Got to roll with it, baby

Came across this Rolling Stone interview with Joe Pepitone from our friend Dan Epsietin. Pepi’s memoir, Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud celebrates its 40th anniversary this year with a reissue from Skyhorse Press (the same publisher as my Maccabiah book; just sayin’).

Can it really be that long ago? I remember that as one of my selections from the newly-created Sports Illustrated Book Club. Ball Four — by Pepitone’s teammate Jim Bouton — was the first of this “adult” version of first-person baseball tales, but each one that came after tried to set the bar higher in terms of the dirt it dished and Pepitone’s led the league for a time. (Amusing to note from the interview that Pepitone says of Ball Four 

Eh, I didn’t read his whole book – I just read certain things that were said about some guys on the club, where he’s the last one to talk, you know what I mean? And I didn’t like how he shit-talked about Mickey [Mantle], and stuff like that. I mean, we had a saying in baseball that, “What you see here and what you say here, let it stay here.” I don’t think in my book I got on anybody’s ass, or talked about anybody bad. I’m harsher on myself than anybody else.

The original cover		The updated model

I had a brief back-and-forth with Epstein on this, wondering if Pepitone would make an appropriate guest for a Bookshelf Conversation. Long story short, one consideration would be the ex-ballplayer’s propensity for profanity. As you know, I run a clean shop here (even though my talk is often salty), so I imagine it might be as difficult to  ask Pepitone to mind his manners as it would be for Deadwood‘s villainous barkeep Al Sweringen (Big warning here, NSFW. Listen at your own risk.)

Maybe I’ll pass on this.