete story from Neil Sagebiel’s new book, The Longest Shot. Bill Scheft from the New York Times gave the book a terrific review. He writes:

“The Longest Shot” is the first book from Neil Sagebiel, the founder and editor of Armchair Golf Blog, and he makes a strong bid to create shelf space for himself alongside 21st-century golf literati like John Feinstein, Mark Frost and Don Van Natta Jr. Sagebiel takes his time, working leisurely as golf demands, but does a thorough job. And his narrative pace during the last hour of that final round, as he bounces back and forth between Hogan in the locker room and Fleck on the course, may have a rhythm more suited to a tennis rally, but here it aces.

In an interview at Geoffshackelford.com, Sagebiel talks about connecting with Fleck, who is 90. From the post:

GS: Tell us a bit about how you approached researching the book and how much access you had to Fleck?
NS: Jack did not have a good history with writers and the press, so I had to gain his trust. I’m a freelancer, not a traditional sportswriter or golf journalist. I told him I had no agenda. I just wanted to tell the story. We talked a lot on the phone and I’d see him two or three times a year at Champions Tour events where the legends played. I hung out with him. I caddied sometimes, ate in the player dining rooms. I also got to be around the other old-timers, hear their stories, pick their brains. Early on I went to the USGA in New Jersey to do extensive research. Later I traveled to the Olympic Club on a family visit to California and spent four days with Jack at his home and home golf course in Fort Smith.

At a time when publishers are cutting back, thankfully Triumph Books in Chicago continues to produce sports books. Here’s the link to a catalogue of their wide array of offerings and some of the selections that stood out for me.

If you Love This Game…An MVP’s Life in Baseball, Andre Dawson with Alan Maimon; Foreword by Greg Maddux.

From the catalogue:

Reflecting on his accomplishments, his colleagues, and the future of baseball, Andre Dawson tells the story of his four-decade career as a player and executive in this intimate memoir. Seriously injured at a young age, Dawson struggled with chronic pain throughout his career and was only seriously scouted by the Montreal Expos during college. Overcoming these odds, he went on to be named the National League Rookie of the Year in 1977, earn eight All-Star appearances, seven Gold Gloves, and a Most Valuable Player Award. This behind-the-scenes look at a dedicated player’s journey from a segregated Miami neighborhood to the fabled halls of Cooperstown offers fans a window into the psyche of a fan favorite.

They Call Me Oil Can: Baseball, Drugs and Life on the Edge, Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd and Mike Shalin.

From the catalogue:

Speaking candidly to veteran sportswriter Mike Shalin for the first time about his often tumultuous career in Major League Baseball, Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd recounts a life that began in the Deep South of Mississippi, and the events that led him toward great heights atop the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park. As part of a stellar rotation alongside Bruce Hurst and a young Roger Clemens, Boyd served a dazzling array of pitches to opposing batters, most notably during the Boston Red Sox ill-fated 1986 World Series run against the New York Mets; and while he was at once brilliant and focused on the mound, off the field—as he affectingly reveals here—Boyd was unraveled by the personal battles he waged with substance abuse and destructive mood swings. As one of the few African American starting pitchers in the history of baseball, Boyd offers a candid, insightful, and often funny portrait of an athlete with boundless passion for the game, his teammates, and the Boston Red Sox.

Harmon Killebrew: Ultimate Slugger, Steve Aschburner; Foreword by Jim Thome.

From the catalogue:

When Hall of Famer Harmon “Killer” Killebrew died in May 2011, the baseball world lost one of its best hitters and one of the finest ambassadors the game has ever known. Killebrew was second only to Babe Ruth in home runs by an American League slugger, and finished his career with 573 home runs and in 11th place for all-time Major League Baseball history. This book takes a look at the 22-year career of a perennial Most Valuable Player candidate and baseball powerhouse, reviewing his life in and out of baseball and peeling back the mystery surrounding this intensely private athlete. This biography is a look not only at Killebrew’s long career as a player, but his life as an announcer and businessman after his retirement from baseball.

A few months back, I was wondering about books that never had been done. I recalled thinking, “Nobody’s written a book about the 1968 baseball season.”

Apparently, Tim Wendell had the same thought.

Currently on the shelves is Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball–and America–Forever. Written by Wendell, founding editor of USA Today Baseball Weekly, the book is about a unique season in baseball history during one of the most explosive years of American history.

It was “the year of the pitcher,” as Bob Gibson (1.12 ERA) and Denny McClain (31 victories) dominated hitters. It culminated in a Detroit-St. Louis World Series that was one of the best ever.

Yet there was so much more to that year both on and off the field.

In a book excerpt on his site, Wendell writes about a scene in the St. Louis clubhouse the morning after Martin Luther King was assainated.

The next morning, in St. Petersburg, Florida, the spring training camp of the St. Louis Cardinals was like most places in America: the King assassination the major topic of conversation. Gibson was devastated by the news and got into a heated exchange with his catcher, Tim McCarver. After telling McCarver that he couldn’t possibly comprehend what it was like to be a black person on this morning, and that it was impossible for whites, no matter how well intentioned, to totally overcome prejudice, Gibson turned his back on his batterymate.

 

 

To McCarver’s credit, he didn’t let the situation go. Undoubtedly, he realized that the last person Gibson wanted to hear from at that moment was a white man, who had grown up in Memphis of all places. Yet McCarver told Gibson that it was possible for people to change. If anything, he was Exhibit A. Back when McCarver was new to the team, Gibson and Curt Flood had ribbed him about his reluctance to share a sip of soda offered by a black man.  McCarver had seen a lot of truth in their teasing. Perhaps that’s why he wouldn’t let things drop after King’s death. In talking with Gibson, McCarver found himself in “the unfamiliar position of arguing that the races were equal and that we were all the same.”
Years later, McCarver wrote that “Bob and I reached a meeting of the minds that morning. That was the kind of talk we often had on the Cardinals.”

In a New York Times piece about the book, Wendell writes:

When I began “Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball, and America, Forever,” I knew I would write about two of the greatest teams in the Tigers and the Cardinals. What I did not expect to discover were athletes who were struggling like so many others in the country to find a way to move forward, to somehow come together.

Such stories were not restricted to baseball. By sitting with teammates of color at the Jets’ training table, Joe Namath helped guide them toward a Super Bowl championship that season. The Mexico City Olympics are best remembered for the raised fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. But those Summer Games should also be relived for the silver medal an ill-prepared Jim Ryun captured in the 1,500 meters at altitude. In basketball, the player-coach Bill Russell rallied the aging Boston Celtics past Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers, then Jerry West and the Los Angeles Lakers for another championship.

“If anything, this was the biggest year in all of U.S. history,” said Robert J. Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that sports was right in the middle of the metaphoric pot of a roiling culture.”

About once or twice a year, I’ll reach into my collection and pull out the “When It Was a Game” video. It is the classic HBO documentary (narrated by my old friend Peter Kessler) featuring home movies of baseball’s beautiful past. You can see so much detail in these vintage old films, shot in color no less. It brings a distant era of the game back to life.

Now there’s a book version of the documentary: Baseball Fantography: A Celebration in Snapshots and Stories from the Fans. Written by Andy Strasberg, the book features vintage photos of players and other baseball images shot by regular baseball fans.

There are pictures of an intense Roberto Clemente; Babe Ruth leaving a baseball with his daughter; a young Howard Cosell during batting practice at Yankee Stadium; and even Hall of Famer Eddie Matthews toweling off in a shower. That one was submitted by Mrs. Matthews.

Strasberg, a former executive with the San Diego Padres, grew up in New York idolizing Roger Maris. He contributes a photo (above) of with him of his hero in 1966. He has his arm around Maris as if they were best friends.

Indeed, later in life Strasberg did become friends with Maris. He remains so close to the late slugger’s family that he is the Godfather to one of his grandchildren.

If you love baseball history, I highly recommend this book. Here’s a Q/A I did with Strasberg.

What makes these fan pictures so special compared to those taken by professional photographers?

Professional photographers are paid to “focus” on what happens on the field during the game, and I felt that they were missing a big part of the baseball experience for fans.

These are personal and poignant photos from, by and for the fans.  It is the photographic memory of what was/is important to the fan as seen through the lens of their camera.

How did you get the pictures?

I first got the word out through family and friends and then through the media (electronic and print) around the country.  I explained that I was not looking for photos NOT taken by professionals and none of game action.

I received pictures from decades ago and the variety of captured moments amazed me!

Were you really best friends with Roger Maris and what did that picture mean to you?

I was Roger Maris’ number one fan growing up in the 1960s.  Once I started working in baseball (1975) for the Padres marketing department, our player/fan relationship matured into a friendship which fortunately for me continues to this day with his family.

The photos I have of Maris and me are incredibly important. In each one you can tell how excited I am to be with him.  But perhaps the most insightful photo is the one of me when I was 12 and I went into a photo booth (4 photos for 25₵) with a magazine that had a picture of Maris swinging a bat to see what I’d look like if I was ever lucky enough to have my photo taken with him.

Besides the Maris picture, what are your other favorite pictures in the book?

In no order some of my favorite photos are: the Roberto Clemente photo, Dizzy Dean having a catch on Doubleday Field, The Duke Snider Lanes sign, the Albert Schoensleben grave site, Lombardi fishing, Babe Ruth leaving Yankee Stadium, Eddie Mathews stepping out of a shower, Max West with his foot on the car bumper and the fan holding the batting average sign of Gwynn and Clark to name just a few.

Did you get enough pictures to do another book?

Yes, and I get more photos every day.  There are treasured keepsake photos out there that I can’t wait to see.  They may be from the 1930’s, 70’s or a photo taken this August.

I am hoping that the fans respond to the Baseball Fantography book in a positive way so that I can publish additional books with never been seen unpublished and significant photos for the next 20 years!

Anything else?

No one has been able to shine the light on the fans consistently and provide them a forum to express what about baseball is important.  Baseball Fantography does that in both text and photos

For the last few years I have had over 20 Baseball Fantography exhibits around the country – Cooperstown, Pasadena, San Diego, Tucson, and currently at the Yogi Berra Museum in New Jersey.

I would like to find an appropriate venue in the Midwest to host a Baseball Fantography display.

The dedicated web site of Baseball Fantography is http://www.fantography.com/

It’s hard to think of a more incredible story than Jim Abbott’s career in baseball. Born without a right arm, he defied the odds with a highly successful career that peaked with a no-hitter when he was with the Yankees.

Abbott, along with Yahoo Sports’ Tim Brown, wrote about his experiences in a new book: Imperfect: An Improbable Life.

In an interview with Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News, Abbott talks about the meaning of using imperfect in the book’s title.

Q:I wondered that if, in dealing with so many people now in and out of baseball, have you figured out that most, if not everyone, is imperfect and may be leading their own improbable lives?

A:Yes, yes. That’s a great observation. It goes back to the title, and how the no-hitter (in ’93 against Cleveland) was far from perfect. There were five walks.

There were some hard-hit balls. It was a struggle and a fight. And it encompasses my family story, physically how I grew up.

Really what’s striking to me, in talking to friends and people close to me who have read it: Everyone deals with imperfection and how we sometimes look back on things and our lives and have these harsh tones.

That was the discovery for me with being “imperfect,” you know, sometimes I just kept moving on with the experience and thinking back on my career as being less than what I wanted it to be.

The no-hitter was great, but not perfect. And examining it even closer through the book, it was worth looking at in a more gentle way. A more accepting way. The effort was there, and I did my best.

Q:And in the end, who really is perfect? No one.

A: Exactly. Aren’t we all?

If you live in Chicago, Abbott will be making an appearance Tuesday with ChicagoSide editor Jonathan Eig. Here is a link with the details.

The book has received much praise. Here are some of the comments on Amazon:

“Jim Abbott is the embodiment of perseverance.  The obstacles that he was able to overcome to play the game at the highest level are remarkable and his story can teach all of us valuable lessons.  Jim was a fierce competitor. He never viewed his disability as a disadvantage and, as a result, it wasn’t.  Imperfect is a terrific story and the best part is that it’s true.” —Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr.

“As I read Imperfect: An Improbable Life, Jim Abbott’s love for the game jumped off the pages. It was like Jim was right in front of me telling me his life’s journey. I felt his pain, hurt, joy, exhilaration, disappointment and accomplishments throughout his life. Jim has always been and continues to be an inspiration for all of us.”—Don Mattingly, former New York Yankee captain and current Los Angeles Dodgers manager

“The story of Jim Abbott—wonderfully crafted by Tim Brown—is everything you’d expect from a baseball life: funny, heartbreaking, and triumphant, though not necessarily in that order. Still, to label this fine book ‘an inspiration’ almost misses the larger point. Imperfect isn’t about learning to cope with a disability. It’s about becoming a man in America.”—Mark Kriegel, author of Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich and Namath: A Biography

“Jim Abbott was 20–22 as a pitcher for the Yankees, and yet, as a man who played the game with one hand, an argument should be made that he belongs among the greatest players of all time. In Imperfect: An Improbable Life, Abbott and one of America’s leading sports journalists, Tim Brown, tell the amazing story of a man’s dignity and grace in overcoming a forbidding physical hurdle to pitch 10 big-league seasons and to throw a no-hitter. Abbott won every day he took the mound. This book is required inspirational reading for all fans of the human spirit.”—Ian O’Connor, New York Times bestselling author of The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter and Arnie & Jack

“If you think you knew the inspirational story of Jim Abbott, think again. With Tim Brown, Abbott gives an unflinching account of his remarkable baseball life—the joys and the pains. With each chapter you know him better and root even harder for him.”—Tom Verducci, senior writer for Sports Illustrated and New York Times bestselling co-author of The Yankee Years

“Imperfect is one of the finest baseball memoirs ever written, an honest, touching, and beautifully rendered story that will remind even the most jaded fans why they loved the game. It is far more than a book about baseball; it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season

Since I hope some of you still read books, I decided to use Sunday to inform you of the latest offerings in the sports category.

Today’s entry is Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, written by Paul Dickson. The book is the first biography of the legendary owner and showman, who dared to defy convention in baseball.

Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck, is considered a classic. However, that book was written in 1962. Much happened in his life after that, including saving the White Sox for Chicago with his purchase of the team in 1975.

Veeck was one of baseball’s most memorable characters. It’s no surprise that his biography makes a compelling tale. In a review of the book, Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times writes:

Bill Veeck works as a wonderful companion piece to Veeck as in Wreck and the 1965 Hustler’s Handbook, both written by Veeck with newspaperman Ed Linn. Dickson’s biography looks at “Sport Shirt Bill” and goes beyond the “Disco Demolition” and the Eddie Gaedel midget stunt for which Veeck is most often associated. Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick is a portrait of a uniquely rounded and compassionate spirit.

Here are some other blurbs from the critics on Amazon.

“Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick incorporates the picaresque anecdotes and populist charm of Veeck’s memoirs into a narrative marked by Mr. Dickson’s broad knowledge and fluid authority. The result is a biography that newcomers to the Veeck legend are likely to find immensely appealing, but one that also makes him new again for those who have already savored the baseball showman’s own episodic volumes.”—Maxwell Carter, The Wall Street Journal

“Any man who wanted to be included on Richard Nixon’s enemies list is worthy of a searching biography—and Paul Dickson has been kind ehough to do that for us with his compelling portrait of the unregenerate Bill Veeck.”—Ray Robinson, author of Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig In His Time

“BILL VEECK, in the language of the subject, is a homerun—a bases clearer. The story of the remarkable full-life of this pioneering baseball character is told with the steadiness, detail and flare that we have come to expect from Paul Dickson,  the premier all-star writer and reporter. The book is great fun—much like being in the bleachers during a day game.”—Jim Lehrer

“Bill Veeck didn’t want to break rules, he insisted, just “test their elasticity.” He wasn’t talking only about baseball. The master showman, who famously sent a three-foot-seven-inch batter to the plate, also desegregated the American League and proudly marched in the funeral procession for Dr. Martin Luther King—on his peg leg and without crutches. BILL VEECK revisits a golden age for baseball, a pivotal time for America and some hilarious moments in the life of a man who helped to change both.”—Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Chicago Tribune

“Bill Veeck was inventive, courageous, principled, and hugely influential–the Thomas Paine of a revolutionary time in baseball. He told his own story in VEECK–AS IN WRECK, back in 1962, but even a man as famously candid as Veeck cannot be fully portrayed in an autobiography. He has awaited a clear-eyed admiring chronicler, and in Paul Dickson he has found him. This amazingly detailed, delicious biography is, as its subject might have titled it, VEECK–AS IN SPEC-tacular!”—John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball, and author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden

“We knew Bill Veeck was the baron of ballyhoo. We didn’t know (or at least I didn’t) that he was a patriot as high-flying as Ted Williams, a racial barrier-buster as fearless as Branch Rickey, a gadfly who set the mold for Charlie Finley, and a one-of-a-kind iconoclast who was irresistible. So don’t resist. Buy Paul Dickson’s new book and have a blast.”—Larry Tye, author of Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend

“A definitive look at one of baseball’s greatest innovators and ambassadors. A must-read.”—Claire Smith, ESPN

“Bill Veeck has finally met his match.  Paul Dickson, consummate baseball historian, has given Veeck the biography he deserves. Meticulously reported and exhaustively researched, Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick is, like its subject, a show-stopper.”—Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood and Sandy Koufax

“[S]ure to entertain is Paul Dickson’s latest: Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick (Walker). As you’d expect, Veeck’s trials, tribulations and experiments with the great game as its greatest promoter may well hold center stage, but Dickson has done something with this biography that I particularly loved about John Sickels’ bio of Bob Feller, which is to write a book that also covers this man’s life outside of the game. Maybe this is a matter of giving the “Greatest Generation” its due, but Veeck was a combat volunteer who lost his leg in the Marines during World War II.”—Christina Kahrl, ESPN, “Sweet Spot”

“Paul Dickson has knocked another one out of the park with Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick a skillfully written biography, scrupulously researched, brimming with revealing anecdotes and historical detail, while unpacking Veeck’s views of social injustice (inside and outside the park),along with his quest to provide fans with a show even if their team wasn’t on the road to clinching a pennant….So if you’re planning your summer reading list, I recommend you place  Dickson’s enlightening and highly entertaining biography on one of baseball’s most combative if influential owners at the very top of your list.”—Bill Lucey, The Morning Delivery.

“The proof of goodness is usually in the details, so it becomes clear right off the bat that Dickson has written an authoritative work.”—Mike Downey, The Los Angeles Times.

“In his lively (and occasionally beatific) biography, baseball and cultural historian Paul Dickson brings Veeck to life, relentlessly digging into his career and times to create a portrait of the kind of guy you’d like to have in your corner – or at your table for a drink.” – Chris Foran, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

To be ignorant of Bill Veeck’s legacy to baseball is akin to being unaware of Steve Jobs’ role in computers. A maverick and visionary, Bill Veeck transformed the way owners promoted the game while captivating the press and public with his charisma and penchant for challenging the status quo. His controversial signing of Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, is an example of a Veeck initiative deftly chronicled by Paul Dickson, baseball’s pre-eminent lexicographer (“The Dickson Baseball Dictionary”). “Bill Veeck” comes as close to a “must-read” as any baseball book in recent memory. Grade: Home run.”–Mark Hodermarsky, Cleveland Plain Dealer