Perhaps jumping on the drug bandwagon/confessional, Otis Nixon, a former outfielder for the Atlanta Braves and other teams, is reportedly working on a book that describes his battle with drugs.
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Actress Laraine Day passed away Nov. 10. She was dubbed the “first lady of baseball” for her marriage to Leo Durocher, then the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Not that he needed any help, but their relationship landed him in a good deal of hot water. From The Washington Times:
Laraine was a devout Mormon who neither smoked nor drank and specialized in prim and proper B-movie roles like that of a nurse in the popular series of “Dr. Kildare” flicks. Apparently Durocher, a high-roller who was suspended from baseball for the 1947 season by commissioner Happy Chandler for associating with gamblers and other unsavory types, swept Day off her feet.
When the two began dating, if that’s the word, Laraine was married to an airport executive named Ray Hendricks who accused Durocher of seducing his wife. The Los Angeles Examiner reported the affair with a bold, black headline that screamed “DUROCHER BRANDED LOVE THIEF.”
Following Laraine’s subsequent divorce, she and Durocher were married in January 1947. A bit later, Brooklyn’s Catholic Youth Organization threatened to have its young members boycott Dodgers games because Leo had wed a divorced woman. Durocher’s suspension rendered that matter moot.
In 1952, with Durocher now in charge of the Dodgers’ crosstown rival, Doubleday published Day with the Giants, described by Biblio.com as “A wonderful book subtitled ‘Mrs. Leo Durocher tells about the drama, the humor, and the heartbreak of being a baseball wife.'”
The Amazon Report: Day with the Giants
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The My Baseball Bias Blog carries a report that Jon Heyman will replace Tom Verducci as co-author of the upcoming Joe Torre book.
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From The Wall Street Journal column, The Numbers Guy, this piece on why baseball players might be underpaid. Good luck convincing fans on that one. Another article, by Vince Gennaro, baseball economist and author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, opines about how A-Rod’s big bucks contract “makes sense” for the game.
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From the About.com economics category, a list of sports business books, including a few older but nonetheless interesting baseball titles.
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Peripatetic sportswriter John Feinstein’s next book will be Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember, an study of two New York hurlers: the Yankees’ Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine of the Mets. Both achieved lofty marks this year with Glavine winning his 300th game and Mussina his 250th. One of my favorite all-time books was his prescient Play Ball: The Life and Troubled Times of Major League Baseball, published in 1993 — before the strike.
The Amazon Report: Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember
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A review of The Best Sportswriting of 2007 by Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel.
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is available on Amazon.com,
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