Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9006010023
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Baseball Book 1990. By Bill James. Random House (Villard Books). $12.95 (paper.)
The Ballplayers: Baseball's Ultimate Biographical Reference. By Mike Shatzkin and Jim Charlton. William Morrow (Arbor House). $39.95.
The All-Lover All-Star Team and 50 Other Improbable Baseball All-Star Lineups. By Al Davis and Elliot Horn. William Morrow. $12.95.
The Art of Baseball. By Shelly Mehlman Dinhofer. Crown (Harmony Books). $40.
The "prophet" of Mark Winegardner's title is Tony Lucadello, a major-league baseball scout for half a century. Winegardner's account is drawn from his travels with Lucadello during what turned out to be the last year of the scout's life.
Lucadello was among the best in his profession at projecting the potential of young ballplayers. (Among his signees were Mike Schmidt and Ferguson Jenkins). But Lucadello, an eccentric if charming loner, was a "prophet" also in the sense that he decried the advent in baseball of a corporate mentality that prefers bureaucratic mediocrity to unconventional brilliance.
Some readers may find the point to have applicability beyond baseball.
Eccentric brilliance, however, is not entirely passed from the baseball scene. Bill James is making a nice (I presume) living by tapping his 1: skeptical mind ever ready to challenge received baseball "wisdom" and 2: ability to make his points always pungently and often persuasively.
So persuasively, in fact, that much of his earlier work is now the received wisdom: What serious fan, for example, is not now aware that a .240 batter who is patient at the plate and hits with power is of more value offensively than a .300 singles hitter who seldom walks?
James doesn't continue to wage a war already won. His last "Baseball Abstract" was in 1988; he now leaves traditional team-by-team and player-by-player analyses to more prosaic competitors. This year, he initiates a new series (a new career, he'd say) with "The Baseball Book 1990."
His Abstracts stressed statistical analysis; "The Baseball Book 1990" stresses anecdotal and historical analysis. A section of player-by-player comments is non-statistical but more inclusive than similar sections in the Abstracts, and is written with Rotisserie League players in mind.
An essay on Pete Rose is of particular note. James was not an admirer of Rose the player, nor is he an admirer of the company that Rose the person has chosen to keep. But the investigator's report compiled for the commissioner's office, James argues, lacks by far enough evidence to prove that Rose bet on baseball games.
"The Ballplayers" may well be "The One & Only Book That Tells the Stories Behind the Stats," and no doubt is of reference value. How much, though, is open to question.
More complete statistical information already is available in books that include season-by-season numbers as well as career totals. And the non-statistical information for each entry - the purpose of the book - tends to be bare-bones dry.
James also is trying to fill the niche; he does it better - but, alas, got through only the A's in his inaugural "Baseball Book" this year. For a long while, I suspect, "The Ballplayers" will be the only game in this particular town unless you're looking up someone whose last name begins near the top of the alphabet.
As a last-resort idea on slow days, sports columnists sometimes name various sorts of all-star teams: an all-Italian team, an all-Methodist team, an all-hard-to-pronounce-name team, or whatever. The trick is to find players who legitimately meet the criterion of the day and who legitimately play or played the positions to which you assign them.
Those are columns I usually don't bother to read. Looking through "The All-Lover All-Star Team" reminded me of why I usually don't bother to read them.
Written by the director and curator of Museum of the Borough of Brooklyn, "The Art of Baseball" is about the of baseball, not the art of baseball.
Not only do I not know much about art, but I'm not even sure what I like. I do know, though, that the various paintings, photos and the like are handsomely reproduced, and that Shelly Mehlman Dinhofer's text is an informative review of the evolution of artistic technique and style, against the backdrop of developments in the game itself.
by CNB