* W2W4: Upcoming titles

Been receiving some publisher’s catalogs recently. Here are a few 2009 titles to look forward to:

>> As mentioned previously, Joe Torre and Tom Verducci have collaborated on the manager’s autobio, coming next month from Random House.

>> Bloomsbury will release a behind-the-scenes look at the machinations of baseball’s Valhalla in Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame, by Zev Chafets (July), who usually writes about more serious subjects. I love these “crossover” authors, such as George F. Will, the late Stephen Jay Gould, and others who divert from their regular areas of expertise to give their “outsider” takes on the national pastime. They almost always bring a different point of view to the discussion.

Not having read the book yet, it is difficult to compare, but I already have a problem with the catalog’s claim

For the first time, this book shows the inner workings of the all: the politics, the players [do the mean the athletes or the members of the board, executives, etc.?], and the people who own and preserve it. From the history of the founding Clark family to a day on the twon with the newly inducted Goose Gossage, from the battle over steroids to the economics of induction and secret campaigns by aspiring members, this is a highly irreverent and highly entertaining tour through the life of an American institution.

Steroids and Gossage aside, this is hardly the “first time” such issues have bee considered. James F. Vail’s The Road to Cooperstown: A Critical History of Baseball’s Hall of Fame Selection Process (McFarland, 2001) considered many of these issues, as did Bill James’ The Politics of Glory, later re-released as Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? Baseball, Cooperstown, and The Politics of Glory (Fireside/Simon and Schuster, 1995). (These titles were the subject of a previous Bookshelf entry.)

Semantics aside, I’m still looking forward to Chafets’ take. As a former columnist for the New York Daily News, I’m sure it will be a no-holds bar approach, as opposed to a fawning tribute.

>> The University of Nebraska Press always produces a few books that are surprisingly scholarly and entertaining. I’ve often found that books written by academics have an extremely narrow audience and as such do not become big sellers. But Cait Murphy (Crazy ’08) and Peter Morris (But Didn’t We Have Fun and others) have proved that you can have your literary baseball cake and eat it, too.

The UNP will release Alexander Cartwright: The Life behind the Baseball Legend, by Monica Nucciarone (Foreword by John Thorn) in June. Cartwright is one of those mythic figures from the mid 19th-century whose contribution to baseball is still in question.

Last year Hal Leonard published Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to The Ball Game by Andy Strasberg, Bob Thompson, and Tim Wiles. It was quite an impressive piece, seemingly exhaustove on the subject.

It’s sort of surprising then that UNP is coming out with Take Me Out to the Ball Game: The Story of the Sensational Baseball Song, by Amy Whorf McGuiggan (Foreword by Mike Veeck). Is a second book warranted? It wouldn’t seem that there are deep dark secrets about it that could be unearthed by a different author. The timing is odd as well, coming out a year after the song’s 100th anniversary. Where Baseball’s Greatest Hit was written by a trio deeply rooted in the game — Strasberg worked for the San Diego Padres and is one of the biggest collector of TMOTTBG memorabilia; Thompson is the director of The Baseball Music Project, and Wiles is director of research at the Hall of Fame, while McGuiggan is a freelance writer and the author of My Provincetown and Christmas in New England according to her book’s blurb, hardly sterling bona fides for the subject. Just the fact that she has to identify it as “the Sensational Baseball Song” (as if fans — and even non-fans — didn’t know this?) has me wondering her connection with the game. But if Chafets can bring a fresh look to his topic, maybe McGuiggan can, too.