* Nitpick of the day: Living on the Black

(Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a regular feature.)

Reading the new book by John Feinstein. I’ve always enjoyed his work, especially on baseball and golf, but I came across this paragraph and it got my eyes rolling:

On page 155, Feinstein writes:

Joe Torre, who came up to the majors as a catcher, can still remember Birdie Tebbets starting for the Braves twice on two days’ rest in the 1957 World Series [emphasis added], a team his older brother Frank Torre played on.

There are problems on several levels (Thanks, again, Neyer!).

First off, by 1957, Tebbets, a catcher for 14 major league seasons, had been retired as an active player for five years. He was, at that point, manager of the Cincinnati Reds. (He later served in that capacity for the Braves for part of 1961 and all of 1962.)

So let’s assume that the player in question was actually Lew Burdette. You say Birdie, I say Burdette. Sounds similar, so maybe Feinstein misheard Torre, assuming that he actually interviewed him for this passage and wasn’t getting the info anecdotally (there’s no direct quote from the Yankees skipper). If that’s the case, a sportswriter of Feinstein’s caliber should have either pricked up his ears at the gaffe or checked its validity.

To continue…

Burdette was the MVP in the ’57 Series, which was played against the Yankees. He won Game Two, which was played on Oct. 3. His next appearance, another win, was Oct. 7, which meant he had three days off. He won the finale on Oct. 10, the only occurrence of two days’ rest. (By the way, the scenario almost repeated the following year: Burdette pitched in Game Two on Oct. 2, Game Five on Oct. 6 (three days’ rest), and Game Seven on Oct. 9 (two days).

So someone got both the personnel and temporal facts wrong. The question is, who?

Who is responsible for getting the information right? Torre? Feinstein? After reading Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Myths, it could be simply a case of Torre misremembering rather than embellishing. But, again, shouldn’t the author have checked? Did he think Torre would have been insulted to have his recollection doubted?

Perhaps it is the editor’s responsibility to fact-check? Did she or he think Feinstein — based on his best-selling author reputation — couldn’t have made such a mistake or would be insulted by being questioned about the discrepancy?

The problem I always have in such situations: if I caught this one glitch, are there others I missed?