Remembering the Late Jim Brosnan, Major League Pitcher and Trailblazing Athlete-Author

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Jim Brosnan, APWonderful NY Times obit of the pitcher-writer whose first book, The Long Season, a diary of a major league season, ushered in the modern genre of realistic baseball literature, preceding Jim Bouton’s more celebrated Ball Four by more than a decade. Delighted to find a line quoted in it from sportswriter at the time, later publisher, and a book biz friend, Al Silverman*. In a Saturday Evening Post profile at the time, Silverman wrote: “Brosnan is quite possibly the most intellectual creature ever to put on a major league uniform.”

In 1990, after Brosnan’s book, and Bouton’s, were established as classics of contemporary sports literature, I had the privilege of publishing the 20th anniversary edition of Ball Four, shown below. In 2002, I got to publish another gem of sports lit, a posthumous short story collection called The Heavenly World Series, by Frank O’Rourke, whose example was opposite to that later established by the two pitcher-authors. O’Rourke was professionally a sports reporter, and a pretty good ballplayer; he got invited to a spring-training tryout with the Philadelphia Phillies before the 1948 major league season. Though he didn’t make the team, he later used the experience to write brilliant short fiction from the viewpoints of ballplayers themselves. From the flap copy: “A writer who belongs alongside Ring Lardner and Mark Harris [O’Rourke] captures the essence of baseball in elegiac, unsentimentalized fiction that blends dazzling description of on-the-field action with compassionate off-the-field portraits. Pennant races, old veterans passing down their wisdom to rookies, and an unforgettable dash around the bases by a player modeled on the young Jackie Robinson highlight these unforgettable tales.”

Here are covers of the Brosnan, Bouton, and O’Rourke books:

*Silverman is also an author, of the marvelous oral history, The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors.

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The Day Gandhi Pinch-hit for the Yankees

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In honor of April Fool’s Day and the start of the new Major League Baseball season, I’m re-reading and sharing a very clever New Yorker sketch–Chet Williamson’s “Gandhi at the Bat,” in which the writer imagines a ballgame where the Mahatma, or the “Nabob of Nonviolence,” one of many funny names the author assigns him, played an inning with the 1933 Yankees, including Babe Ruth.  I love the whole piece, especially the set-up. The sketch is viewable below. You may hit the pause button in the blog’s slideshow to read each page (Apologies to Mr. Williamson, who I want to add has had a very interesting career, and The New Yorker for scanning and screen-grabbing my old clipping.)New Yorker baseball sketchChet Williamson sketch

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#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s “The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie”

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Lonely End of the Rink#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie. Very excited to begin reading my copy of the new book by my friend, Canadian broadcaster Grant Lawrence, which just landed in my mailbox this afternoon. The book, which chronicles his uneasy relationship with the Canadian national sport, was officially launched last night with an event in Vancouver, BC. Grant loves to meet with booksellers and readers and is one of the hardest working authors I’ve ever observed. On his website you can find details on the extensive book tour he’s taking, with stops in many Canadian cities between now and December 12.Lonely End back cover

I loved Grant’s first book Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other Stories from Desolation Sound, a memoir of the many summers he’s spent in the wilds of coastal British Columbia, in the environs of a family cabin on the vividly named Desolation Sound. It went to #1 on the BC Bestseller List, won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year, an award given by booksellers, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. I’m hoping for similar success for his new book, which I will begin reading this weekend.Adventures in SolitudeGrant at Radio 3 picnic
[cross-posted at my other blog Honourary Canadian]

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How is the NFL like Big Tobacco?

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I find the NFL’s conduct in this matter more and more like that of the Big Tobacco executives who in the 1990s lied to Congress and denied there had long been knowledge within their companies that nicotine in cigarettes was addictive. Among several issues that league execs should answer for is whether they have for many years known that injured players risked longterm disability and shortened life expectancy from competing too soon after having suffered concussions. I find their behavior obnoxious but unsurprising. But for ESPN, I have I think even more scorn. They’re happy to be thought of as an influential media player, committing journalism and keeping an eye on organized sports’ tendency toward corruption and malpractice when it serves their reputation-building purposes, but then they readily revert to being a commercial player, with Disney corporatism holding the whip hand once the league turns on the heat full blast.

Maybe the lesson is we should not show trust for the journalism put out by ESPN. A pity, because I know there are many capable reporters and correspondents working for the network, including the brother reporting team of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, authors of the forthcoming  League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth, the book accompanying “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis,” the PBS Frontline documentary that the NY Times article suggests Disney forced ESPN to back out of sharing in ownership of and credit for, even after the network and the authors had spent months working on it alongside producers at Frontline.

Below is the trailer for the program that according to the Times became a major point of contention at the recent midtown Manhattan lunch meeting between NFL and ESPN execs. The book, with nearly the same title as the program, will go on sale a few days before it is first broadcast. Another item of interest is the online statement Frontline producers put out, regretting ESPN’s decision and promising their viewers “The two-hour documentary and accompanying digital reporting will honor FRONTLINE’s rigorous standards of fairness, accuracy, transparency and depth.”

Watch “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis” preview on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

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#FridayReads, August 16–Mike Sowell’s “The Pitch That Killed” & Jayne Anne Phillips’ “Quiet Dell”

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Sowell-front-cover-69x100#FridayReads, August 16–Mike Sowell’s The Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read, or been involved with publishing. It chronicles the only fatality ever caused by injury to a player during a pro baseball game. Ray Chapman was a terrific Cleveland Indians shortstop who died after being struck in the head with a pitch thrown by NY Yankee Carl Mays. The tragedy occurred in the same season that the Tribe won their first World Series, somehow overcoming the mid-season loss of one of their most valuable players. I’m glad that Cleveland Plain Dealer sports writer Bill Livingston, @LivyPD, chose to write about it recently, reminding me of the time I worked at Macmillan Publishing when an editorial colleague and friend, Rick Wolff, brought out the book. Livingston reports that a film based on the book, “Deadball,” is in the works.

Sowell-back-cover-67x100 Today is the 93rd anniversary of the day of the day of the beaning. Chapman never regained consciousness, lingering in a coma and dying two days later. I have read the book several times and feel privileged to make it part of my #FridayReads today.

Quiet Dell coverI am also happy to say that I am continuing to read and savor Jayne Anne Phillips’ Quiet Dell, a mesmerizing novel drawn from the annals of a notorious true crime. It’s set in 1931, when a West Virginia killer who operated under several aliases lured a Chicago-area widow and her three children in to his fatal embrace. He tried to dispose of his victims but failed at that; his crimes were discovered and he was arrested by authorities in the hamlet of Quiet Dell, WV, near the city of Clarksburg. Into this true-life set-up, Jayne Anne Phillips has found it necessary to insert only four fictional characters, alongside the more numerous figures filling the narrative from the historical record. Fictional or once among the living, she renders the actions and motivations of her characters with vivid and imaginative power. One of her fictional characters is female journalist, Emily Thornhill, who becomes the readers’ eyes and ears on the case, which she’s covering for the Chicago Tribune. Emily has had thrust upon her the adoption of the dead family’s orphaned dog–a real-life bull terrier with the Victorian-tinged name of Duty–earlier the target of a vicious kick by the malefactor, now playing a valuable canine role in the investigation with his compelling identification of the killer. Phillips grew up in West Virginia and on her website she includes an Author’s Note that chronicles her personal connections to the story. I urge you to watch for the book which will be published October 15, and which has already received a starred review from Kirkus: “Phillips’ prose is as haunting as the questions she raises about the natures of sin, evil and grace.” I am deliberately not rushing through Quiet Dell and will write more on the book when I’ve finished reading it.Quiet Dell back

Mike Sowell’s fine book is still in print today, in a trade paperback edition from Ivan R. Dee, independent publisher in Chicago. It can be purchased from Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon via this link: The Pitch That Killed. You may also pre-order Quiet Dell from Powell’s. They are the bookselling partner for this site, returning a percentage of your purchase price to aid me in its upkeep.

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A Special Treat–Weekday Baseball at Yankee Stadium

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IMG_0194 Had a great time yesterday watching the Yankees vs. the Indians play ball on a bright and gorgeous day at Yankee Stadium. Longtime friend and publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin got tickets and had invited me to join with him two other friends of his–Dick and Mike–with whom he’s in a rotisserie baseball league. The game ended up as a 6-4 win for the Yanks. As a Tribe fan, I would have been happier to see my old hometown team prevail but the Bombers were much the better team, with Yankee starting pitcher C.C. Sabathia, the former Indian, throwing a complete game.

As Mike put it at one juncture, “What’s the point of having your own business if you can’t take time off to go to a day game?” I agreed wholeheartedly, and really enjoyed the wide-ranging conversation the four of us carried on for all nine innings, ranging over photography, New York City, New Hampshire, the economy, the early days of the Internet, publishing, and of course, baseball. My camera happened to have enough battery power for one photo and I’m glad I got this good shot and could include it here. What a great way to spend a late spring afternoon!

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