The Book Review: “Bottom of the Ninth” by Michael Shapiro and other Reads

If you like an untold story, and who of us does not, and if you are even a little bit of a sports junky than “Bottom of the Ninth” by Michael Shapiro ( Times Books, $26.00, 303 pages) belongs on your reading list. It is as its sub-title proclaims about Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself.

Shapiro, author of “The Last Good Season,” is in top form breaking new ground and providing new awarenesses of a little reported on chapter in American sports history – the aborted attempt by Branch Rickey to create the Continental League and Casey Stengel’s yen to remake the ways in which the national pastime was played. A good read.

“Crystal Clear” by Eric Le Marque with Davin Seay (Delacorte, $24.00, 256 pages) is the remarkable story of the author’s attempt to snowboard California’s Mammoth Mountain. Trapped by an approaching storm, he survived in sub freezing temperatures for 8 days but at a cost – he would lose both legs below the knees through frostbite. This is the story of a true “Miracle Man.”
“The Unwritten Rules of Baseball” by Paul Dickson (Harper, 256 pages, $14.95, paper) is an interesting reference read on the sub-text of the national pastime.

“The Baltimore Elite Giants” by Bob Luke (Johns Hopkins University Press, 192 pages) is a raising of consciousness about one of the legendary teams from the old Negro Leagues.

From “MR. RED SOX BOOKS” - Bill Nowlin - comes another couple of winners edited by him - - “The Ultimate Red Sox Home Run Guide” (Rounder Books, $18.95, 192 pages, paper) and “Lefty, Double-X and The Kid,” (Rounder Books, $18.95, 165 pages, paper). The former book is chock full of relevant, irreverent and very informative data on circuit clouts and their place in BoSox legend, lore and fact. The latter book is all one would want to know (and some things one might not want to know) about the Boston Red Sox of 1939. Both books HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for Red Sox fans.

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

Jackie Robinson Remembered (FROM THE VAULT)

He was born in Cairo, Georgia on the last day of January in 1919, and died on October 24, 1972 in Stamford, Connecticut. A chilly April 15, 1947 was the day he broke baseball's color barrier at Ebbets Field, the lone black man wearing the ice cream white uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The man they called "Robby" attended UCLA, where he won letters in three sports. He was in the Army during World War II and then played briefly in the Negro Leagues when the war ended. He was signed to a minor league contract with the Montreal Royals in 1946 by Branch Rickey, and the following year came up to the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke baseball's age-old color line.

He played in the major leagues for a decade. He won the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, and he helped the Dodgers win six pennants and one world championship.

Despite all the pressure he played under, he was still able to record a lifetime batting average of .311. His base-stealing ability and hustle won many games for the Dodgers. He set several records for fielding for second basemen.

His influence on sports is immeasurable. His breaking of baseball's color line against the greatest of odds is still one of the most dramatic stories in all of sports history. And there are those who still have special memories of the man and the legend. Here is how one from that time still remembers the great player Brooklyn Dodger fans called "Robby".

When school was out, I sometimes went with my father in his taxi. One summer morning, we were driving in East Flatbush in Brooklyn down Snyder Avenue. My father pointed to a dark red brick house with a high porch.

"I think Jackie Robinson lives there," my father said. He parked across the street and we got out of the cab, stood on the sidewalk and looked at the house. Suddenly, the front door opened. A black man in a short-sleeved shirt stepped out. I didn't believe it. Here we were on a quiet street on a summer morning with no one else around.

The man was not wearing the baggy, ice-cream-white-uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers that accentuated his blackness. He was dressed in regular clothes, coming out of a regular house in a regular Brooklyn neighborhood, a guy like anyone else going out for a bottle of milk and a newspaper.

Then, incredibly, he crossed the street and came right toward me. Seeing that unmistakable pigeon-toed walk, the rock of the shoulders and hips that I had seen so many times before on the baseball field, I had no doubt who it was.

"Hi Jackie, I'm one of your biggest fans," I said self-consciously. "Do you think the Dodgers are going to win the pennant this year?"
"His handsome face looked sternly down at me. "We'll try our best," he said.
"Good luck," I said."
"Thanks," he replied."

He put his big hand out, and I took it. We shook hands and I felt the strength and firmness of his grip. I was a nervy kid, but I didn't ask for an autograph or try to prolong the conversation. I just he walked away down the street.

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).
Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

THE BOOK REVIEW

“George” by Peter Golenbock

I had two chance encounters with George Steinbrenner and both were memorable.
I was sitting in his office at Yankee Stadium with the late Robert Merrill, the great opera singer, who for many Yankee fans was better known as the man who sang the "Star Spangled Banner." I was interviewing Merrill for a profile. This was late 1980s. Steinbrenner charged in, military stance, bristly and in charge.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he snapped at me.
"I was invited in here by Mr. Merrill."
"What for?"

When I explained, the Yankee principal owner relaxed and told me to get myself a drink. I declined saying I wanted to fully concentrate on my interviewing job at hand. Hearing that and no longer of interest to him apparently, Steinbrenner exited.

The second meeting was around the same era at Madison Square Garden at half time in the VIP quarters where drinks flowed freely and most tried to show off their hoop IQs. Steinbrenner came by and exchanged pleasantries with the late Red Holzman, then the former and legendary coach of the New York Knicks who I was with.

“The Boss” then turned to me.
“And you are writing Red’s autobiography.”
“Yes,” I said.
Those two encounters with G. Steinbrenner revealed a lot about the man. But those two encounters only were surface insights.

To read "George” by Peter Golenbock (Wiley, $26.95, 366 pages) is to get the total package of a complex, driven, nasty man who has his “good side,” too.

"George” is a page turner carefully crafted by one of America’s most skilled sports authors. It is a book that is part Golenbock autobiography but all Steinbrenner. Sub-titled “The Poor Little Rich Boy Who Built The Yankee Empire,” is a tome created over a couple of decades from more than 100 interviews and prodigious research.

Golenbock, a best selling author several times over, has out-done himself in this sweeping narrative of George Steinbrenner’s life and times. Golenbock has out-done himself in this terrific tome that gives an up close and sometimes too personal portrait of the man many have called "the Boss."

To read "George" is to read the definitive book on the principal owner of the Yankees.
BOOKENDS: “The Baseball Economist” by J. C. Bradbury (Plume, $15.00, 337 pages, paper) is a treatise and an argument about many of baseball’s cherished myths - like steroids are not the reason for behind the breaking of home run records, etc.

“The 1969 Miracle Mets” by Steven Travers (The Lyons Press, $24.95, 185 pages) was created to pay homage to one of the more popular NYC baseball teams. Unfortunately, it falls short in many ways – priced too high for too little, rehashing rehashed data and recycling stock photos – Met fans deserve better.

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including “New York City Baseball,1947-1957″ and “Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball”. His “Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral and Narrative History of the House that Ruth Built” (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his “Shoeless Joe and Ragtime. His REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK will be published in 2010.
Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed. FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in excess of one million and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

**Last call for Fenway Memories - now working on "Remembering
*****Fenway Park" - will feature stories– first game attended, marker moments, odd events, tales of a special player at the Fens, architectural features... Please contact me by e-mail if you have something to contribute.

Opening Day at Yankee Stadium: 1927

1927 (last season before the grandstand was extended around past the foul poles)

Another season, another opening day.

The old Yankee Stadium still stands but the new one (as if we needed it) is in place poised for its first opening day.

One of the most memorable of openings days at the “House That Ruth Built” took place in 1927 when the old Yankee Stadium was just four years old.

Owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert was very upbeat about prospects for baseball in 1927 but was muted in his predictions for his team. He did not seem to have a clue as to what tremendous accomplishments lay ahead for his Yankees.

“Everything indicates that 1927 will be one of the most remarkable in baseball history,” Ruppert told reporters. Although born in New York, he had never lost the German accent inherited from his paternal grandfather. It was an accent that became thicker when he became emotional, usually when talking about the Yankees.

On April 10th , a New York Times headline proclaimed:
“BIG LEAGUE SEASON TO OPEN ON TUESDAY: Yanks Will Greet Athletics, Picked by Many to Win Flag, at the Stadium”

“Well, it won't be long now,” James R. Harrison wrote in The Times. “Only a few days more and the greatest show on earth will be on. Tired business men will lock their desks and go uptown for an important "conference" at 3:30 P.M. The mortality rate among the grandparents of office boys will take an alarming jump . . .”

Everything was in readiness for the Yankees of New York beginning their fifth season at their majestic Yankee Stadium home field in the Bronx.

"The big parade toward Yankee Stadium started before noon yesterday,” Peter Vischer described Opening Day 1927 in the New York World. “Subways brought ever-increasing crowds into the Bronx. Taxicabs arrived by the hundreds. Buses came jammed to the doors. The parade never stopped.”

"Yankee Stadium was a mistake, not mine but the Giants’," Ruppert had said. The site was chosen for among other reasons to irritate the Yankees former landlords the Giants and because the IRT Jerome Avenue subway line snaked its way virtually atop the Stadium's right-field wall.
Built at a cost of $2.5 million, "The Yankee Stadium", as it was originally named, and nick-named "the House that Ruth Built,"when the park first opened in 1923 by Fred Lieb always one especially handy coming up with a catch phrase, had a brick-lined vault storing electronic equipment under second base, making it feasible to have a boxing ring and press area on the infield.

Yankee Stadium was the first ballpark to be called a stadium. A mammoth horseshoe shaped by triple-decked grandstands, the edifice’s huge wooden bleachers circled the park. The 10,712 upper-grandstand seats and 14,543 lower grandstand seats had been fixed in place by 135,000 individual steel castings upon which 400,000 pieces of maple lumber were fastened by more than a million screws. Sod from Long Island, 16,000 square feet of it, was trucked in.

The Stadium had eight toilet rooms for men and as many for women scattered throughout the stands and bleachers, a nice touch for the time. A 15-foot deep copper facade adorned the front of the roof, covering much of the Stadium's third deck, giving it an elegant almost dignified air. This decorative and distinctive element was the ball park’s logo.

Seating capacity in 1927 was now 62,000, increased from 58,000. The admission price for the 22,000 bleacher seats (the most in baseball) was reduced in 1927 from 75 cents to 50 cents. Grandstand admission was $1.10. All wooden seats were painted blue. In right center field there was a permanent "Ruthville" sign. Sometimes , the area was also called "Gehrigville".
The left-field pole was but a short 281-foot poke from home plate. It was 415 feet to left, 490 feet to left center, 487 feet to dead center, 429 feet to right center, 344 feet to right, and 295 feet down the right field line. The 82 feet behind home plate made for plenty of room for a catcher to run and chase wild pitches, passed balls, foul balls.

Above the bleachers in right centerfield was the manual scoreboard. The Yankee bullpen looked out on left centerfield. The dark green Yankee dugout was on the third base side of the field and remained there until 1946.

"By game time the vast structure was packed solid," Peter Vicher’s article continued. "April 12, 1927, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium. Rows of men were standing in back of the seats and along the runways. Such a crowd had never seen a baseball game or any other kind of game in New York."

The crowd was the largest in all the history of baseball, 73,206, breaking the previous attendance record of 63,600 that had been set in Game 2 of the 1926 World Series. Another 25,000 were turned away.There were 9,000 guests of the New York Yankees plus one thousand who were able to get in with passes.

On the balmy, almost summery day, the Seventh Regiment Band dressed in gray outfits began playing with vim and gusto. Red coated ushers, really into their effort of trying to keep the level of behavior orderly, worked the crowd, seating people.

At 3:25 the string bean manager Cornelius McGillicuddy (Connie Mack) of the Philadelphia Athletics, in dark civilian clothes and high stiff collar who was featured on that week’s Time Magazine cover, and the wisp of a Yankee pilot Miller Huggins posed for photographs.

Mayor Jimmy Walker, 45, typified New York City and the 1920s. A svelte, more dressed up model of the gregarious Babe Ruth, Walker in 1927 was happily involved with Betty Compton, 23, an actress. The two of them, it was said, had a gay time of it in their Ritz Hotel suite. Largely ignoring public mention of the relationship, the press instead gave lots of attention to the way Walker dressed, the parties he attended, the stories he told.

Urbane, dashing, positioned in Ruppert's private box, the Mayor threw out the first ball – twice, taking no chance to miss a photo op, to Eddie Bennett, referred to in newspapers of the time as “the hunchback bat boy.”

Bennett gave players their bats, presented baseballs to umpires. He let his cap and hump be rubbed by Yankees before games. He sat on the bench next to Miller Huggins, observing and pointing out things out on the field, a kind of precursor to today’s bench coaches. He would bring bicarbonate of soda to Babe Ruth before every game generally during batting practice after the big man had downed his massive quota of hot dogs and soda pop.

Ruth and Bennett would create laughs for early arrivals at the Stadium by engaging in a highly animated game of catch. Starting about ten feet apart, they would toss the ball back and forth. Ruth would throw the ball after a while about a foot above Bennett’s reach, and he would scamper after it. They would repeat the routine and the Yankee mascot would bitch a bit to the Babe who would feign total innocence. The game continued until Bennett found himself backed up against the screen behind home plate. To some, the whole ritual was viewed as cruel behavior on Ruth’s part, a taunting, shaming of a cripple. It wasn’t – just two guys playing around.

On this day of days, the Yankees had two loud voiced announcers using megaphones to inform the crowd of the on-the- field goings on. Previously one megaphoner had sufficed, colorful Jack Lentz, longtime announcer, who wore a derby hat and sometimes mangled the King's English. He was joined by George Levy, who had made a reputation working the Polo Grounds. He wore a soft hat and made use of a smallish megaphone. The work of the announcers was simple: speak the name of each player as he came to bat; keep silent after that except when a new player entered the game.

Knowledgeable fans noticed a significant change in New York’s white wool flannel home uniforms for 1927. "Yankees" was now on the front of the jersey rather than the name of the city. Navy blue vertical pinstripes and stirrups accentuated the uniform. Players wore navy blue caps with a white interlocking "NY" in script on the front. The v-necked shirts had a brief tapered extension around the neck. Sleeves extended over the elbows, and the knicker pants reached just below the knees. Belts and cleats were black. On the road, the team from the Bronx would wear a gray uniform with "YANKEES" in navy blue block letters across the chest, and two colored stirrups, navy blue on top and rust on bottom.

By noon, a carnival-like atmosphere pervaded the area around Yankee Stadium. Swarms of hawkers, vendors, gawkers and fans intermingled in a circus of sounds and colors.
By three o'clock most unreserved seats had been snatched up. Lines of police were at River Avenue in the back of the park and also along the approaches in front of the Stadium. New York’s Finest checked carefully allowing only those with tickets to pass.
It was exactly half past three when the game got underway.

This was the Yankee Opening Day lineup:

Earle Combs cf
Mark Koenig ss
Babe Ruth rf
Lou Gehrig 1b
Bob Meusel lf
Tony Lazzeri 2b
Joe Dugan 3b
Johnny Grabowski c
Waite Hoyt p

The Yankees, scoring four runs in the fifth and sixth innings, triumped , 8-3, They were in first place where they would remain day in and day out throughout the season.

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.

CHILDREN'S SPORTS BOOK REVIEWS

A Trio of "Sluggers" By The Team of Loren Long & Phil Bildner From Simon and Schuster Books For Young Readers/Aladdin Will Appeal To Youngsters and Others, Too.
"Water, Water Everywhere" ($14.95, 259 pages, hardcover) is the remarkable story of the Travelin' Nine making their way in a barnstorming tour across the USA. Spread over 21 concise and highly readable chapters and adorned with "inky" black -and white images, this is a book to treasure.
"Magic in the Outfield" ($5.99, 136 pages, paper) melds old-time baseball again with those inky and quite marvelous Loren Long images.
"Horsin' Around" ($5.99, 195 pages, paper) is set in the year 1899 and is about family, faith and baseball. And once again features those inky and quite marvelous Loren Long images.
"Before They Were Famous Babe Ruth" by Vito Delsante with remarkable illustrations by Andres Vera Martinez (Aladdin, $8.99, 120 pages, paper) is all about the young "Sultan of Swat" in comic strip form because he became what he would become. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics: "New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball." The prolific Frommer is at work on REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (2010).

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.