PSA for the PBBC, May 7, 2021

Of course, I should have posted this as soon as it came in (on Wednesday), but life, you know? So you’ll forgive me if a couple of the items mentioned below are already past date.

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.

Now up at pbbclub.com: Steve Steinberg talks about his book, Comeback Pitchers: The Remarkable Careers of Howard Ehmke & Jack Quinn. In it, he and co-author Lyle Spatz uncover two great, forgotten Dead Ball Era pitchers whose paths crossed on multiple teams, in fascinating ways. The result is a heretofore untold story that includes Connie Mack, Ty Cobb and other legends of the game. Steinberg is here in conversation with Mark C. Healey, author of Gotham Baseball, discussing everything from the Dead Ball Era to the intensive process of writing a baseball book.

If you’d rather listen in your earbuds, we’ll be posting the podcast tomorrow.

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ASK AN AUTHOR
Luke Epplin
Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball (Flatiron, March 30, 2021)

What’s your book about?
Our Team traces the story of the postwar Cleveland Indians, the second team to integrate in Major League Baseball in the twentieth century, through four of the club’s key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-soken, hard-hitting pioneer whose turnaround from dejected benchwarmer in 1947 to indispensable start in 1948 became one of the most improbable and meaningful narratives of its time; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy.

What’s something you learned during the research of your book?
Everything I learned about Effa Manley was a revelation. What an incredible figure—fierce and savvy, forward-thinking and deeply rooted in her community. I love how she fought for the Newark Eagles and its players, how skillfully she guided her club, and how fearlessly she challenged both Branch Rickey and Bill Veeck as they were integrating their teams. She was such a singular figure in baseball at that time, and I had to restrain myself from inserting a fifty-page biographical section on Manley in the middle of my narrative. More generally, it taught me how many stories there are to tell in baseball’s rich history.

What surprised you?
How often the lives of these four characters (Veeck, Doby, Feller and Paige) overlapped—or at least how often they trod similar ground—before they joined forces in the majors. I had expected the book to cover just two years, 1947 and 1948, but quickly realized that to tell this story fully, I had to start a decade earlier.

How long did the book take?
About five years from proposal to completion, mainly because I hadn’t learned yet how to write such a long piece and encountered several missteps along the way.

What’s the most memorable interview you conducted?
Unfortunately, the main characters in my book had all passed on by the time I started working. The only living member of the 1948 Cleveland Indians was Eddie Robinson, who welcomed me into his home in Fort Worth and gave valuable firsthand insight on Larry Doby’s first day on the Indians, as well as Satchel Paige’s major-league debut. I also learned a ton from Al Kachadurian, the starting quarterback at Larry Doby’s high school in Paterson, New Jersey. He filled me in on what an athletic phenom Doby was as a teenager.

What are some lessons you learned along the way?
Make an outline and do what you can to stick with it. My first draft was nearly 200,000 words, twice as long as the publisher had called for. I could’ve saved myself a lot of time and heartache by plotting everything more tightly. The final draft clocked in at around 105,000 words, and the cutting wasn’t painless.

What’s one memorable instance of your editor lending direction in a general way? How about in a specific way?
Because my book revolves around a quartet characters, the first draft separated chapters rather rigidly separated by person (a chapter on Veeck, a chapter on Doby, a chapter on Feller, etc.). My editor did an excellent job of weaving together the disparate storylines in a much more coherent narrative. He also helped me make the book more linear and straightforward.

Was anything extremely difficult to cut?
I wrote two long sections on the Newark Eagles in 1946: one on Leon Day’s Opening Day no-hitter, which was disrupted by a fistfight that wasn’t broken up until mounted police officers galloped onto the field; and one on the Negro Leagues World Series later that September. I loved the details in those sections, which I’d gathered mainly by sifting through the archives of several Black newspapers. Unfortunately, several early readers felt that the sections pulled them away from the main narrative, and I ended up scaling back the sections on the Newark Eagles in general.

Do you have a favored work routine? Has that been affected by the pandemic?
I learned that I do my best writing in the morning. I’d usually wake up by five, have coffee and clear my head, and then turn on an Internet-blocking service for a few hours so that I could write uninterrupted until my day-job started. I did most of my archival research and reading at night or on the weekends.

Did you receive any notable outside help in pulling the manuscript together?
The Cleveland Public Library was instrumental in guiding me through their archives. I wrote a big chunk of the book in the Allen Room at the New York Public Library, which gave me access to research librarians and materials that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. For those who live in NYC, have a book contract and need somewhere private to write, it’s the best place for doing so.

Buy Our Team here.

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THIS WEEK AT BASEBALL PROSPECTUS
This week, the Pandemic Baseball Book Club’s partnership with Baseball Prospectus gave us an excerpt from Dave Parker’s autobiography, COBRA, witten with Dave Jordan, focusing on the 1979 All-Star Game. Like this scene, from the pregame clubhouse:

“Grayboy, what the fuck you doin’ here?” I asked Phil [Garner], who stepped into the clubhouse. “This is for All-Stars only, son.” Heh-heh, me and Garner had a little back-and-forth thing that started once he landed in Pittsburgh from that trade where we emptied out the farm system in ’77 for a third baseman. Me and ol’ Scrap Iron had our nicknames for each other, but that’s also a story for another day. We could’ve played Vegas with all the riffing we did.

“I can’t wait to see you fall on your fat ass against Nolan Ryan tonight.”

“Check the bubblegum card, motherfucker. Mine’s got a big ol’ star on the side.” Turned out that Garner, who became our team rep for the Players Association, was in town for a union meeting.

“You’re just in the building on a pass. I’m gonna dazzle ’em all. I’m gonna get MVP. You just wait and see.”

Also at Baseball Prospectus this week is Jason Turbow’s look at one (of many) downsides of MLB’s new three-batter-minimum rule for pitchers: What to do when a wild pitcher needs to be pulled immediately but must stay in the game.

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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT US
The New York Daily News has thoughts about Lawrence Baldassaro‘s bio on Tony Lazzeri.

Danny Gallagher was runner-up in the Ontario Community Newspapers Association competition for Best Sports Story of 2020, with a 3,300-word piece on Ontario pitching legend Jack Vooght, 83, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Also, Danny’s book, Never Forgotten, was featured by Larry Walker’s hometown paper.

This week marks the 70th anniversary of Minnie Minoso‘s debut with the Chicago White Sox debut. The corresponding Chicago Sun-Times story quotes David Krell on Minoso’s historical significance.

Tom Hoffarth tackled two PBBC books at his Farther Off the Wall column this week: Erik Sherman’s Two Sides of Glory and Luke Epplin’s Our Team.

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WHAT ELSE WE’RE DOING
Luke Epplin spoke about Our Team on the MLB Network, and at an event with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

The new episode of Say It Ain’t Contagious is lousy with PBBC representation this week. In addition to regular hosts Frank Guridy and Lincoln Mitchell, guest Dan Epstein joins Craig Calcaterra, Steven Goldman and Tova Wang to discuss his new book with Ron Blomberg, The Captain & Me.

In addition to appearing on the PBBC airwaves, Steve Steinberg talked Comeback Pitchers on the inimitable Baseball by the Book Podcast.

Andrea Williams spoke about Baseball’s Leading Lady with Amira Rose Davis on the Burn it All Down podcast.

Erik Sherman was busy with Two Sides of Glory, appearing on the Downtown With Rich Kimball radio show in Maine, and the Man In The Arena with Ed Berliner. His book was also the focus of an article at Bill James Online.

David Krell spoke to the SABR’s Pacific Northwest chapter about 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK.

Rob Parker at MLBbro.com designated Glen Burke as a “bro you need to know,” with a focus on Andrew Maraniss’ book, Singled Out.

Turns out Bill Nowlin does some pretty interesting stuff that has nothing to do with baseball. Like start a record label that eventually features Grammy-winning Robert Plant albums. Now he has a book recounting those years: Vinyl Ventures: My Fifty Years at Rounder Records.

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UPCOMING APPEARANCE
To commemorate Willie Mays’ 90th birthday, John Shea will discuss 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid at an event at the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Thursday, May 6. He will also be appearing Thursday on ESPN’s Outside the Lines with Jeremy Schaap, at 1:40 p.m. EST.
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GET SHOPPING
Why do we always close these newsletters with a pitch to buy some branded stuff from us? Partly because the stuff is great and high-quality, and partly because this is how we pay the bills at an organization that is otherwise entirely focused on earning attention for our authors. Which makes your decision to purchase some PBBC swag, as they call it in the industry, “a win-win.” Step on up.