Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280109
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns. Alfred A. Knopf. $60.
Fugitive Moon.
By Ron Faust. Tom Doherty Associates Inc. $21.95.
Scouting Reports: The Original Reviews of Some of Baseball's Greatest Stars.
By Stan Hart. Macmillan. $12.95 (trade paper).
Banana Bats and Ding-Dong Balls: A Century of Unique Baseball Inventions.
By Dan Gutman. Macmillan. $11.95 (trade paper).
More than a little irked by the cancellation of the '94 World Series, the late-start short season of '95 and the absence even now of a permanent labor settlement between wealthy players and filthy-rich owners, baseball fans by the hundreds of thousands are staying away from big-league parks this summer.
Amid the gloom, a bit of cheer: Baseball, being also a game of the mind and with a history, still has books written about it.
First, a belated mention of Geoffrey Ward's and Ken Burns' "Baseball: An Illustrated History," the companion volume that came out last September with Burns' nine-part PBS documentary. For many fans, the documentary filled much of the void when the work stoppage abruptly truncated the season.
The price of the book is steep, but it's worth it. A handsome, oversized volume for reading as well as coffee-table adornment, it includes archival material left out of the TV show and essays by several of the series' outside commentators.
Juxtaposed with the video documentary, the book is also a reminder of the virtues of the print medium. Readers have more power than do film, video and TV audiences. In print, more ideas and information can be presented more quickly; conversely, if you wish to linger over a phrase or photo, you can do so at your own leisure.
Now, three newer releases, each in its own way an oddity - fitting, I suppose, for the current state of the game:
"Fugitive Moon" is a novel about baseball, murder and mental illness - not a standard formula for literary success, perhaps, but a combination that in author Ron Faust's hands becomes weirdly hilarious.
Teddy Moon is a star relief pitcher and sometime mental patient who punches out his Neanderthal manager, then skips town lest he be arrested as the serial killer of transsexuals whose murders just happen to occur in various cities when Moon's team is in town.
Slightly reminiscent of "Bull Durham" for its cast of locker-room characters, at other times of "A Confederacy of Dunces" for the loony nobility of its protagonist, "Fugitive Moon" in the end is - like Teddy Moon - too different to be very reminiscent of anything. It won't appeal to everyone, but to readers with a certain taste for wicked humor ...
The potential of young baseball players, compared to those in other sports, is notoriously difficult to assess. In "Scouting Reports," Stan Hart has compiled the early scouting reports on a number of past and present major-leaguers. They include both wild misjudgments and amazingly prescient evaluations.
The book is a quick read, not a comprehensive reference, in part because most scouting reports - including those of the majors' centralized scouting bureau that some years ago supplanted individual scouting systems for most clubs - are confidential.
Dan Gutman's "Banana Bats and Ding-Dong Balls" is, by contrast, a comprehensive reference work - but of a highly specialized subject. The book consists of short (mostly) entries on baseball-related gadgets patented over the past century.
It's divided into five sections, for inventions designed to improve bats, practice techniques, ballparks, baseballs and protective gear. Many of the products were duds, of course, which is perhaps also fitting for the current state of the game.
Geoff Seamans is associate editor of The Roanoke Times editorial page.
by CNB