Ninety nine最新文献

{"title":"In Memoriam: The California League, 1879–2020","authors":"Steven Treder","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903315","url":null,"abstract":"In MemoriamThe California League, 1879–2020 Steven Treder (bio) The COVID-19 pandemic triggered North America's greatest upheaval in the structure of professional baseball in more than a century. The disruption was even greater than that of World War II. In that instance, zero major league championship games were cancelled, and though most minor leagues suspended play, the few strongest endured the war and with them, the minor league framework survived. It was not so through this most recent calamity. Following the complete cancellation of the 2020 minor league season, for 2021 the minor league organizational architecture itself, in place continuously since 1903, was blithely scrapped. Replacing it were blandly named, colorless, vassal leagues, stripped of any identity beyond subservience to the majors. Many of the grandest old names and richly storied institutions were unceremoniously swept away, including the International League, the Pacific Coast League, the Texas League, the Eastern League, the Southern League, and the California League. The reconstituted minor leagues are purposefully, conceptually, and most importantly, legally severed from any connection to the past. Beginning in 2022, with MLB now able to use traditional Minor League brand names without paying trademark compensation (it's always about the money), several of the newly arranged minor leagues were rechristened with old names. Among these is a wholly owned MLB subsidiary called the California League, stocked with eight wholly owned MLB subsidiary teams. Whatever this entity may prove to be, it isn't what the California League was before 2020. The California League before 2020 took various forms. Its most significant was the enterprise that operated for every season from 1946 through 2019, a period that presented turbulent changes to the state of California and to the midlevel minor baseball league that proudly bore its name. The enduring role that the California League played within the greater state economy and its cultural way of life was complicated and fascinating. [End Page 86] That California League is gone. It deserves a fair and hearty remembrance. baby pictures In 1879, the sport of professional baseball was just toddling about as a brand-new business concept. There was a grand total of five baseball leagues presenting a season of play that summer; among them was the now-familiar National League, struggling to make it through its fourth year. It was within this primordial setting that the California League first appeared. It was one of two professional leagues in the Golden State making a go of it in 1879; the other called itself the Pacific League. Both had chosen names to make them seem more expansive than they were. Of nine teams comprising both leagues, eight were located in San Francisco, and the ninth was all the way across the bay in Oakland. That's how tightly concentrated California's economic activity was. The population of the state of California in 1880 ","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Get Up, Baby!: My Seven Decades with the St. Louis Cardinals by Mike Shannon (review)","authors":"Scott D. Peterson","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903324","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Get Up, Baby!: My Seven Decades with the St. Louis Cardinals by Mike Shannon Scott D. Peterson Mike Shannon with Rick Hummel. Get Up, Baby!: My Seven Decades with the St. Louis Cardinals. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2022. 240 pp. Cloth, $30. If longevity alone were a measure of greatness, Mike Shannon's sixty-four-year tenure as a minor league player, major league player, and radio broadcaster would put him in rarified company on that criterion alone. There are more dimensions to greatness, just as there is much more to Mike Shannon as legions of line-time fans in Cardinals Nation would attest. Those myriad, multifaceted elements are illustrated in Shannon's autobiography Get Up, Baby!, as told to Rick Hummels, whose own impressive fifty-year career covering baseball for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch makes him a fine composition partner for Mike the \"Moon Man.\" Shannon's nickname is just one of the one of the many inside details that will entertain Cardinals die-hards and newcomers to the city described as \"a drinking town with a baseball problem.\" One of the features of the book is the roster of heavy hitting baseball figures who offer commentary and corroboration in each of the ten chapters. For example, St. Louis' own Bob Costas sets the tone with the forward and readers like me might find newfound respect for Costas upon learning that he once lined a single off Bob Gibson in a fantasy camp game—albeit on a pitch tipped—much to Gibson's chagrin—by Shannon. Every page of the book is filled with anecdotes like this one to tell the story of an adult life in baseball. A subtext taken up by the roster of commentators, but notably not by Shannon himself, is whether Mike belongs in the Broadcaster's Hall of Fame. The proof to this issue lies in the tapes, but there is plenty of support to this claim in the pages of Get Up, Baby! as well. Shannon's \"Moon Man\" moniker is one of the book's gems and it's very well documented. Former teammate and fellow player-turned-broadcaster Bob Uecker alleges that Shannon \"didn't get that nickname—Moon Man—for nothing. He was one of those unique guys who comes along every once in a while, hangs around, becomes a friend of everybody, and they believe what he says\" (103). According to Dal Maxville, another former teammate [End Page 131] (and eventual Cardinals general manager), the nickname \"goes all the way back to the minor leagues,\" when players discussing Sputnik said, \"You know, Shannon's up there, too. He's around the moon all the time\" (168). The Moon Man himself weighs in on his moniker when he says he was trying to distract Bob Gibson one time on the mound by telling him, \"'There's going to be a guy that is going to walk on the moon one of these days.' So he started calling me, 'Moon Man'\" (75). The book is replete with other surprising and engaging details, like the revelation by Dick Musial (Stan's son and Mike's football teammate at Christian Brothers College—which is Mike's answer to the all-imp","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pinnacle on the Mound: Cy Young Award Winners Talk Baseball by Doug Wedge (review)","authors":"Andrew J. Mauldin","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903330","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Pinnacle on the Mound: Cy Young Award Winners Talk Baseball by Doug Wedge Andrew J. Mauldin Doug Wedge. Pinnacle on the Mound: Cy Young Award Winners Talk Baseball. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. 218 pp. Cloth, $32.00. \"Undoubtedly, observing a master at work provides insights. By no means does it guarantee a replication of success . . . but studying these masters and how they approach their craft can help inform others. An idea or an approach that has worked effectively for one. Ay work just as effectively for someone else\" (ix). In his book Pinnacle on the Mound, Doug Wedge takes the reader on a journey into the lives, careers, and personalities of ten of the best pitchers to ever play the game of baseball. Wedge takes a qualitative inquiry into several aspects that have contributed to the successes of these players. Although these Cy Young Award winners all had different styles and played in different eras, they were able to utilize their skill set to reach the pinnacle of success at their position. From Jim Lonborg to Corey Kluber, Wedge gathers practical wisdom that this book passes on to future generations of pitchers. One common theme discussed in this book is the idea of athlete identity. Although these athletes have devoted the majority of their lives to their craft, many of these pitchers make it a point to not place their identity in baseball. This theme is best demonstrated by R. A. Dickey, who states, \"I want to be remembered as a good father, good husband. A God-fearing, kindhearted, generous, hardworking citizen.\" He continues, \"Those are attributes that people should value. I think a Cy Young is awesome. I just didn't want it to be the thing that was the most important thing about me\" (163). Barry Zito also discusses in-depth the pressure that is placed on an athlete and the importance of finding his identity in something other than baseball. This is an important discussion that Wedge repeatedly brings forth in this book. Wedge does a great job of describing the wear and tear these pitchers placed on their bodies. Many fans might not initially realize the strain that the sport puts on the pitcher's body, specifically their throwing arm. This theme is best described during his interview with LaMarr Hoyt. Wedge describes interviewing [End Page 144] Hoyt at a pool in South Carolina. While at the pool, someone threw a football to Hoyt, knowing he was a former Cy Young winner. Hoyt caught the ball and handed it to someone else for them to throw it back. When asked why he didn't throw it back, he simply replied, \"I can't throw the ball, I wish I could\" and later stated, \"When you tear three of the tendons that tie your rotator cuff together, and you've only got four of them, [and you] never had the operation, that's kind of what happens over the years\" (72). Wedge does a fantastic job of emphasizing the importance of the catcher and coaches on the success of the pitcher. Almost every Cy Young winner describes the i","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"188 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coming Home: My Amazin' Life with the New York by Cleon Jones (review)","authors":"R. Zachary Sanzone","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903319","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Coming Home: My Amazin' Life with the New York by Cleon Jones R. Zachary Sanzone Cleon Jones with Gary Kaschak Coming Home: My Amazin' Life with the New York. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2022 239 pp. Cloth, $30.00. When I was offered the chance to read Cleon Jones's autobiography and review it for NINE, I jumped at it. I wrote my master's thesis on pro- and anti-war demonstrations in New York City in 1969, using the Mets' World Series victory as a context in which to discuss the historical events. I was looking forward to reading what Jones's perspective was on the war at the time, completely forgetting that his life encompassed so much more than the Mets' World Series victory over the Baltimore Orioles in 1969. While I reminded myself that Jones had a long and respectable career, I was not expecting to read about a life that was so humble, so illustrious, so historical, and so moving. What I took away most from Jones's autobiography though was how genuine he was when he talked about those who had come before him like Jackie Robinson, those—like his grandmother—who helped him reach the majors, and an entire community of people that he still respects and towards whom he still to this day shows appreciation. Jones details how he was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, home to many great major league ballplayers like Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Billy Williams, Tommie Agee, and Satchel Paige. Jones talks about the hardships with which he grew up, including segregation and an absent father who, despite being an inconsistent presence in his life, always showed love for his son. Jones talks fondly about Mama Myrt, his grandmother, who raised him to be a good Christian and always remain humble: \"What I think about all the time is: you're a product of your community. Everybody thinks it's all about you, but often times it's about everything but you. In my case, it's about my community because I've always looked at my community as a team\" (9–10). Jones does not mention this idea in an obligatory way like many other sports autobiographies do. Instead, he makes it clear that that is how he genuinely feels about his community, an idea to which he refers repeatedly in the book. With that said, this autobiography is not so much a story about Jones's life as much as it is about the community from which he came. Jones references the idea of community throughout the book in relation to Mobile as well as in relation to his time in the minors and the Mets. Most importantly perhaps, he references the community of his ancestry. He discusses the ancestors who were brought to America as enslaved people against their will, how they were denied their humanity, and how important it is to ensure that we do not forget that history. It is within these contexts that Jones discusses his identity as an African American baseball player. [End Page 120] Jones played baseball during a turbulent time in America that saw the contentious passage of much-needed Civil Rights","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"A Year Probably Never Before Equaled . . .\": The Klein Chocolate Company Team and its Nine-Game Major League Run of 1919","authors":"Gerald Huesken","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903314","url":null,"abstract":"\"A Year Probably Never Before Equaled . . .\"The Klein Chocolate Company Team and its Nine-Game Major League Run of 1919 Gerald Huesken Jr. (bio) In the spring and summer of 1919, a semipro company baseball team known as the Klein Chocolate Company Team took local baseball fans in southcentral Pennsylvania on a wild and unforgettable inaugural run of success, culminating in an unheard of nine-game run against major league talent. Today it's almost unthinkable to imagine major league owners or managers allowing their rosters to go up against minor leaguers, semipros, or local amateurs, but back in 1919 it was just another aspect of the game. To understand the Klein Chocolate Company Team (often referred to as the \"Lunch Bars\" or the \"Chocolatiers\" in the local media), one must first understand the story of their industrial patrons William and Frederick Klein and how these two brothers of immigrant parents built a successful semiprofessional baseball unit. Such a story as this plays on the time-honored and culturally significant tradition of many American immigrants vying to integrate deeper into American society through the love of American sports. In this case, the Kleins did not just integrate themselves to American culture with a love of baseball, but they also used it to further their own economic interests. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. The Klein Chocolate Company factory in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Image courtesy of the Elizabethtown Historical Society. In March of 1883, Gottfried Klein emigrated from Germany with his family to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and settled into a home on Woodward Street, where he remarried and had two more sons—the aforementioned William and Frederick Klein—plus five more children.1 In an effort to support their growing clan, William and Frederick took to selling newspapers and traditional German chocolate eggs on the streets of Lancaster's Penn Square. Their [End Page 66] sweets soon became a popular local treat, bringing them to the attention of local businessman and candymaker named Milton Hershey,2 the owner of a successful caramel company in Lancaster who had had a lifelong fascination with German milk chocolate after trying it at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Driven to find a method by which he could mass produce this milk chocolate for an American audience, Hershey was impressed with the chocolate knowledge of the young Klein brothers. He ended up hiring the Kleins as apprentices in his caramel shop and brought them with him in 1900 when he sold his Lancaster offices and built his iconic milk chocolate empire in Derry Township, the Hershey Chocolate Company. Over the next twelve years, the Klein brothers became trusted lieutenants for Hershey, with Frederick serving as a factory supervisor while William served as an advisor and candy-experimenter, helping Hershey develop his signature brand of milk chocolate.3 In 1912, the Klein brothers decided to strike out on their","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great by Willie Horton (review)","authors":"Paul Hensler","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903326","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great by Willie Horton Paul Hensler Willie Horton with Kevin Allen. Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2022. 256 pp. Cloth, $30. When four American League teams vied for the right to play in the 1967 World Series, one of those clubs, the Detroit Tigers, fell short but would go on the following year to capture the Fall Classic by overcoming a three-games-to-one deficit against the St. Louis Cardinals. Members of that squad are fondly recalled in Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great, and Horton, along with co-author Kevin Allen, have crafted a narrative devoid of any academic pretense—there are no endnotes or bibliography, but one wishes that an index had been created as well as an appendix of Horton's career statistics. In publishing his life story, Horton has invited readers to pull up a chair so he can tell them all about it. Indeed, the text barely draws a PG rating and eschews Ball Four as a template. Horton's personal journey is compelling on its own merit, although the timeline of his narration wanders in spots. Born in rural western Virginia as the youngest of twenty-one children, Horton was challenged to keep track of his many siblings as he, his parents, and other members of his family settled in the Jeffries Projects of Detroit. As a teen at Northwestern High School, Horton played with future American League batting champion Alex Johnson, and he served as the baseball team's catcher; his physique and prowess at the bat drew [End Page 135] comparisons to Roy Campanella. A precursor of his later renown came in 1959 when Horton hit a home run onto the roof at Tiger Stadium during the city high school title game. Such heroics did not escape the attention of his kindly mother or his father, possessed of a sterner approach to life and a man who kept his athletic son well grounded. When baseball scouts expressed their interest in Willie, his father cautioned, \"Don't sign that contract unless you're willing to make a commitment to the people. You have to promise that you'll serve the community as a player for the Detroit Tigers\" (43). As Horton's life continued to unfold in his adopted hometown, he fulfilled that promise after his apprenticeship in the minor leagues. Landing on the Tigers' roster for keeps in 1965, Horton made the AL All-Star team as the starting left fielder, and so integral was his performance to Detroit that he earned the tag of \"franchise player\" before the term became fashionable. That label was one he was reluctant to accept: \"Not fully understanding what it meant, I thought it sounded negative\" (213). While Horton worked hard to be an adequate outfielder, it was his bat that spoke for him, and as a former boxer in his youth—a point only casually mentioned—he wasn't bashful about taking a stand when the occasion warr","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss (review)","authors":"Charlie Bevis","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903322","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss Charlie Bevis David Maraniss. Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2022, 659 pp. Cloth, $32.50. This biography of Jim Thorpe is an enlightening examination of the famous athlete who had to endure a lifetime of severe prejudice against Native Americans within American society during the first half of the twentieth century. Of particular interest to this journal's readership, Maraniss delves deeply into Thorpe's lesser-known baseball career, which serves as a springboard for the author's fresh perspective of Thorpe's inner character. The broad outline of Thorpe's sporting life is well known to avid readers of sports history. He attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School where he catapulted to fame as an All-American college football player and Olympic decathlon gold medalist, was summarily stripped of his Olympic honors, and then became a professional football and baseball player. While Maraniss examines in great detail the exploitation of Thorpe's Native American heritage, he eschews the perspective taken by prior Thorpe biographers \"to view his story as tragedy\" and instead considers Thorpe's life to be \"a story of perseverance against the odds\" (4). By capably developing this theme, Maraniss supplants Kate Buford's superbly researched 2010 book to become the definitive Thorpe biographer. Maraniss receives high scores in this reviewer's essential elements of a sports-related biography. He extends the exploration of Thorpe's impact to the sporting world and its broader cultural influence by adding new intellectual perspectives. He uncovers new research material while revisiting archival sources originally tapped by Buford, mining them for additional material and including more of the evidence in the text. Maraniss, a prolific biographer better known for his 2012 book about Barack Obama than his 2006 look at baseball legend Roberto Clemente, writes in an engaging narrative style as he unfolds his take on Thorpe's perseverance. Maraniss really shines in his interpretation of the subject's character, always the steepest challenge faced by a biographer. He portrays Thorpe as having quiet tenacity through perseverance, rather than muted acquiescence that [End Page 126] defeats him. It's an ambitious task of character development, but Maraniss credibly builds the argument through an analysis of a series of ups and downs in Thorpe's life. Baseball plays a central role in this character assessment, beginning with Thorpe's minor league years in North Carolina in 1909 and 1910 where he \"crossed the blurry line from amateur to professional\" that triggered the forfeiture of his Olympic medals (129). Maraniss reveals new details about Thorpe's escapades in North Carolina and his eventual public outing as a professional athlete by an obscure Worcester, Massachusetts newspaper in 1913. When viewed alone, Thorpe's life in baseball would signa","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Diamond Quotes","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903308","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played by Jeff Fletcher (review)","authors":"Jennifer J. Asenas, Kevin A. Johnson, Mary Hyepock","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903329","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played by Jeff Fletcher Jennifer J. Asenas, Kevin A. Johnson, and Mary Hyepock Jeff Fletcher. Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played. New York, NY: Diversion Books, 2022, 232 pp. Hardback, $27.99. Shohei Ohtani may be the best player that we will see in our lifetimes. He is an All-Star pitcher and hitter. In other words, we may think of him as two All-Star players in one body. Who else in our lifetime will throw a 100-mph fastball as a regular starting pitcher and also hit a baseball 513 feet? Jeff Fletcher's book provides a delightful review of Ohtani's greatness from his early playing days in Japan to his tumultuous beginnings in MLB and through his historic 2021 season. Manager Joe Maddon wrote the foreword for the book, describing Ohtani as having a joy for the game and thriving on the competition: \"He does not like to lose. At the same time, he is humble, polite, and kind\" (xi). Maddon continues, \"When it comes down to it, this guy is pretty much out there with a brush in his hand and he's painting all the way. He knows what he wants. He reacts to the situation. You don't have to tell him. He's just better than most everybody out there\" (xi). The book begins by noting that the two-way player may never have come to exist without the risk-taking behavior of the Fighters baseball team of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league. At the time, the Fighters expressed support for Ohtani being a professional pitcher and hitter. Ohtani had not even considered the notion until the Fighters put it on the table. According to Fletcher, \"The Fighters had a reputation for going against conventional wisdom, using advanced metrics for decisions more than other NPB clubs at the time\" (6). He continues, \"[Ohtani] assumed that any professional team would want him to specialize on the mound. The Fighters, again bucking traditional wisdom, had an idea that Ohtani could pull it off \" (7). As baseball scholars, we find this observation intriguing given recent \"conventions\" of decision making in baseball. Perhaps taking risks in the face of conventions (whether they be \"analytics,\" \"sabermetrics,\" or \"load management\") allows for the conditions of some of the greatest achievements in the game. Certainly, many of the greatest baseball moments were made possible by risky decisions that challenge much of today's conventional wisdom. The book then takes readers on a journey through Ohtani's arrival in MLB. Several teams went to great lengths in order to recruit and attract Ohtani. For example, on a visit to presumably meet with the Angels, a baseball writer \"spotted a limo waiting at the international terminal [of LAX]. The license plate included 'O11.' Ohtani had worn number 11 with the Fighters\" (33). We learn from Fletcher's account that Ohtani is seemingly more concerned with [End Page 142] trusting his own feelings ab","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Baseball's Best Ever: A Half Century of Covering Hall of Famers by Ira Berkow (review)","authors":"Mark McGee","doi":"10.1353/nin.2023.a903318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nin.2023.a903318","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Baseball's Best Ever: A Half Century of Covering Hall of Famers by Ira Berkow Mark McGee Ira Berkow Baseball's Best Ever: A Half Century of Covering Hall of Famers New York, NY: Sports Publishing, 2022 478 pp. Cloth, $40.00. As a sportswriter reading Ira Berkow's collected work in Baseball's Best Ever: A Half Century of Covering Hall of Famers, I became painfully aware of how inadequate my offerings are. Berkow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and he proves it with each selection in this book. The collection is divided into thirteen parts starting with topics dating back to 1903 and continuing through the present. A sports columnist and reporter, primarily for the New York Times, Berkow is a wordsmith without parallel. Players, managers, sportscasters, sports writers, and those who had an effect on baseball without ever playing the game, like Marvin Miller, are profiled. Each story provides an in-depth look at these greats of the game. Berkow's love of the game is obvious throughout each page. In \"Introduction: The Smell of the Ball,\" he reveals how he became enamored with baseball as a youngster, spending time with his friends watching the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. One of his most vivid memories is a baseball given to him by Cubs' coach Roy Johnson when he was eleven. \"I smelled that tan horsehide smell that has not changed in 20 years, that has not changed in a hundred years,\" Berkow writes (xxiii). Berkow's access to the greats of the game is enviable to those of us in the sports writing field. He humanizes the game's legends and is not afraid to deal with their tragedies and failures as well as their successes. In addition to picking and choosing decades, each profile stands on its own so readers can learn about \"Babe Ruth and a Jug of Whiskey Sours\" on page one and then quickly turn to page 399 and discover \"Tommy Lasorda's Recipes for Winning and for Minestra E Fagioli.\" [End Page 118] The profiles, for the most part, average around three pages each. Like a bowl of potato chips, you are not going to want to stop at just one. The reader is going to want to continue to the next profile, relishing each story. It is a quick read because of the way it has been organized. Berkow obviously has great insight in the game of baseball and its participants. Due to his stature as a writer, he has been blessed with access to so many of the greats of the game and their family members. However, through the years he also developed friendships with many baseball personalities, giving a special poignancy to stories such as \"The Tom Seaver I Came to Know\" that provides an in-depth look at the great pitcher's health struggles and death. I will wager that even the most dedicated baseball fans are going to learn more than a few knew things about the game and those who have made significant contributions to it. Not all of the members of the Baseball Hall of Fame are included in the book. As he mentions in his forward on page xvii, he only ","PeriodicalId":88065,"journal":{"name":"Ninety nine","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135640490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}