I was surprised to see this notice in the Publishers Weekly e-mail, until I saw the context:
There probably has never been a better baseball book than Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, which was a paean to the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. With Roe’s death there are only a few left, Carl Erskine, Duke Snider and Sandy Koufax. One of the last “Boys of Summer” died Nov. 9 at the age of 92.
The aforementioned Richard Goldstein wrote the New York Times‘ obituary.
It was in the summer of 1955, a year after he retired, that Roe admitted to throwing spitters, describing his technique in an article in Sports Illustrated, “The Outlawed Spitball Was My Money Pitch.” Editor’s note: Ya gotta love that SI Vault.] Roe told of wiping his left hand across his brow and spitting on his thumb with juice from his bubble gum, using the base of his hand as a shield….
Roe received $2,000 for the article, but said he did not do it for the money. He maintained that he hoped to see the spitter legalized and wanted to relate how it was not necessarily a dangerous, hard-to-control delivery.
“It never bothered me none throwing a spitter,” he said. “If no one is going to help the pitcher in this game, he’s got to help himself.”
is available on Amazon.com,
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