In the Biz: Behind the scenes at Thomas Dunne Books with Joseph Rinaldi

A few months back, I had the opportunity to chat with Joseph Rinaldi, director publicity for Thomas Dunne Books (an imprint of St. Martin’s Press), on how his company picks its baseball titles and what works best in a discriminating, and relatively small readership.

In 2007, TD released Ty and The Babe: Baseball’s Fiercest Rivals; A Surprising Friendship And The 1941 Has-Beens Golf Championship, by Tom Stanon; Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits, by David Ortiz with Tony Massoritti; and Is This a Great Game or What? From A-Rod’s Heart to Zim’s Head–My 25 Years in Baseball, by ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkijan.Bookshelf: So what makes a baseball book right for Thomas Dunne?

Rinaldi: That’s a editorial concern; they have to deal with the contract. I just have to deal with the finished product and run with it with the media and hope that the author – whether a terrific writer or a celebrity athlete – is available and a terrific interview.

There’s a different kind of passion applied to Tom Stanton’s and Tim Kurkjian’s books that to David Oritz’s book. But Tom and Tim are baseball writers; this is their life. From their standpoint, they bring a totally different view of the game, expressing their love of the game, whether it’s Tim stories or Tom’s research on Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.

I think more often than not from looking at the best seller lists and my experience, the Tim Kurkjians and the Tom Stantons are more successful; maybe not in big explosive momentary best sellers, like a superstar’s name lends it self, but I think in the long run there’s more success and there’s more to do with them because their time is devoted to promoting their book, that’s their baby. For David or [other author/athletes], their “baby” is first playing. Of course, they are respectful of their book; they want to promote it, too, but they’re pulled in a lot of directions. Tim’s a busy man, too; he’s all over the country for ESPN , but this [book] is his baby.

The type of book: Stanton’s is more historical, Kurkjian’s more anecdotal.

They apply to two different readerships. Tim is readily available to fans, in his capacity as a baseball analyst, several times a week. Tom, on the other hand, is a baseball historian and writer. But when your title says Ty and The Babe, these are icons who are recognizable even to younger readers.

The story took place in 1941, long after both players had retired. It’s about two guys who were not the best of friends brought together by series of golf exhibitions for charity. Turns out after the course of the events, they found out they had a lot more in common than they originally thought and eventually became good friends.

Stanton had done several books for TD/SMP, including The Final Season, which chronicled the shuttering of Tiger Stadium.

It was told in such a marvelous way, it transcended its regional confines. Tom got stories from his families, friends, old-timers; he took his dad to several games, and it was like ‘let’s remember our youth and the great moments we had.’

At a time when there’s so much – too put it bluntly – crap on the sports page and we may idolize these players but there’s an awful lot of them in a lot of sports who are doing more damage than they could ever do good…to go back and think of a time when the game really was a game, also for the fans. I think a lot of fans take it way too seriously, the vitriol that many fans have today. ‘I want the Red Sox to go 162-0 every year.’ It’s not going to happen. So when they don’t, I don’t sit there and curse that the opposing team comes down with a dreaded disease on the plane ride to their next ballpark. They won; move on.

But this was a time when the games were easier, they were fun and the fans had fun. They also weren’t paying $100 to sit in the nosebleed sections either, and I think that’s the appeal to Tom’s books. They [all] recapture a time that was wonderful.

In 2005, TD published Praying for Gil Hodges, written by Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant.

Such as lovely book. Obviously writing a book of that nature would be foreign since Oliphant was known for his political writing.

In one of my favorite chapters, he is a young boy watching the final game of the 1956 World Series with his father and celebrating when the Dodgers won their only championship in Brooklyn.

Oliphant and Stanton wrote about a game at a time when, if your team won, There was just heartfelt joy. There wasn’t burning half of the city down like fans took to doing a few years ago. And if you lost, it was painful but it wasn’t, ‘let’s go burn the city down,’ either.

How has the Internet affected readership?

Any and every venue has been tremendously helpful. If you’re a sports fan and you’re hooked on the sports sites, even just a slight mention about a book that sounds slightly interesting will get you looking for another site to find out more.

I think it’s because in baseball – it doesn’t work with a lot of the other sports – there is still that large enough faction of the crowd that will go buy the book, even the younger crowd.

Baseball is the only sport that still really relies on its history and what that history meant. I think it’s the only sport where you can actually catch even a young reader’s attention by saying ‘Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Cy Young.’ A lot of the awards are named for these guys, many are still talked about as mythical, legendary figures.

Yeah, you’ll go out and but the book even though we live in that age where we just want to score and move on. Young football and basketball fans don’t have that connection. They really have to care about the game to know the history to appreciate the old players.

One of the greatest things I heard was from Willie Mays: “Every time I look in my wallet, I see a picture of Jackie Robinson,” because of what Robinson went through. It’s because of [that] that today’s players are doing so well.

Rinaldi had harsh words for a player who had won an award several years ago, named after one of the game’s legends. Said recipient confessed in an interview that he had no idea who the player for whom the award had been named was.

Even if that’s the true answer, don’t say it. You sound like an idiot! You should damn well know who the award is named for; you just won it!

Ortiz, however, was one player who had respect for the game, Rinaldi said. After Big Papi broke Jimmy Foxx’s Red Sox home run record in 2006,

He took the time to go research who … Foxx was so when that moment happened and people asked him about it, he knew who Jimmy Foxx was and what he meant. Hat’s off to you, David , because you didn’t have to do that. You’re trying to help your team stay in a pennant race and you have enough things to deal with. You took the time to talk intelligently about this long-since retired and deceased great star for your team and you knew what he meant.

Ortiz was an example of how a involved player can help sales.

I need a star to help me sell the book and that star has more time in the off-season to give than during the season when he’s worried about playing. Hey, that’s what they’re paying him all that money for. I would rather roll the dice and take the gamble with doing something in the off-season. I don’t mean months after, I mean right after when it’s still on people’s mind.

David did four events, he averaged close to 700 books sold per event in a restricted time frame, usually on a day he was playing. Two were in Boston, a third in Framingham, and a Barnes and Noble in New York City after the first Yankee-Red Sox series in late April. The crowd for him in New York was as large as the crowds in Boston, there was a large number of displaced Red Sox fans who live in the area who wouldn’t miss the chance. This was a dream come true. David was very generous, very hard working with his time.

Rinaldi offered this scenario on the importance of timing a book’s release:

Let’s say the Sox win it all, and we have brought Big Papi’s book out the first week in November. Even if the book was already finished and wouldn’t even have included what’s just happened at the end of October with the World Series win, does it matter? Of course not. Not in a million years would that matter, there would still be thousands of people lining up at all of his bookstore singings and he wouldn’t feel the pressure to rush to the ballpark.

It’s always a difficult juggling act; if you bring it out in the off-season, no one cares but the player has more time to promote the book. But at the same time, the season’s over and people are moving on to the next seasonal sport.
But a guy who’s as popular as David Ortiz could get a humungous crowd out at three o’clock in the morning in the dead of winter in a church parking lot because he’s David Ortiz and Red Sox fans adore him and rightfully so and will go anywhere to meet him. He could show up and sign a cocktail napkin and a thousand people will be there. If he can put in the time with interviews – local and national – over a short period of time so the word gets out, especially during the season, that’s enough to make that book fly.

What type of book works best for TD/SMP? Biography? Memoir? Statistical?

I hate to sound wimpy, but I’ll say all three.

The big star memoir will work. You’re agonized over every minute on the way to the event — including [him] getting hit by a pitch the night before a book-signing. Stanton’s book appeals to the nostalgia, the old-time baseball fan and it always will and that’s the only sport where that will be the case. And Tim’s book… [because] he has this viable national TV and radio platform several times a week, he is his own publicity machine, people know who he is. People see him and hear him. So that will work because his stories are wonderful. He’s loved the game, it comes through in every story he recites in the book.

Do you think the Red Sox can repeat the same success at the book stores as they did following their 2004 World Championship?

I’m not sure. If you’ve got a specific fan base, it’s going to work. Put “Yankees” on anything and it’ll sell. Just put pinstripes on the jacket; done. Even if it doesn’t make the best-seller list, you’ll probably make a profit. That’s just the way it is.

With all due respect to the White Sox, who ended their own pain (in 2005), do you remember one White Sox book? But if the ‘fuzzy Cubbies’ win, you can rest assured…Their 99-year rebuilding plan has finally paid off. If they ever win, everybody and his uncle is going to have a book. Pinella will have one, they’ll find some old Cubs from years ago…

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Read an excerpt from Tim Kurkjian’s Is This a Great Game or What?

Read an excerpt from David Ortiz’s Big Papi

Read an excerpt from Tom Stanton’s Ty and The Babe

TD/SMP have published some wonderful baseball titles over the years, including:

• The Road to Cooperstown (2003)
• The Book on the Book (2005)
• The Numbers Game (2004)
• The Zen of Zim (2004)
• Clearing the Bases (2002)
• Brushbacks and Knockdowns (2004)
• The Gift of the Bambino (2004)
• Planet of the Umps (2003)
• The Magnificent Season (2004)
• NY Yankees Illustrated History (2002)
• Sultans of Swat (2006)
• You’re Out and You’re Ugly Too (1998)
• The Rivals (2004)
• Smart Baseball (2005)
• The Minors: The Struggles and Triumphs of Baseball’s Poor Relations (1991)
• Amazin’ (2002)

Tagged as: Baseball News, Big Papi, Is This a Great Game or What, St. Martin's Press, Thomas Dunne Books, Ty and the Babe