Maybe one of these days, when I run out of good baseball books to read, I’ll return to Alysaa Milano’s treatise.
I wanted to be very careful and not judge too harshly. If her celebrity status can bring a few new fans to the game, maybe it’s worth it.
But no.
There are so many things wrong with it, I don’t know where to begin. I’ve read enough comments and heard from fellow readers to express my annoyance and anger that this project ever reached the light of day. Monsters and Critics posted their take. I mistakenly clicked on a link and thought I was reading an actual review that was so utterly fawning I thought it had to be written by a PR flack. Or a fan with a major crush.
Sample: “Now in Safe at Home, [sic] Alyssa Milano, the mind (emphasis added) behind the bestselling sports-clothing line Touch, tells the story about her lifelong obsession with baseball, revealing what the game has meant to her and why everyone should take a chance on nine innings.”
The piece concldues, “The end result is a unique and unexpected book that is equal parts memoir, manifesto, and love letter to our national pastime.” The very thought of using “manifesto” when referring to this book makes me want to go lie down for awhile.
But then it turns out I was reading the press release from the publisher. I think that should have been mentioned somewhere.
M&C summed it up nicely: “This has to be one of the silliest book deals from a celebrity I’ve seen, but here it is. Though this is the kind of book you’ll find in a used store with coffee stains on it, selling for a buck.”
Not even.
Who ever thought this was a good idea? I wonder if the people involved — the agent, the editor, et al — still have their jobs?
Milano was the subject of a Q&A with The New York Times Bats Blog recently.
In his intro, Benjamin Hoffman writes
When first told that Alyssa Milano, the actress, was writing a book about baseball, I couldn’t help but be somewhat skeptical as I knew of her as a baseball fan, but more as someone who had dated some baseball players and worked on a baseball clothing line.
My concerns about her book, “Safe at Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic” were immediately addressed by Joe Torre, the Dodgers manager, who wrote the book’s foreword. Torre talks about first encountering Milano as manager of the Dodgers and finding out firsthand that she doesn’t just go to games, she goes to every game. She knows baseball and means business.
Sorry, but an endorsement by Torre doesn’t quite do it for me.
Hoffman calls her out on one particular mistake:
Q: Memoirs have recently been under attack by the news media with inaccuracies found in books by James Frey, Herman Rosenblatt and others. With that in mind, I wanted to clear up the one major problem found in your book. In regards to a statement on Page 8, Jackie Robinson’s position on the Dodgers was?
A: Branch Rickey discovered Robinson when he was playing shortstop for the Monarchs. Jackie played first base his rookie year and then moved to second for the rest of his career. Total brain fart by not only me, but the publishing professionals that took 20 passes looking specifically for my brain farts. (emphasis added) I apologize. Profusely. If I were to write that sentence today it would have read ‘… no other team could have done what his team did, which was to hire a black shortstop as its first baseman and then second baseman, and end segregation in baseball.’”
Blaming the publisher for not finding her mistake? Look, I’m a writer (believe it or not). I know how I feel when something ends up in print that I thought should have been caught by a proofreader or copy editor (this blog is obviously produced without benefit of either). In my most recent freelance baseball piece, my name was misspelled in the author bio (not my doing, just missed by whoever was working on it). Sorry, Alyssa, but if this is really your own work and you’re that much of an expert, you should have caught it. Cop out.
Am I being too picky here? Maybe. Do I care? Not really.
is available on Amazon.com,
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