Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412140034
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY BOB WILLIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Michael L. LaBlanc. Visible Ink Press. $15.95.
We Played the Game.
Edited by Danny Peary. Hyperion. $35.
Ted Williams.
By Dick Johnson and Glenn Stout. Walker and Co. $12.95.
Field of Screams.
By Richard Scheinin. Norton. $14.95.
In his foreword to "Hotdogs, Heroes & Hooligans," broadcaster Ernie Harwell writes, "When I was a youngster in the late '20s and early '30s, one or two books about baseball would be published in an entire year. Nowadays, there are that many books about the game released in one week."
It's a good time to be alive. But tough to keep up with the output. Reviewed here are four releases, three well worth the reading, especially in a time when the 1995 season looks iffy.
"Hotdogs" is billed as the story of baseball's major-league teams. It includes a once-over-lightly history of the game itself, and to some aficionados the team histories will also be superficial. When many clubs have been around for a century or more, there's a lot that must go unsaid in a compendium like this.
Franchise shifts cause other problems. If you don't know, for instance, that today's Baltimore Orioles once were the St. Louis Browns, you won't know how to find the history of the Brownies. You've also deprived of much of the rich background of the old Orioles, a famous minor-league team.
The format (81/2 by 11-inch pages printed long ways) is a bit awkward. Still, there's a lot of pleasurable browsing for the baseball lover in nearly 600 pages, including a rundown on the old Negro leagues.
Lawrence Ritter was first with "The Glory of Their Times," interviews with old-time baseball greats published in 1966. He supplies the introduction to "We Played the Game," a worthy successor.
Interviewed here are 65 players from "baseball's greatest era, 1947-64," such as Ewell Blackwell, Lew Burdette, "Mudcat" Grant, Eddie Joost, Ralph Kiner, Tim McCarver, Minnie Minoso, Don Newcombe, Brooks Robinson, Johnny Sain, Andy Seminick. These personal reminiscences, especially about the men they played with and against, are a joy. It's a weighty hardback, but you'll have more trouble putting it down than picking it up.
Ted Williams has been profiled many times, but probably no better than by Johnson and Stout - with the help of essays by the likes of Stephen Jay Gould, David Halberstam, Bill Littlefield and others. If he wasn't, as he aspired to be, the greatest hitter the game ever knew, Ted came damn close. More than 50 years after he did it, major-league baseball's not produced another .400 average.
In personality he was both simple and complicated, capable of great charm and great childishness. He deserved better than playing in Boston, where local papers unfairly skewered his character and habits. Only late in his career did they seem to realize what a treasure he'd been for the city, and for baseball.
"Field of Screams" is an ill-tempered book that dwells on "the dark underside of America's pastime." It exposes what everybody knows anyway, that baseball is played by human beings with their share of weaknesses, including gambling, drinking and fighting. This still could have been worthwhile book, but the author's single-minded approach to the topic robs it of value and, ultimately, of interest.
Bob Willis recently retired from the editorial page.
by CNB