The Bookshelf Conversations #202: John W. Miller

John Miller says in our Conversation that he was actually coaching a high school game when he found out that The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball won the popular CASEY Award, given by Spitball Magazine to the best baseball book of the year. That’s sounds like a scene out of a sentimental feature film (perhaps the creator of that story will appear on a future “Conversations”).

Miller comes across as a humble fellow, grateful for the honors and accolades that come from having The Last Manager on The New York Times best-seller list. (Here’s the review I wrote for Bookreporter.com.)

I read The Last Manager on a single 12-hour flight to Japan last March. Not bragging or anything, just saying it was hard to out down the book (well, Kindle actually). I t made me wonder how many other baseball personalities from Weaver’s generation had evenly remotely similar stories. Most of the biographies depict them as hard-working kids from less-affluent backgrounds who made good. Or at least that was the norm prior to Jim Bouton’s Ball Four blowing the lid off what fans generally thought about their heroes. Weaver had it rough and the level of detail about his early life went a long way in explaining how he turned out.