* Too much, too late?

July 25, 2009

This two-page overview of three Yankees titles — The Yankees Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci; A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez, by Selena Roberts; and American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime, by Thompson, Vinton, O’Keeffe and Red — appears in this weeks New York Times‘ Sunday book review section. And I have several problems with it.

For one thing, the timing. These books were released so long ago, relatively speaking (Years in February, the other two in May). Now in my day job at a weekly publication, I’m pretty liberal in the book review policy as farm as timing goes. But because we’re a speciality publication and the books we consider are pretty narrow in scope, we do what we want. We are not The New York Times, which should be concentrating on the cutting edge in all things newsworthy.

So why these books and why now? Each of them had been reviewed when they were originally released? With all the complaints about shrinking book sections, why did the editors decide it was worth re-examination, considering they were pretty much panned the first time around by the general reviewing public.

Second — and with all due disrespect — who the heck is Touré? The Times‘ bio describes him as “an on-air contributor to NBC and the author of “Never Drank the Kool-Aid,” a collection of essays.” Does a reviewer need any expertise in the topic of e book he or she is critiquing? When it comes to this genre (of which I’m obviously not very objective), I would say yes, but Touré doesn’t seem to have any. According to his MySpace page, he’s had a lot of experience covering the Hip-hop world, but when it comes to sports,

He has often evoked the participatory journalism of Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton, for example, playing high-stakes poker with Jay-Z, two-on-two basketball with Prince, one-on-one basketball with Wynton Marsalis, tennis with Jennifer Capriati, or writing illegal graffiti with known graffiti artists.

Sorry, I don’t get it. Nicholas Dawidoff, author of a couple of highly-regarded baseball-themed books, reviewed A-Rod, while the other two were handled by NYT staffer Michiko Kakutani.

Thirdly, Touré brings nothing new to the table, nothing we haven’t already read, as he infers in writing about American Icon, “[It] mostly covers ground that serious baseball fans already know, but it may answer some lingering Yankee questions,” he writes. I beg to differ: at this point, I don’t know if they even care any more.

You folks know me. I read anything about baseball, even bios on the Wheaties boxes, but given the publishing situation these days, I wish more thought would be given about needless duplication.

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