PSA for the PBBC, June 30, 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.

MORE GREAT BOOKS STILL ON THE TABLE
We’ll be giving away books from Rowman & Littlefield’s 2021 baseball catalog until July 5, with the first winner announced today. Congrats, @nyy_cate—you’ve won a copy of Don Zminda’s Double Plays and Double Crosses!

Six more entrants will win a copy from the list below, and one grand-prize winner will walk away with all seven titles.

Lights, Camera, Fastball
Double Plays and Double Crosses
The Best Little Baseball Town in the World
Beyond Baseball’s Color Barrier
America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era
The Reshaping of America’s Game
Gathering Crowds

For entry rules, see the pinned tweet at @pandemicbaseba1.

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ASK AN AUTHOR
Robert Whiting
Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys … and Baseball (Stone Bridge Press, April 20, 2021)

What’s your book about?
Tokyo Junkie is a dual biography, charting the growth of the city of Tokyo since 1962, when I first arrived, and my own personal growth as I lived in the city on and off for the next 60 years, and how it changed me.

Why this book? Why now?
I’m 78 years old. It’s time.

What’s one noteworthy thing you learned during the research of your book?
Tokyo is today the greatest city in the world. That’s proven by metrics. Highest GDP. Longest life expectancy. Most Fortune 500 company headquarters. Highest literacy rate. Most efficient and extensive subway and train system. Cleanest. Safest. Designed for easy use by the elderly. Most Michelin starred restaurants (twice as many 3-stars as Paris). Most populous. Most fashion-conscious. Tokyo is in its Golden Era.

What surprised you?
How big Japanese athletes have become. When Sadaharu Oh appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1977, and then broke Hank Aaron’s career home run record, he was 5-foot-9 and 175 pounds. When Hideo Nomo first appeared with the Dodgers in 1995, he was 6-foot-2, 190 Pounds. Today, Shohei Ohtani is 6-foot-5 and 220 pounds. Yu Darvish is nearly as big. Better diet, more sophisticated training methods. They are keeping the best of the martial arts philosophy that has defined Japanese baseball (and all imported Western sports), while adopting the best the US has to offer, particularly in area of resistance training,

When I first went to Japan, NPB pitchers threw 100 pitches a day in practice. Aces pitched on two days rest. Now their usage is much less, and pitchers start once a week.

How long did the book take?
Five years.

What’s the most memorable interview you conducted for the book?
The Destroyer, an American wrestler from Buffalo named Dick Beyer, who was a member of Syracuse Orange Bowl team in 1953. Beyer wrestled in Japan for many years. I made the mistake of asking him if pro wrestling was fake, and he responded by putting me into a figure-four leglock and nearly broke my leg.

In 2003 I interviewed Hideki Matsui at Legends Field in Florida. I asked him about a story in a Japanese language daily that claimed he had a collection of over 1,000 porno DVDs. Is that true, I asked? He replied, “No, not at all. I only have around 300. But doesn’t everybody?” I later discovered that he took the New York press to dinner on the last night of spring camp and gave each one a present—among them, items from his DVD collection.

What are some lessons you learned along the way?
Memoir is the hardest form of non-fiction. As a writer, you are basically interviewing yourself … and you don’t know if you’re asking the right questions, much less getting the right answers.

What’s one memorable instance of your editor lending direction?
I made the mistake of describing the postgame interview area at Koshien Stadium after a National High School championship tournament baseball game—where young, attractive female TV announcers were giving soothing backrubs to nervous, camera-shy and bursting-with-testosterone 18-year-old players—with the phrase “The smell of sex was everywhere.” My editor, Rick Wolff at MacMillan, was kind enough to cut it out of the text.

Was there anything you felt was extremely difficult to cut?
My initial draft was 177,000 words. I had to cut interesting anecdotes to get it down to 100,000, as requested. The stories lost include a visit to the house of baseball superstar Shigeo Nagashima in 1983. Nagashima was so popular in Japan—Joe DiMaggio squared—that he was invited to every major political-, business- and entertainment-related reception in Tokyo. His walls were covered with photos of him with the likes of Sean Connery, Ronald Reagan and Jane Fonda. I visited his house one night with Montreal catcher Gary Carter and a TV crew from CBC. Nagashima greeted Carter at the door. He had been told in advance that Carter was a Catholic and played for a Canadian team, so prominently displayed in the entryway was a photo of Nagashima shaking hands with then-Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and displayed on a table in the living room was a photo of Nagashima in the Vatican, meeting with the Pope. That was class.

Do you have a favored work routine? Has that been affected by the pandemic?
I work every day from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The pandemic gave me more time to work because my social schedule was disrupted.

How did this process differ from your other books?
Other books took 10 drafts. This one took 20. My normal process is to do the first three drafts to get a logical flow. My next three drafts are to cut the book down to the desired size. The following three drafts are to put my voice in. My 10th draft I read out loud. Tokyo Junkie took twice as long as all of that.

Buy Tokyo Junkie here.

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NOW UP AT BASEBALL PROSPECTUS
Speaking of Robert Whiting, our partnership with Baseball Prospectus gives us an excerpt of Tokyo Junkie, which, because it is a memoir about his 60-odd in Tokyo, includes significant amounts of baseball. Whiting, of course, earned his baseball bona fides in 1989 with You Gotta Have Wa, and his baseball writing in Tokyo Junkie is equally excellent.

For an animation series about a boy playing baseball, [Star of the Giants] was pretty heavy stuff. What I knew of the game up until then had been strictly American style—meaning, basically, playing the game for the enjoyment of it. But the moral code running through the story, the sense of family sticking together through thick and thin, the willingness to sacrifice everything for what is perceived as the ultimate good, and to always do the right thing, was fascinating to me.

A key lesson comes early in the story. One day, the father gives Hyuuma, still in elementary school, ¥40 to go buy a pack of cigarettes for him. On the way, Hyuuma passes by a carnival and wanders inside. He sees a game where customers can win cartons of cigarettes by knocking down stacks of them with a baseball. He pays ¥40, knocks down all of the cartons and races home, his arms filled with half-a-year’s supply of cigarettes. His father is furious and demands his ¥40 back.

“I don’t want cigarettes obtained in such a manner,” he says. “I am not teaching you baseball so you can make money. There are other more important reasons.”

It was heartbreaking. But, as the Japanese said, there was beauty in suffering and the suffering was so beautiful—because of the love behind it—that it made you want to cry. And I did cry, in spite of myself, sitting there in the Sakurambo drinking my beer, tears rolling down my cheeks, asking myself what the hell was going on—Was I turning Japanese?—and hoping Masutaa would not look over and notice weeping over a children’s cartoon.

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NOW UP AT PBBCLUB.COM
During their 20-year run in the Pacific Coast League, the Hollywood Stars were among the most inventive teams in baseball, with celebrity owners and fans including Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and Humphrey Bogart. They wore short pants, used cheerleaders and pioneered air travel.

Lights, Camera, Fastball author Dan Taylor discusses his book, and breaks down stories from the team’s history with David Krell, author of 1962.

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WHAT ELSE WE’RE DOING
Andrew Maraniss interviewed Erik Moses, the first Black NASCAR track president in history, for The Undefeated. He was also in Omaha, cheering on Vanderbuilt at the College World Series.

Danny Gallagher wrote about former Expos owner Charles Bronfman, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, for the Montreal Gazette.

Lincoln Mitchell wrote about the recall process for the San Francisco Examiner, and Andrew Yang‘s failed mayoral campaign for CNN.

Jason Turbow wrote about gamesmanship in baseball’s new age at The Baseball Codes blog.

Eric Nusbaum wrote a love letter to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, especially as they relate to Los Angeles and the Lakers, for his Sports Stories newsletter.

Greg Larsen is on the coast of Lake Superior researching my new novel, Tormenta.

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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT US
The 38^th annual Sports Literature Association Conference included the presentation “Baseball and Beloved Community in the Poetry of E. Ethelbert Miller” on June 24.

Singled Out got a starred review in School Library Journal.

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WHERE WE’VE BEEN
Lincoln Mitchell was on Marty Lurie’s show on KNBR discussing The Giants and Their City. He was also on The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen, kibitzing about politics on WNHN.

Andrew Maraniss was interviewed by CNN about Glenn Burke for a story on gay athletes in pro sports. He also spoke about Burke to New York City public school teachers and librarians as part of their Pride Month speaker series, and was keynote speaker for the Tennessee Association of School Librarians summer professional development event.

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WHERE WE’LL BE
Luke Epplin will be doing a virtual talk about Our Team with the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 5 at 2 p.m. EST. Register here.

“Baseball and Beloved Community in the Poetry of E. Ethelbert Miller” will be presented at the virtual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference on July 23.

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GET SHOPPING
Look at that cute little baby! Okay, there’s no baby. But imagine that cute little baby in such an adorable onesie. Because you like baseball and you want your babies to like baseball and starting them off early like this is just the right thing to do. Head over to the PBBC shop for all sorts of goodness like this.