Required Reading

Anyone who's read this blog knows that I'm a huge fan of Bronx Banter. I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time with Alex Belth on Monday, as well as his fellow Banterer extraordinaire, Emma Span, my Baseball Prospectus friends Joe Sheehan, Jay Jaffe and Steve Goldman, and Kevin Baker, who is one of the contributors to the Anatomy of Baseball compilation.

It was a great joy being at a table where I was clearly the worst-read person there. At one point we basically became a baseball version of the McLoughlin Group, going around the table for opinions on books, the end of Yankee Stadium, Joe Girardi's shaky start as Yankee manager, Will Leitch (and sports blogging along with him) getting pilloried on Bob Costas Now.

Speaking of books (and Bronx Banter), I got to participate in Alex's Essential Baseball Books project, nominating my top ten books. I restricted myself to non-fiction works, and worked off the top of my head (sadly, my apartment doesn't have space for all my books, so there were a few favorites, like Ball Four, that I missed solely because they're in storage rather than on my bookshelf). You can find the Essentials series at these links: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

From Part III, here's my tardy list:

Bill James, Politics of Glory -- Wonderful exercise in applied sabermetrics: James takes a dash of numbers, a huge dollop of historical research, and systematically ticks off the problems with baseball's most revered institution.

Steve Goldman, Forging Genius -- Has all the things you'd expect in a bio--fun anecdotes, character sketches, historical details--and throws in a strong dose of logic on top of it, to explain how Casey Stengel became the guy that led the Yankees to all those pennants. I suspect it would be interesting to read this back-to-back with the next book, because the authors' styles are so different.

David Halberstam, Summer of '49 -- It's like the movie Apollo 13: even if you know exactly how the 1949 pennant race ended, you still probably won't be immune to the suspense that Halberstam builds up in this book. Essential read for Yankee fans.

Alan Schwarz, The Numbers Game -- Great history of the game, told through the eyes of statheads from era to era.

Bill James, Historical Baseball Abstract -- It's a bit like Disneyland, huge and easy to get lost in. There are maybe three great books' worth of work in there.

Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Between the Numbers -- Excellent primer on a broad range of stathead topics.

Michael Lewis, Moneyball -- Cliche? Maybe. A bit dated, just five years after it was published? Sure. Doesn't matter. Moneyball drags you into the collective mind of a MLB front office better than any book I've ever read.

Peter Gollenbock and Sparky Lyle, The Bronx Zoo -- Sentimental pick. I was still a kid with illusions to shatter when I read Gollenbock's story of what really happened with the 1978 World Champs. You never get your innocence back.

William Goldman and Mike Lupica, Wait Till Next Year -- Can you remember when Mike Lupica actually liked baseball? I think this book was the beginning of the end of that. The NFL and NBA, peek in here, but Goldman (of Princess Bride fame) and Lupica mainly focus on the 1987 Mets with a decent side helping of Yankees stories. The essential parts for baseball fans are Goldman's humor, and Lupica's glimpses into how sports journalism works.

Rob Neyer and Bill James, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers -- Probably the most unique baseball reference book out there--I mean, how many times do you think of a pitcher, but can't quite remember all the pitches he threw, or what his best pitch was?

More book talk later, I hope

Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Baseball Prospectus (But Were Afraid to Ask)

This one's a little bit personal and more than a little self-involved, so if you're just here for the baseball you might want to come back tomorrow.

I got news Saturday that Baseball Prospectus 2007 hit (or will hit, I've never quite figured out how this works) #9 on the New York Times Bestseller list, in the "Paperback Advice" section, as of March 25. Apparently, this reflects how well the book sold through March 10. Saturday was March 17, by the way. Confused? Me, too!

More certain (but certainly not less confusing) is that this means that all the authors of BP2K7 (as we like to call it) are best-selling authors. Including me. This was unexpected (apparently, this is Baseball Prospectus's best-ever showing), and it came on the tail of some big changes in my life.

So the last few weeks, I've been dealing with the ups and downs of being a BP author. On the up side, at the end of February, I was interviewed for Japanese television, a story about the Yanks/Red Sox rivalry and Daisuke Matsuzaka. The opportunity was sent my way by BP colleague Neil deMause. It was pretty cool: the crew came to my home, and did a detailed interview in which I talked about the Yanks' and Sox's finances and payroll advantage, explained the luxury tax, and gave the Yanks an extremely slight edge going into the season. Then they asked me for action shots of me at my computer, which you can see above. Sadly, the interview will only air in Japan; if I'm able to get my hands on the footage, I'll be sure to share. But it was weird being interviewed on TV, particularly since they were interviewing me...and Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe.

That's a weird feeling. Ryan's been one of the top sports writers in the country since I was in high school, if not earlier. How'd I become the next name they pick out of the hat?

On the down side of all this, came the news just after BP was released that four players were missing from the book--and two of them were from my chapter, including the one that people would be most likely to miss, Seattle third baseman Adrian Beltre. Now, as one of my editors, Christina Kahrl, made clear on BP's Unfiltered Blog, if wasn't that we forgot about Beltre or anything. The team working on BP2K7 had a really cool web-based interface that we used to submit and edit our work, rather than emailing dozens of Word files to each other. From what I understand, something went wrong in that interface, causing the entries on Beltre, Wladimir Balentien, Bob Wickman, and Hernan Iribarren (how's that for a bizarre random sampling of players?) to get lost on their way to the publisher, and so none of those guys made it into the book.

These things happen. The first Baseball Prospectus annual, back in 1996, was missing an entire team, the Cardinals. As was the case back then, we're trying to make the inconvenience up to people--this time, by making all the information from the entry, plus quite a bit more, available to the public by making all four players' PECOTA cards available to the public for free (you can click on any of the player names above to see what those PECOTA cards look like, and the comments that should have been in this year's annual). Still, it sucks because a) a bit of work, by myself and others, went into those comments, and it sucks that they didn't get into print, and b) there are plenty of people who will buy the annual but never see Christina's Unfiltered post, or know that they could get the missing entries online. To all those people, I am very deeply sorry.

Even without Beltre (and Balentien), it's still a great book, and I'm still proud of the Seattle chapter, which is where I made my contribution.

Still, I'd only just gotten over the waves of nausea that the missing players caused me, when another hubub erupted, having to do with my chapter. This one was simultaneously more annoying and far less substantial. Someone took one of the players comments as a personal insult against one of his friends, and decided to make a giant public stink about it. The post about this no longer exists, but the Baseball Think Factory thread on that post can be found here, and another post from the same website giving the denouement of the whole affair can be found here. All in all, I guess the firestorm took maybe six or seven hours one afternoon and evening. It didn't help that I got to the party late, by which time there were many, many comments at both the site in question and at BTF, accusing me and my colleagues of all manner of ugly and scurrilous conduct.

The worst part is, people took great umbrage over the fact that the person who wrote the comment in question (me) was anonymous, as a result of BP's policy that team chapters and player comments are written by the Baseball Prospectus Team as opposed to any particular author. To understand why that policy makes sense, you have to understand how the book writing process works. There are chapter authors, each responsible for writing the team essay and a number of player comments. Each author decides--with the able assistance of BP's resident prospect expert, Kevin Goldstein--which players he'll write about, and who will get a full comment or just a single-sentence Lineout comment. Kevin will also give input on the minor leaguers, ranging from the incredibly detailed to a simple "big fastball, no command."

Then it's off to deal with the blank page, but even that isn't a solitary process. Writers have the backup of BP's technical staff and internal mailing list, where they make requests for statistical queries, often drawing commentary and suggestions from other members of mailing list. By the time all's said and done, the research is collaborative enough that if you had to attribute all the individual contributions, something like "based on research by Ben Murphy with suggestions from Keith Woolner, and a verbal smackdown about historical context from Jim Baker..." by the time you got through with all the shoutouts, you wouldn't have much wordcount left to actually say anything.

Once all the research is done there's the writing, and after the writing, our editors get their thing on. Sometimes their influence is relatively small, just covering up the fact that the writer doesn't know when one should use "that" as opposed to "which", or that he doesn't have any idea about the proper use of the semicolon. In other situations, they're streamlining the text, making it more readable, adding jokes, and trying to make the whole thing read less like a dozen different authors writing in their own voices, and more like a chorus singing in a single key. Sometimes the verbal surgery they perform is radical--in one 120-word player comment I submitted, the editors kept only two of my words, re-writing everything else. Those words? "Hamster wheel."

So the point is, it takes a village to write a player comment.

This comes into play in the weird internet argument I was talking about before. The problem was, I wrote a comment about longtime Mariner Raul Ibanez, in which I looked back at BP's 2004 comment about Ibanez, in which the Mariners' signing Ibanez away from the Kansas City Royals was labeled a waste of money, and pointed out that the previous comment had turned out completely wrong: Ibanez stopped his decline, started playing like a completely different person, and was a bargain over the course of his contract. At the end of this, my editors appended, for humorous purposes "...the guy who made that comment isn't with us anymore."

Someone assumed that this last part was a dig at former BP author Derek Zumsteg, who did the Mariners chapter for several years, including 2004. The only problem with this theory was, well, that the Ibanez comment in 2004 wasn't in the Mariners chapter--it was in the Kansas City Royals chapter, which was written by someone else. I knew that when I wrote the comment (although I'll admit that I forgot for a while in the post-accusation shock period; I thought the guy who'd accused me of being a miserable person was right, and that my memory was wrong). I have absolutely no grudges against either Zumsteg or the person who actually wrote the comment (to the contrary, they're two of my favorite writers). The idea wasn't to get a dig in on anyone, it was to take accountability for a prediction that turned out wrong--one that lots and lots of people, and not just at Baseball Prospectus, shared.

Anyway, all of this comes up because as of today, I'm outed from my Seattle chapter anonymity. I did a Baseball Prospectus Radio spot for today previewing the Mariners' season--ironically, in connection with a piece Zumsteg wrote for Baseball Prospectus's Hope and Faith series. With any luck, my own Hope and Faith entry--on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays--will be up on the site later this week. On Thursday night, I'll be at Columbia University and on Saturday afternoon I'll be at the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair, New Jersey, signing copies of Baseball Prospectus 2007 and talking baseball (details can be found on BP's events page). Feel free to come by and have your book signed. If you've happened on a copy of Bombers Broadside 2007, I'll gladly sign that, also.

Heck, if you bring a printout of the Adrian Beltre or Wladimir Balentien PECOTA cards, I'll sign those, too.

[UPDATE: fixed typo]

Not-So Secret Projects

Here are a couple of projects that I'm very proud to have been working on this winter, which I'm proud to finally be able to announce:

BP 2K7

The 12th edition of the classic baseball annual is coming February 2007.

Pre-order for only $13.57

Yes, I've got a chapter in the classic baseball annual. Since they're not bylined, I can't tell you which one (insert I'd-tell-you-but-I'd-have-to-kill-you joke here).

Bombers Broadside 2007

This one's new to the dance, it's a Yankees-only baseball annual, and I've got two pieces in it, one on the aging of the Yanks lineup and pitching, and another, shorter piece on Alex Rodriguez. More on this as it becomes available...

Last-Minute Gifts

Luckily, it's not the case this year, but most years, Christmas Eve is a prime shopping day for me. Here are a few ideas for last minute gifts for the baseball fans in everyone's family:

Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age with the New York Yankees, by Matthew McGough -- This one's great because it's a decent fit for people at all levels of baseball fandom, from the baseball novice to the lifer, and for kids as well as adults. Matt's a bit young to have written a memoir, but this one's unflinchingly honest, and it gives you a good look at life behind the scenes in the Show--and a small peek of the high school I attended, to boot.

The Numbers Game, by Alan Schwarz -- Lots of people, when they hear about my baseball writing, ask, "Well, how did you get into that?" Alan Schwarz's history of baseball fans' obsession with the numbers gives perhaps the best answer to that question ever committed to paper. Schwarz's narrative is a great introduction to the concepts that I and so many others spend so much time and effort obsessing about; it's also a great read.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis -- Perhaps the most controversial baseball book since Ball Four, Lewis's book shook the foundations of the game and launched a thousand mainstream sportswriter articles--many of them horrifically misinformed. The book's about Oakland A's GM Billy Beane, and his team's efforts to stay competitive despite having only a fraction of the financial resources of the Yankees or Red Sox (among many others). No, this is not the definitive tome on how to run a baseball team that some have made it out to be, but the level of detail Lewis brings to describing the operation of the A's front office is just spellbinding.

Baseball Between the Numbers, by the Baseball Prospectus Team -- I'm not part of the team on this book, so I feel comfortable recommending it. BBTN, as we call it, is a single-volume collection of many of the key concepts of baseball analysis, presented in a straightforward fashion. It's a must-have for the hardcore baseball fan.

Stepping Up: the Story of Baseball All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players' Rights, by Alex Belth -- Great bio of an overlooked player, and probably one of the more courageous stands taken by any person involved with the game. Every time a Gil Meche or Juan Pierre gets big money in free agency, they should send a thank-you card to Marvin Miller, and order a bouquet to be delivered to Curt Flood's gravesite, and honor two of the men who made it possible.

Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, by David Maraniss -- the book that--along with a question on BP's intenal mailing list--motivated this list. I haven't even finished it yet, but I feel compelled to recommend it. Roberto Clemente is one of the Hall of Famers that so many fans don't "get"--his numbers were good, but not amazing, and it's not like he was the first Latino, or even the first black Latino, to play in the major leagues. This book does a lot to explain why there are people out there agitating that his number 21 should be retired throughout baseball, like Jackie Robinson's number was.

****

Notes

When Darryl Strawberry tells you you should embrace a teammate who isn't fitting in, remember that he's not only a veteran of multiple world champions, but also a guy who's spent time in jail. You can't take that sort of advice lightly.

Meanwhile, this is the time of year that the Yankees play Not-So-Secret Santa to the rest of their major league competitors, by coughing up their luxury tax dollars to the tune of $26 million. Do the other team owners leave out cookies and milk for Steinbrenner Claus? I think not.

So to all of you out there, have a merry and a happy! See you with some light posting next week!

Summer Reading List: Forging Genius

Steven Goldman is simply one of the best people writing about baseball today. He's the author of the Pinstriped Bible/Blog for the YES Network's website, he's an author of the Baseball Prospectus 2005 annual and has a column, You Could Look It Up which he does for BP's website. As if all that weren't enough, he also writes content for the New York Sun, and has suffered the trials of Job as writer/editor/mid-wife of Prospectus' upcoming book, Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart and Finally Won a World Series.

What sets Steven apart from most folks writing about baseball online is that he's a historian first and a baseball writer second. So it's appropriate that his first baseball book is a bio of legendary manager Casey Stengle, focusing on his career up to and including his first season with the Yankees, 1949.

Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel, starts with 1949, and the announcement that Stengel has been retained by the Yankees. Casey was not exactly welcomed to the Pinstriped Family with open arms. This echoes to the events of 47 years later, when the Yankees hired Joe Torre after popular incumbent Buck Showalter quit/was forced out, and the headlines read, "Clueless Joe." As Goldman quotes, the fourth estate's attitude to Stengel's hiring was: "Is this serious? Are they really going to put a clown in to run the Yankee operation?"

Like Torre, Stengel was judged by those writers primarily for his sub-par career record--developed, in Stengel's case, by managing inferior clubs such as the mid 1930's Brooklyn Dodgers and the late '30s and early 40's Boston Braves. Goldman's thesis is that those losing experiences--along with Casey's minor league managing assignments and playing career--shaped Stengel into exactly the kind of manager that the Yankees needed as they made the difficult transition from DiMaggio to Mantle.

Step by step, we see Casey learn the value platooning from his own experiences as a player, we find him learning under the tutelage of Wilbert "Uncle Robby" Robinson and John McGraw, and we see him begin to formulate his managerial style in the face of near-bankrupt owners, prima-donna star players, extreme baseball environments, and most notably under the crushing weight of repeated losing.

The best thing about the book is that Goldman is fluent in his subject, and is able to immerse the reader in baseball of another era. You'd think the author was in his seventies rather than his thirties, based on his vivid descriptions players, ballparks and execs long gone from the face of this earth. Goldman's facility with the material makes the story move along as if on rails.

Unlike the popular treatment of Stengel, Goldman doesn't over-emphasize Stengel's humor or off-the-wall antics. He shares a number of these anecdotes with the reader, but is careful to put the humor in context, as the reaction of a bright and competitive mind to the boredom of non-competitive ballclubs.

There are only a couple of criticisms that I can make of this book. The first is, that on occasion, Goldman is too adept with his material. He shuffles through the rosters of the 1940 Braves and 1934 Dodgers like a dealer at the Belaggio, and if you don't know your Ken Loenecke from a Whitey Wittleman, then you might be in for a moment's confusion, here and there.

The other complaint--and this is one of the nicest complaints that there is--is that I wish there had been more of this book. Stopping the action at 1949, and the first of Stengel's World Series Championships, puts Goldman in good position to follow up this book with one or more forays into Stengel's later career. Given how good Forging Genius is, I'd buy those books sight-unseen. But after all that time spent watching Casey learn the lessons of his pre-Yankees career, I wanted more of seeing those lessons applied.

Nonetheless, Forging Genius is a most satisfying reading experience, and required reading if you have any interest in the great Yankee teams of the mid 20th Century. Very highly recommended.

If you like reading an excerpt before clicking to purchase, Alex Belth published one over at Bronx Banter, which you can read here and here.