The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

I read everything I could get my hands on to write the Billy Martin part of the book, and I mentioned in the book that I was particularly interested in a book that’s not yet written (focusing on Martin’s baseball life and times more than which of his wives was the worst).

There are two widely-available books out on Martin: The Last Yankee, by David Falkner, and Wild, High, and Tight, by Peter Holenbock. They’re both essentially the same book, though I’d recommend Holenbock’s if you’re going to chose one: there’s significantly more in it. Right now, though, it’s a little expensive to come across, while the Falkner book is cheap (see below).

Both of them, do a good job of tracing Martin’s path up from the mean streets, finding baseball (through Casey Stengel) and his turbulent life, including the alcoholism, the womanizing, and all that good stuff. You can really sense how the madness that drove him to succeed also destroyed him, and there’s enough baseball content that if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be okay.

Amazon links:

The other big one is Martin’s autobiography, which is widely available for next to nothing:

One cent!

Written by Martin and Peter Golenbock (who, you’ll note, wrote High, Wild, and Tight), it’s almost entirely fact-free. It’s a staggering bundle of self-justification, lies, half-truths, fabrications, and sometimes, surprising insight into how Martin’s mind worked. Having read this, and Golenbock’s biography, it’s not hard for me to believe that when Martin went to explain his latest bar brawl or run-in with the umpires that he was convinced that he was in the right, and that whatever story he was peddling was the absolute truth.

In the book, I suggest that Steve Goldman, who wrote the outstanding Forging Genius, would do a fine job with the baseball career of Martin. In Forging Genius, he writes about how Stengel learned at each stop in his career, and relates how the circumstances changed him as a player and manager until everything came together and he encountered success.

It’s exactly the kind of book I would have loved to have read about Martin and didn’t. Martin was for a long time one of Stengel’s favorites: as Stengel moved up the minor league ladder as a manager, he frequently promoted Martin with him. Martin must have learned much from him in the years he played, but we don’t really get that from any current book. And if you’re like me, and what you’re really interested in is his relationship with his pitching coach, who he brought in to teach his staff to spitball, or Martin’s amazing in-game strategies, you just don’t get that from what’s out there now. I know that’s not the kind of book that sells 100,000 copies, but it’s a book I think the baseball world would be richer for having.

Which reminds me: here’s a link to Goldman’s book.

If you’re thinking of buying the book, or just want a free read, the Billy Martin chapter from The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball is available for your enjoyment at ESPN.com. Enjoy!

I came across a beautiful pristine copy of this book, and thought I’d write it up. It came out

The Hidden Language of Baseball is a small history of signs. And that’s it. If you liked the sign-stealing chapter in my book, you should enjoy Dickson’s work. It traces the start of signs (Chapter 1 is “From Signal Flags and Torches on the Battlefield to the Early Game”) and the increasing complexity of both signs and sign-stealing through baseball’s history.

It’s great – like every chapter, I feel like I left so much on the table when I wrote the chapter on sign stealing, and reading Hidden Language is almost relaxing for me, because I think “ahhh, that’s covered.” There’s a great bit on how Connie Mack was suspected of stealing signs in the 1911 World Series by having his hunchbacked mascot and batboy Louis Van Zelst, who supposedly could see the catcher’s signs by being “being near the ground, on account of his short stature”.

The whole book’s like that, with a chapter on what to watch for during a game, and a sweet appendix with glossary. It’s small-format, pretty quick reading, and if you’re into signs, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot.

Amazon link:

King Kaufman mentioned that there’s a new book out about groundskeeping:

Writing my own book turned me into a total geek for groundskeeping. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (I’ll post a longer review later) but I’m excited to read this. This part of the description:

Peter Morris demonstrates that many of the game’s rules and customs actually arose as concessions to the daunting practical difficulties of creating a baseball diamond.

Sounds exactly like the central tenet of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball,

Emil Bossard’s widely credited with the invention of “modern” groundskeeping, including the invention of the batting practice screens, tarps, and most of the techniques that are associated with what we think of as the work of the grounds crew today. He (and his kids) dominate the groundskeeping chapter in Cheater’s Guide, and in the Notes I mention how much I’d have loved to have seen a whole book about their work.

I’m intrigued to see how groundskeeping worked when just getting a field together was a monumental task, when parks burned down fairly regularly, and the people tasked with maintaining them wouldn’t have access to the same tools, resources, and knowledge that Bossard did.