A Civil War: Army vs. Navy, by John Feinstein

I'm an unapologetic Longhorn football fan, but I've always been fascinated by the Army-Navy rivalry. It is the only game attended by the entire student body of both schools, and even when the teams are awful (which sadly is pretty normal these days) the game is exciting and the spectacle captivating. I love watching this game each year, the only non-Texas game that is appointment viewing for me. So when I spotted this book in a discount bin about the 1995 Army and Navy seasons, culminating in their clash at the end, I snatched it up and saved it to read just before this year's bout. Unlike what many of the refs did during their respective seasons, that was a good call.

Feinstein is known more for his books on basketball and golf, and it shows a bit here: his college football knowledge seems a bit lacking in places. For instance, he claims the Army-Navy game is the best rivalry in the country; it is certainly in the top echelon, but what about Harvard-Yale? The World's Largest Cocktail Party? The Battle for the Axe? Michigan-Ohio State? The Iron Bowl? Or the greatest of them all, the Red River Showdown? Similarly with stadiums, he calls Notre Dame Stadium "college football's most famous stadium." Um... how about the Rose Bowl, or Michigan Stadium, or Tiger Stadium? Even the name of the book is a bit odd; the Civil War is what the annual Oregon-Oregon State game is called; nothing to do at all with Army-Navy.

That said, this is a wonderful book and the Army-Navy game is one of the treasures of college football. Feinstein does a great job of ping-ponging between the Army and Navy squads as their year progresses, becoming a biographer of sorts for a handful of players and coaches on each team. Along the way a lot of the traditions and history of the schools and squads are told giving more than a glimpse into what life at a service academy must be like. Even with Feinstein's hyperbole and occasional pretentiousness this was a fantastic book and I look forward to watching the game on Saturday!

First Sentence:

Almost thirty minutes after the last play of his college football career, Jim Cantelupe, still dressed in the black uniform with the gold number 22 on the back and front, walked down a dank, winding hallway in the bowels of Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium.

The Arena, by Rafi Kohan

I really wanted to like this book, and I'm not entirely sure I didn't. Watching sports is a big part of my life: we have had season tickets for Longhorn football since 1992 and it has been longer than that since I've missed a home game¹. When I travel, seeing a local event is one of my favorite pastimes, especially in a stadium I've not seen previously. So when I was gifted The Arena I was pretty excited, especially with a subtitle like Inside the Tailgating, Ticket-Scalping, Mascot-Racing, Dubiously Funded, and Possibly Haunted Monuments of American Sport. Sadly, there is more content about the people that inhabit these arenas than the arenas themselves.

It starts strong with a chapter that reads like a love-letter to some of the greatest old-school stadiums in America: the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field; Fenway Park, home of the Green Monster; and, the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. Later there is a chapter dedicated to the groundskeepers (whose work is seemingly only noteworthy when it is terrible), and later still a wonderful picture of the logistical nightmares of running these behemoths. All great stuff, and I wish there was more of it.

There is an entire chapter about the Superdome in New Orleans, but most of the detail is around the role the building played during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—and much of the Katrina rhetoric fell into the same quagmire as most other writing about the disaster, giving the impression that Katrina affected New Orleans and no other part of the country. Most disappointing was the chapter on college stadiums; all that is covered is the Penn State sexual abuse cover-up and Joe Paterno's legacy. So many collegiate cathedrals out there—the Rose Bowl, the Big House in Ann Arbor (there was a picture of this but no real discussion), Death Valley at LSU, hell, even Kyle Field—but instead all we get are the details of a vulgar scandal.

I'd recommend this unhesitatingly to any casual sports fan. The stories following the people in and around the buildings (scalpers, half-time entertainment, and unruly and misbehaving fans) are compelling and made the book hard to put down. I was hoping for more stories about the buildings themselves though, and ultimately left unsatisfied. A very good book, but a misleading title gave me a misleading impression.

First Sentence:

By the time I meet the mayor of Lambeau Field, he's already had a few.

¹My mother went to hear the author speak in Dallas, and they gave away a door prize to the person that had been in the most professional, semi-pro, or collegiate stadiums; I believe the winner was in the low 50s. This idea fascinated me, so I went through my history and tried to record all the places I've seen some sort of organized sport. Turns out it is quite a few, but I have multiple friends that leave me in the dust here. I look forward to expanding this list over the coming years!

The System, by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian

I love college football. My wife and I have had season tickets for the Longhorns for over 20 years (although with the introduction of the poorly named Loyalty Program that may not last much longer) and I don't remember the last fall Saturday that wasn't spent watching the battle of the gridiron. The System is about the parts of the game not covered by the box scores, though: the boosters, the politics, the crime, and of course, the money.

Benedict and Keteyian don't have a single narrative, but instead structured the book like a series of essays. The exception to this is the tale of Mike Leach, from his decision to ignore his law degree in order to pursue football, to being the head coach of Texas Tech, to the idiocy of Craig James and his son causing Leach to lose that position, to his resurfacing as the leader of Washington State. (I always liked Leach and thought he was a great addition to the Big XII, even if his Red Raiders did stop the Longhorns from going to the National Championship in 2008.) Other chapters covered Don King, who ran the Yellow Rose strip club in Austin and offered VIP service to athletes (saying "I've done more for recruiting at UT than Mack Brown"), 17 year old Jane Brown at BYU who was raped by freshman football players (who were so new to campus they actually hadn't yet played in a game), the NCAA itself and its epic bungling of the Miami booster case, and essays titled "Crime and Punishment" (subtitled "SEC leads the nation") and "Gameday" ("The genius of ESPN").

The System provides a look at a variety of issues in college football, but doesn't attempt to provide any solutions. Challenges to the status quo like the Kessler antitrust suit, unionization, player stipends, and students rights to their own image aren't mentioned at all. This lack of detail and analysis keeps this book from being a true exposé, but it is still a great primer for the aspects of the sport not seen on College Gameday.

First Sentence:

On Saturday afternoons in the fall of 1981 the roar of the crowd would echo across campus every time BYU scored a touchdown.

The Last Best League, by Jim Collins

While I like baseball, I admit I'd never heard of the Cape Cod Baseball League before reading this book. I found it fascinating: a detailed look at what is often the last phase of amateur baseball prior to a professional career. The juxtaposition of an amateur league run largely by volunteers and low-paid managers that attracts the attention of top MLB scouts and whose players routinely receive six or seven figure signing bonuses was interesting. The players—mainly 20 and 21 year old college students—know that playing well on this stage can mean serious money if they do well, or kill any dream of playing professionally if they don't. The coaches are there for the love of the game, knowing they'll never see the kind of money many of their young wards will. The Last Best League captures the emotion of this situation well, following one team through the summer season of 2002.

One of my favorite aspects of baseball is that there is no clock; no matter how far behind one team gets, it is theoretically possible to close the gap in a single inning. Collins takes this truth and uses it as a metaphor to capture the beauty of baseball through the years. "The game had the awesome ability to stop time. There is no clock in baseball. The players out there on the field were twenty years old, just as they were last year, five years ago, ten. Nothing had changed—that was the illusion. Forget that the big electronic scoreboard in left field was new. ... Forget that this little old-fashioned club had spent $60,000 in the off-season on field improvement... That was real grass out there, those were wooden bats. The generations blurred. Mike MacDougal, Mike Lowell, Jeff Bagwell, Thurman Munson, Johnny Schiffner watched from the dugout. These were the same kids out there, chasing the same dream, giving the same gift." While baseball is often seen as being reluctant to embrace modern technology, this reluctance helps give the sport a timeless quality. Collins gives us a compelling glimpse into this aspect of our national pastime through the eyes of young men with dreams of playing at the highest level.

First Sentence:

For John Schiffner the summer of 2002 began at four o'clock on the eighth of June.

Bill Veeck, by Paul Dickson

Before our current world of billionaire team owners, Bill Veeck owned several different baseball teams, including the White Sox two different times. I do enjoy baseball, but am a bit embarrassed to admit I didn't know who Bill Veeck was. After reading this excellent biography, it turns out I may not have known his name but was well aware of his legacy.

Veeck was famous for being a relentless promoter, always looking for a unique innovation or publicity stunt to attract new fans to baseball. He was one of the first owners to broadcast games on the radio, installed the first "exploding scoreboard" in the country, and started the trend of putting names on the backs of jerseys. He fought in WWII (losing his leg in combat) and there saw black and white men working together; from then on he became a stout proponent for integration making him very unpopular with his fellow owners. In 1942 he attempted to purchase the Phillies with the intent of stocking the roster with the very best of the Negro League players, but was thwarted by then Commissioner of Baseball Kenesaw Landis. Veeck did eventually help pioneer integration, signing Larry Doby as the first African-American in the American League and the second in baseball after Jackie Robinson. Sadly, despite all the good things he did for baseball, Veeck is better known for his outlandish stunts.

One of my favorite baseball stories has always been about the time a little person was called to the plate in a major league game. Turns out this not only is true, but Bill Veeck was the mastermind behind it. Eddie Gaedel was less than four feet tall, but Veeck signed him to play in 1951 for the St. Louis Browns wearing number ⅛. When Eddie walked to the plate the opposing Tigers objected, but with a valid contract the umpire allowed the batter. With a strike zone of maybe two inches Gaedel was walked on four straight pitches and was immediately replaced with a pinch runner. The next day the American League President voided the contract and banned "midget" players from the sport, but the previous game was deemed official and history was made.

Another less humorous promotion was Disco Demolition Night in 1979. The idea was that people would bring disco albums into the stadium and they'd be destroyed between games of a double header. Unfortunately it didn't go quite as planned as may if not most of the overflow crowd were not actually baseball fans but anti-disco rockers and the event devolved into a riot. "It was an incredible scene. There were bonfires of burning records on the streets, and records thrown Frisbee-style into the air were slicing down. ... All hell then broke loose. Anti-disco forces stormed the field and refused to leave. They ran the bases and then stole them all, including home plate. The batting cage was pulled loose and destroyed, along with other field equipment. People from the upper deck slid down the foul pole to get onto the field." Hard to imagine Jerry Reinsdorf or corporate-sponsored MLB allowing that today.

Veeck truly loved baseball; hanging out in the Wrigley Field bleachers singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" he was once quoted as saying, "This is the epitome of pleasure." A love of the sport didn't make him the success he became though; he had a set of twelve commandments that guided his professional and personal life. The first two in particular hit home with me: "1. Take your work very seriously. Go for broke and give it your all. 2. Never ever take yourself seriously." I haven't taken the time to codify my beliefs, but if I did I'd like to think these tenets would be found at their core.

First Sentence:

The first Bill Veeck—William L. Veeck Sr.—was born in Boonville, Indiana, a small village near Evansville, on January 20, 1876, the son of Dutch parents.

100 Things Longhorn Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, by Jenna McEachern

As most folks that know me can attest, I do love my Longhorns! I finished this the day before the first game of the season and it certainly helped to put me in the right frame of mind. It should really have been called 100 Things Longhorn Football Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die because virtually every item is either about football or strongly related, but then football is the lifeblood of the University so I suppose that should be expected!

The book is a series of vignettes covering the history and traditions of Longhorn football. Sections on places (Memorial Stadium, the Drag, the Cotton Bowl), people (Vince Young, Clyde Littlefield, Rooster Andrews), and important years and decades make up the bulk of it, and McEachern admirably captures the essence of them all. For instance, when discussing the Texas-OU game she mentions Robert Heard’s quote, “There is no rivalry to rival this one.” She follows it with, “Just reading those quotes [sic] makes you want to drive to Dallas tomorrow. It makes your mouth water, makes your heart pump faster, and makes your breathing shallow.” Well said! Another fun story: Yards After Contact is a common football statistic; it turns out that UT was reportedly the first school to track it, although at the time it was called “Yards Made by [Earl] Campbell After First Hit by a Tackler.”

In places this book was entirely too repetitive and could have used some judicious editing. At one point we learn “the day Texas football was truly born was November 30, 1893, when The University of Texas Foot Ball Club accepted a challenge from the Dallas Foot Ball Club, the self-proclaimed champions of Texas.” On the very next page we are told “no game was more crucial than the very first one, when the Texas Varsity stormed into hostile territory to challenge the Dallas Foot Ball Club, self-proclaimed "champions of Texas."” This particular tidbit gets mentioned elsewhere too, but to be found on facing pages is a bit too redundant for me. Another oddity was the seeming lack of logic behind what items had dedicated sections and what ones were combined into overviews. For instance, the World’s Largest Texas Flag didn’t get it’s own section—it had to share with the Hex Rally and Pig Bellmont in the More Traditions category. However, both the color PMS 159 (burnt orange, naturally) and the tunnel at the Cotton Bowl got their own entries—with the actual Cotton Bowl getting yet another! Seems like odd logic to me, but the stories were all still entertaining.

First Sentence:

The University of Texas was legislated to be great.

The Fencing Master, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

In The Club Dumas, Pérez-Reverte crafted a mystery with book sellers and lost manuscripts; here, the adventure revolves around fencing and 19th-century Spanish politics. Don Jaime Astarloa is the fencing master of the title, an older man who is expert in a dying art. A mysterious woman appears and wants to be taught the killing thrust for which he is famous, and his life starts to spiral out of control after that. Mix in secret political documents, a throne in jeopardy, and a noble man living in the past and an exciting thriller begins to unfold.

The Fencing Master was both captivating and well-written, but I simply don’t know enough about fencing to be drawn in to the obviously well-researched sections. I could follow the duels and the intensity of the fights came through well, but I suspect that there was an artistry that would have been more poignant if I was better versed in swordsmanship. I still loved the book, however, and look forward to others by this author!

First Sentence:

Much later, when Jaime Astarloa wanted to piece together the scattered fragments of the tragedy and tried to remember how it all began, the first image that came to his mind was of the marquis and of the gallery in the palace overlooking the Retiro Gardens, with the first heat of summer streaming in through the windows, accompanied by such brilliant sunlight that they had to squint against the dazzle on the polished guards of their foils.

Johnny U, by Tom Callahan

“Big hands and feet. Long arms and legs. As bowlegged as a ranch hand. Somewhat sunken chest. Slightly rounded shoulders.” Not what you would expect for a description of one of the best quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen! Johnny Unitas was known as the Golden Arm and holds the greatest record in the leagues history: 47 consecutive games with a touchdown pass. (For comparison, only Brett Favre has come close to this mark and he was stopped at 36.) He is also famous for claiming only to be a Baltimore Colt; when Irsay moved the franchise to Indianapolis in 1984 Unitas led the way in boycotting the team, going as far as requesting that his statistics be removed from the Indy books.

Written by a sports columnist, this could have easily devolved into a list of facts and records, but instead was much more interesting. Included are interviews with many of U’s teammates and contemporaries, recaps of big games, and because of the nature of the subject, the story of the NFL itself. Callahan has a good sense of humor, too—especially if you are a football fan. “Compared to [Steelers coach in the 1950’s Walter] Kiesling, Woody Hayes at Ohio State had a devout and sentimental attachment to the forward pass.” My kind of wisecrack! While the writing at times is a bit choppy, rapidly jumping between players and anecdotes, overall this was a great biography and a fun read.

First Sentence:

“My father’s name was Leonard Unitas,” states the autobiography of Johnny Unitas, Pro Quarterback, published in 1965 by Grosset and Dunlap.

Friday Night Lights, by H. G. Bissinger

Considering I love both football and reading, it is surprising I hadn’t gotten around to Friday Night Lights. I’ve never watched the TV show, but I liked the movie, so when I saw the book in the bargain bin I picked it up. Friday Night Lights follows the Odessa Permian high school football team through their 1988 season. Interspersed with the history of a racist-leaning Odessa we meet the coach and all the major players of the team. Boobie Miles is a highly recruited fullback that is star of the team until he blows out his knee; after that he is ostracized by the universities and vanishes into a depression. Brian Chavez is the Harvard-bound valedictorian; Don Billingsley is a troublemaker trying to live up to his father’s legend. Ivory Christian is a linebacker that doesn’t much care for football, and yet is the only player to receive a Division I football scholarship. Gary Gaines is the coach and by far the most interesting persona detailed: the pressure to win in this football-obsessed town is amazingly intense, and Bissinger does an excellent job at portraying the strain Gaines was constantly experiencing.

As interesting as the individual and team stories are, the emotion of small-town Texas is what makes the book stand out. “As the black wave of the Permian players moved out into the middle of the field, eight thousand other souls who had filled the home side rose to give a standing ovation. This moment, and not January first, was New Year’s day.” This passage more than any other captures the essence of how football is loved by Texans, including me. Great book; I’m sorry I waited so long to read it.

First Sentence:

In the beginning, on a dog-day Monday in the middle of August when the West Texas heat congealed in the sky, there were only the stirrings of dreams.

From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, by David Walsh

Bleah. This is a one-sided whack job on Lance Armstrong, all circumstantial evidence and hearsay. I'm not a cycling fan and there has been plenty of proof that the sport is riddled with performance enhancing drugs, but the fact remains that no allegations against Lance have yet been proven. Do I think Lance is a clean rider? The circumstances seems against him, but with cycling officials, opposing teams, and the world at large watching him like a hawk, it seems very odd that no one can catch him in the act. We are supposed to believe the author is a non-partisan journalist simply presenting interviews and background information, allowing the reader to decide who to believe. Unfortunately, it is all very one-sided with no realistic opposing viewpoint. Considering that Walsh is also the author of L.A. Confidentiel, a French anti-Armstrong book, the idea of journalistic integrity is completely shattered.

First Sentence:

It was one of the tougher moments in Greg Strock's unfulfilled career in cycling: the moment when he had to accept it was over.

The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball, by Scott Gray

I found this book quite interesting, although the writing was terrible. I’ve heard a lot about Bill James and was looking forward to learning more about him. Because of the wide range of topics, this is neither a complete biography or a well-rounded baseball discussion. Gray is clearly a huge James fan and spent a lot of time fawning over him and making odd comparisons, such as “Bill James was the closest thing to Neo that the baseball matrix has ever seen.” The basics are covered (birth, marriage, kids) but not in much detail and thick with baseball allusions: “[Bill’s wife] threw out the ‘first ball,’ as it were—a baby girl named Rachel.” In addition to the sparse biographical information, we get long passages about James’ opinion on non-baseball topics such as what evidence juries can see and the criminal justice system. Of course, James did often weave such tangents into his Abstracts, so I suppose this could be seen as a parallel, but I found it distracting.

This book generated a lot of discussion in my book group. We are all baseball fans (or in one case, was before the strike) and I was surprised at the widely varying opinions. In fact, about all we could agree on was that this was a poorly written book! The biggest argument was around James’ contention that the minor league system is a charade: “Players are assigned to the minor league team ... without the team having any say ... anonymous young men playing to develop skills rather than playing to win. ... If you’re selling a sport and the players don’t care about winning, that’s not a sport. That’s a fraud.” While there is a bit of truth here, ironically we were discussing this while watching the local Triple-A franchise—along with over 8,500 other fans. Considering we were nine games out of first place and there was a 40+ minute rain delay, “fraud” seems an overstatement to me.

The appendix was by far my favorite part. It was a collection of short paragraphs that shared many of the essential ideas that James brought to the baseball world. Many of these show why he is considered controversial: clutch hitting is a myth, aggressive base running hurts a team more than it helps, and the designated hitter increases strategy to name a few. The ideas here countered many of the wilder opinions presented in the main text, such as having variable distances between the bases depending on the park dimensions. Yeah, you read that right!

First Sentence:

Like William Shatner singing “Rocket Man,” bad lineups have a perverse appeal.

Ruffians, by Tim Green

This book tells of a highly drafted rookie that discovers virtually his entire NFL team is on steroids and is threatened with being blackballed if he doesn’t start shooting himself up as well. The steroid is explained away as being untraceable and therefore random drug testing wouldn’t uncover it, which seems far fetched at best. The steroid-crazy team went on to hurt opposing players badly enough so they had to leave the field multiple times every week. There is no way the NFL would ever stand for this, much less the players on the other side of the ball. Yeah, people get seriously hurt in football, but a defense that was unabashedly and purposefully trying to injure other teams on a regular basis would get suspended so fast your head would spin. I’m sure I’d be surprised at the actual level of violent intent in the pros, but this seemed way over the top.

The plot being as silly as it was, I was surprised to find that the main character, Clay Blackwell, was reasonably deep. I heard somewhere that Tim Green based Clay on himself which might explain that, especially as all the other inhabitants are one-dimensional. Clay is shown to have deep feelings for his college girlfriend yet still unable to resist the temptations of easy sex that comes so easy to a professional athlete. He has a complicated relationship with his father, yet is still able to find father figures in others. While clearly upset and morally offended at the idea of steroids, he doesn’t blow the whistle on his teammates and flip-flops on the thought of taking them himself. While Clay is not anywhere near as complex a character as Prince Hamlet, he is far from the wooden caricature I’d expected from a novel by an ex-jock.

First Sentence:

The concrete was cold and made Clay’s bare feet clammy.

One Heartbeat II, by Mack Brown and Bill Little

From the title I knew this was a follow-up to One Heartbeat, but I expected more of a sequel rather than a rehash. The first two-thirds of One Heartbeat II are identical to the previous volume; the remaining chapters tell the story of the Texas Longhorn’s 2005 National Championship season. While this is a fascinating and exciting story, I admit I was hoping for more. That said, being a Longhorn Foundation member and football season ticket holder for over 15 years, I loved reading about how the team battled through the season and won the crystal football! If you haven’t read the first book, read this one instead. If you have read the first one, read this one anyway!

First Sentence (from the Prologue):

It was twilight at the house on Waters Edge, and the gentle breezes coming off the lake left only a muted memory of the sweltering sun that had begun the day.

One Heartbeat, by Mack Brown and Bill Little

I read this well over a year ago and could have sworn I wrote about it then. Apparently I didn’t, though, as it isn’t anywhere to be found. It seems unlikely that Blogger lost a post, so I’m going to assume I simply forgot. I certainly prefer that to the idea that I’m randomly losing my posts!

This was a fascinating read—part-biography and part-psychology. It is largely a collection of anecdotes that demonstrates the lessons Mack Brown tries to impart to his athletes, but with a healthy dose of the career path Mack has taken thrown in. I found the story of how and why he left North Carolina for Texas quite interesting. About this time every year we see the coaching carousel fire up and often we hear coaches claim loyalty one day only to leave the next. We get the inside story of what happened when Mack changed jobs. Recruiting, teamwork, dealing with adversity, attitude, and honesty are some of the other topics tackled here. One of my favorite lessons applies to parenting as much as it does coaching: “It is all about training people ... when there is nobody else around, to make the right choice.” One Heartbeat will appeal to many people: coaches and managers looking for ways to lead others, fans of college football, and of course, anyone with Longhorn pride!

First Sentence:

To the farmer, it is a prayer for rain even when meteorologists say it won’t.

Management by Baseball, by Jeff Angus

How are business management and baseball linked? “Baseball is the perfect simple lab to test management theories. If you can’t do more with less in baseball, you’d better have a perfecto [sic] explanation about why it works elsewhere.” I expected the baseball metaphor to be a gimmick, but I found the lessons here are surprisingly relevant. The book is organized into (surprise!) four parts, one for each base. First base is about the basics elements of management: time, decisions, and people. Second base discusses managing a staff, and third base is about managing yourself. Home plate is about understanding change, responding to it, and initiating it.

Notice that well over half the book is about the human element, which I find fitting. As the author says, “people are the irreplaceable ingredient in valuable work.” After all, the players are the product, both in baseball and the corporate world. Two quotes I want to share that I found compelling:

• “Only 15 percent of people holding a job aren’t in need of significant improvement.”
• “When talent that can’t contribute to winning a pennant clogs your limited roster, it’s critical to move people along. And while it’s less obvious, doing a good job of executing the cuts is critical for your competitiveness, morale, and the reputation of your organization.”

These held meaning for me not only for how I should work with my team, but how I should guide my self-improvement. Management is not only something you use to guide others, but yourself as well.

While I found this book very thought provoking, there are a couple of nits that really irritated me. One is the use of the word rôle instead of role. Being a book on management (especially one with a focus on personnel), that is a very common word and for some reason seeing the circumflex every few pages really bugged me. The other problem I have is with the accompanying website. Multiple times the reader is directed to www.managementbybaseball.com with promises of further reading and tools. One in which I was especially interested is a template for regular one-on-one staff meetings. Unfortunately, when visiting the site (and after being forced to register) I find that the promised material doesn’t exist. Quite disappointing.

Update: Apparently this entry popped up in a search engine and the author noticed it. He emailed me and attached the doc I couldn’t find on the site. It looks fairly effective, too—I’m looking forward to taking a closer look. Taking the time to respond to a fairly random review like mine (my readership isn’t exactly making Digg take notice) gives a large credibility bump to the author. Angus also mentioned he is an Eric Johnson fan, which is another plus in the positive column!

The baseball anecdotes that pepper the book made it that much more fun to read for me. I’ve always liked hearing about the strategy behind the moves: why a pitching change is made, why a steal or bunt is called, why the outfield is shifted, that sort of thing. This book is full of such descriptions that cover the last 100+ years of the sport. While I don’t think you need to be a fan of the diamond to enjoy this book, if you are one it will take on a whole other level.

First Sentence:

Winning at managing in organizations is much like winning baseball games.

The Big Book of Baseball Brainteasers, by Dom Forker, Robert Obojski, Wayne Stewart

On the surface baseball looks fairly simple, but read a couple of pages from anywhere in this book and you’ll quickly find a lot more to it than expected. The different chapters focus on various parts of the game: the infield, the outfield, base runners, umps, and so on. There is a mix of anecdotes, trivia, and puzzlers which illustrate different rules and situations. Well organized, even if not well written!

The style of writing made several of the puzzles quite difficult to follow. Instead of a straightforward layout of a siuation (“Runners on first and third with one out”) we plow through prose like, “The Cardinals have one out, Vince Coleman on third base, Willie McGee on first base, and a rookie who is trying to make the St. Louis ball club at the plate.” While that imagery is great when listening to a game on the radio, it sucks when the idea is to figure out the proper call when a base running error occurs.

That said, I learned a lot from this book. For instance, if a thrown glove makes contact with a live ball, the play is ruled a triple. If a fence is closer than 250 feet from home plate, a ball hit over it is a double and not a home run. If a batted ball strikes an umpire in fair territory before touching a fielder, the ball is dead; however, if it strikes an ump after passing a fielder other than the pitcher, it is considered fair. Great stuff!

First Sentence:

Some people claim that umpires give certain players the benefit of the doubt: Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, for example, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn, too.

Hustler Days, by R. A. Dyer

I like to shoot nine ball, but I’m not very good. Reading this almost makes me glad of that fact; these guys would see me coming from miles away! Minnesota Fats, Wimpy Lassiter, and Jersey Red are three of the greatest pool hustlers this country has ever seen. This book is more than simply a biography of these sharks, though; it is the story of the fall and rise of pool through the twentieth century. The narrative jumps around a lot between the three players making it occasionally hard to follow; eventually they start to show up at the same tournaments and it all comes together.

I was surprised to find that the man known as Minnesota Fats didn’t take that name until after the Hustler was released. The movie was a hit, and an aging hustler that bore a strong resemblance to Jackie Gleason’s character hijacked the name. The newly minted Minnesota Fats then parlayed that into fame and popularity. Imagine, the only pool player that most people can name isn’t famous because of his prowess at the table!

First Sentence:

On January 19, 1913, at an hour uncertain, the child who would become Minnesota Fats took his first gasping breath in this world.

Raising Cole, by Marc Pittman with Mark Wangrin

This was a very difficult book to read. Not because of complicated sentence structure or an unnecessarily large vocabulary, but because of raw emotion. Cole Pittman was a football player at the University of Texas that was killed when he fell asleep at the wheel of his truck in 2001. His father wrote this story, describing both the amazingly close relationship they shared and the aftermath of his death. It is honest and poignant; I’ll admit I was literally brought to tears while reading the last couple of chapters. The main message of this the author tries to impart is simply to not leave anything unsaid. If you were to die tomorrow, are you sure that everyone you love knows that you love them? A hard question. I probably still haven’t come to terms with my fathers death a few years ago, and this brought a lot of those emotions back. There was too much unsaid between us when my dad died. I am the type to keep my feelings largely to myself; this book helped me to see I need to change that somehow.

The Pittman family uses two interesting concepts to maintain their unusually close relationships: Love Wars and Dead Man’s Talk. Love Wars are simply trying to outdo each other with gestures of affection, like driving 10 hours simply to meet for lunch. Dead Man’s Talk represents no-tell confessions, like talking to a dead man: “A dead man couldn’t repeat what was said. It would not make him angry or stick in his craw. It wouldn’t change an opinion or influence a friendship. It would be said, and it would disappear forever like a breath on a cold night.” Love Wars is a concept I grok and will certainly be using in my life. Dead Man’s Talk is more opaque to me, though; once a meaningful fact is known I don’t see how it can possibly not affect a relationship. Clearly it worked for Marc and Cole Pittman, though.

First Sentence:

It’s been more than three years since I buried my oldest son in the red Louisiana dirt near Minden.

Coach Royal, by Darrell Royal with John Wheat

Darrell Royal is one of the best college football coaches this country has ever seen. While I’m familiar with the legend, I found I didn’t actually know much about the man. This book is far from an in-depth biography, but it does cover at a brisk pace the life of the man known simply as Coach. It is in a conversational format, not a narrative so the content is very easy to follow. I hadn’t realized how much job-hopping Royal did early in his career; after he graduated from (shudder) OU he spent one year each running six different teams before landing at Texas. Can you imagine someone today going from student to head coach at a major university in such a short time? I would have liked to gotten a bit more detail on his thoughts on racism in the 60’s and Title IX, but still enjoyed it for what it was. Any Texas fan will enjoy this, especially after the recent big win!

First Sentence:

I began my conversations with Coach Royal in the spring of 1993 to record in his own words the story of his legendary career at the University of Texas.

The Dark Side of the Game, by Tim Green

This isn’t a biography, but a collection of essays about the NFL. None are all that in-depth and most are more anecdote than analysis, but all are interesting. We get a peek into topics that range from training camp to injuries, from agents to the media, from playing dirty to retirement. I’d have preferred a deeper dive into a few of the topics but still found this a pretty good read. The biggest detraction was that it is somewhat dated now; it was written in 1996 and the landscape of professional football has obviously changed since then (been a while since the 49ers and Cowboys have been the cream of the NFL). Light reading for sure, but you could have a worse book sitting in your bathroom (especially if you enjoy watching football).

First Sentence:

When I meet people for the first time and they learn that I played for eight years in the NFL, their eyes glaze over with that faraway look of a person dreaming what he’ll do if he wins the lottery.