PSA for the PBBC, August 5, 2021

Headnote: One of the thing I like about the Pandemic Baseball Book Club is that it’s a kind of “one stop shopping.” Instead of posting about various authors, projects, and events, all I’m doing here is cutting and pasting their weekly newsletter. Do take a moment to read the author Q&A. I find them particularly interesting as they discuss the arduous process of bringing their projects to press.

By the way, here are “Bookshelf Conversations” I’ve had with some of the authors associated with the PBBC:

Visit the PBBC for the latest batch of authors with new books coming out this year.

ON DISPLAY
Our Poet-in-Residence, E. Ethelbert Miller, enjoys libraries, particularly those close to his home in Washington, D.C. Among them is the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where Miller is friendly with an employee named Don Allen, who once ran a popular indie bookshop in the area.

The two were chatting recently when Miller mentioned the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. Next thing you know the place has erected a veritable shrine.

Nice work, Ethelbert and Don. Go support your public libraries, everybody.

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ASK AN AUTHOR
Bryan Hoch
Bronx Zoom (Triumph Books, June 8, 2021)

What’s your book about?
It’s a baseball book, and also a book about 2020. It traces the entire, crazy year through the lens of the New York Yankees, with overlapping storylines involving the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City, the Black Lives Matter/social justice movement and the contentious presidential election. We all have stories about how the last 18 months changed and shaped our lives; while the games and scores of the book are part of the skeleton, I wanted to show the human side of how Major League Baseball and its participants dealt with a season unlike any other.

Why this book?
I’ve been on the Yankees beat for MLB.com since 2007, and more than any other season, 2020 was a year in which baseball and real life collided. We usually look to sports as a distraction from what is going on in the daily news cycle, but sports and news were inseparable last year. Baseball players are creatures of habit, and I found it fascinating to examine how these finely tuned athletes dealt with a season in which they literally had no idea what tomorrow might bring. In a way, I lived it along with them—I was with the Yankees when play halted on March 12, and was one of the few people permitted into the ballpark when workouts and games resumed.

What’s one noteworthy thing you learned during the research of your book?
Looking back on a year in which media access was severely limited due to the pandemic, I realized that my day-to-day reporting during the season was much thinner than I knew at the time. (This is a good argument for why it matters that we get clubhouse access back!) Only by peeling back the layers and reconstructing the season with players, coaches, executives and others was I able to glean a true sense of what went on behind the scenes and how the team bonded over simple things like table tennis, pop-a-shot basketball and rowdy bus rides to the ballpark. Baseball teams are generally tight units, but I feel like the 2020 Yankees will be forever bonded by their shared experience during the pandemic. Years from now, at Old-Timers’ Day, these guys will be swapping stories about that weird year that they played in empty ballparks, when they stayed in vacant hotels and had to take spit tests every day.

How long did the book take?
I started compiling information when baseball headed north for the summer-camp restart in early July, and continued taking notes when the season got underway. There was no guarantee that baseball would be able to pull off a 2020 season, and it looked very shaky at times—especially when the Yankees were sequestered in Philadelphia for days on end, “rained out” under sunny skies while MLB tried to figure out to do in the wake of the Marlins coronavirus situation. Several Yankees players told me that they expected the league to shut down at any moment. I thought that if they were able to pull off any type of season, shortened and strange as it might be, it would be a human story worth telling.

What’s the most memorable interview you conducted?
There were many, but the three-headed trio of Gerrit Cole, Scott Boras and Brian Cashman was terrific in reconstructing the contract negotiations that took place before the 2020 season. Pitching in New York was Cole’s boyhood dream. He’d become Cashman’s white whale, and I was thrilled to unearth so many little details about their meeting in Newport Beach, Calif. I love the image of Cole and Andy Pettitte chatting one-on-one for about 20 minutes as every other participant in the meeting stood by and observed awkwardly as these two craft masters swapped notes. The Yankees rolling out a red carpet for Cole’s nine-year, $324 million contract was one of the last “normal” events before the world stopped in March.

How did this process differ from your other books?
The great majority of my interviews for this book took place over Zoom or telephone due to the pandemic. It was a means to an end, as it was during the baseball season, and I missed the flavor of face-to-face interaction. One of the wildest experiences in reporting for my previous book, MISSION 27, the 2009 Yankees, was riding in Alex Rodriguez’s limo through the streets of Manhattan as he traveled to meet Jennifer Lopez at 30 Rockefeller Center. That was great color, but it was impossible to get that kind of stuff last year. In some ways, I treated it like historical research, even though the games had taken place only a few weeks earlier. I leaned upon photographs, game video and some behind-the-scenes content provided by sources to tell the story of the year.

Buy The Bronx Zoom.

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NOW UP AT PBBCLUB.COM
We travel back in time 10 years to revisit the unlikely St. Louis Cardinals championship of 2011, with author and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Benjamin Hochman, whose book, 11 in ’11, covers Albert Pujols‘ final season in St. Louis, plus Yadier Molina, Chris Carpenter and, of course, David Freese.

As if that isn’t enough, Benjamin is interviewed here by Our Team author Luke Epplin, a Cardinals fan for whom 2011 is deeply ingrained. Good stuff, that. Watch it here.

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NOW UP IN THE EBOOK WORLD
Old pal Mitch Nathanson, author of last year’s classic Bouton, has a new e-book out called The Ten Minute Collapse: Black Friday and the Fall of the 1977 Phillies. It’s short and it’s only about nine bucks and Mitch says that it’s worth every penny.

Need more convincing? Here’s a blurb:

With a lineup that featured Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski in their primes, a rotation anchored by Steve Carlton, and perhaps the deepest bench and bullpen in baseball history, these Phillies took a back seat to nobody. So when they faced Los Angeles in the NLCS, few thought the Dodgers stood much of a chance. After splitting the first two games of the five-game series in LA, the clubs arrived at Veterans Stadium that afternoon with Phillies fans anticipating a coronation. After jeering a jittery Burt Hooton off the mound and watching their Phils take a 5-3 lead into the ninth, everything was going according to plan. Until it wasn’t. Within ten minutes, everything had spectacularly imploded. Even now, four decades later, Phillies fans debate just how and why it all went so wrong so suddenly.

For those still trying to make sense of it, The Ten-Minute Collapse will help. (Philly fans with lingering PTSD might want to consider carefully.)

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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT US
Luke Epplin‘s Our Team was featured in Forbes. Also, he appeared on the Business of Sports podcast on Bloomberg Radio.

The Chicago Tribune said that eight poems by E. Ethelbert Miller in the Chicago Quarterly Review “display a compelling virtuosity.” It excerpts one called “Invention”:

“Across the street Thomas Edison listens to
Bessie Smith and decides the blues are too painful
For anyone crying alone in the dark.”

Miller was excerpted in HillRag. And just because we love the guy so much, we also direct you to Emily Rutter‘s presentation on his work as part of SABR’s Jerry Mallory Negro League Conference. (Password: S@b4$umm7r)

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WHAT ELSE WE’RE DOING
Andrew Forbes wrote something about kids and cards for the SABR Baseball Card Research Committee.

In this week’s Sports Stories, Eric Nusbaum writes about Miguuel Najdorf, a chess master who turned to tricks, at one point playing 45 simultaneous blind games, in which he could not see a single board (of which he won 39, drew four and lost two).

Jason Turbow wrote about Mark Canha’s peskiness at The Baseball Codes blog.

The latest edition to the SABR Digital Library is out. “When the Monarchs Reigned: Kansas City’s 1942 Negro League Champions” was co-edited by our very own Bill Nowlin. It’s available for purchase, or if you’re a SABR member you can download it for free.

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WHERE WE’VE BEEN
Dan Epstein spoke to Ron Kaplan for the latter’s Baseball Bookshelf. Ron rocks a PBBC t-shirt like nobody’s business.

Longtime San Francisco radio host Marty Lurie had Steve Steinberg on the Giants’ Sunday pregame show to discuss Comeback Pitchers.

Speaking of Giants, Lincoln Mitchell was joined by none other than Dave Dravecky in a July 24 appearance at Oracle Park to promote The Giants and Their City.

Dave Freaking Dravecky, y’all.

Speaking of ballpark meetings, Jason Turbow found his way to Fenway Park, where he finally met Bill Nowlin in person. This was not difficult to pull off since Bill spends more time at Fenway than most Red Sox executives. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes after that photo was taken the sky opened up in biblical ways and that night’s game against the Blue Jays was postponed.

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WHERE WE’LL BE
Don Zminda will part of a SABR panel discussing the 1921 Black Sox trial on Aug. 14 as part of the Summer of SABR. (There’s a LOT going on at that link. Well worth checking out.)

E. Ethelbert Miller will be at an in-person, outdoor signing at Bards Alley Bookshop in Virginia on Sept. 7.

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GET SHOPPING
Head back up to the item about Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf. It was a first-rate product before Ron got all gussied up in our gear, and now it’s nigh unstoppable. Want to look as good as Ron? Of course you do. Head over to the PBBC shop to get started.