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.
Bill Nowlin has done many things. He was SABR’s vice president for a dozen years. He has written more than 1,000 articles for the society, including some 700 for the BioProject. He co-founded Rounder Records, which put out the Grammy-winning Robert Plant-Alison Krauss “Raising Sand” album. Mostly, though, he writes books about the Red Sox. Topics include the Babe and Fenway Park, Tom Yawkey and Johnny Pesky. Also, Ted Williams. Like, a lot about Ted Williams. Adding to the pantheon (which includes examinations of Williams’ time in San Diego ad Williams at wartime), Bill now offers “The Kid” Blasts a Winner, an examination of every one of Williams’ 110 game-winning home runs. Just because it’s the kind of book only a Red Sox die-hard would conceive doesn’t mean it’s not endlessly fascinating.
Bill himself tells us how that is so. Read on.
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ASK AN AUTHOR
Bill Nowlin
“The Kid” Blasts a Winner: Ted Williams’ 110 Game-Deciding Home Runs (Summer Game Books)
What’s your book about?
In his book, The Science of Hitting, Ted Williams wrote: “I had a higher percentage of game-winning home runs than Babe Ruth.” When I read that, I thought to myself, “Really? I’ve got to look into this.” I ended up with a book examining every home run Ted Williams hit that provided the game-winning run. There were 110 of them.
Why this book? Why now?
This is my seventh book on Ted Williams (with another in the works). He was a childhood hero, and I’ve always found him fascinating. Ted Williams At War looked at his military career. Ted Williams—First Latino in the Baseball Hall of Fame looked at his family background. It was nice to write a book focused on his hitting.
What’s one noteworthy thing you learned?
How much of a clutch homer hitter Eddie Murray was. He’s the only hitter who had a higher game-winning-homer percentage than Williams.
How long did the book take?
I plunged in and wrote it in a couple of months by writing up each of the 110 games in question for SABR’s Games Project, then encapsulated them while providing context for the book itself.
How was this process different from your other books?
Everything was cut and dried. To see if Williams had a higher percentage of game-winning homers than Babe Ruth required simple math. For Williams, 110 of his 521 home runs—21.11 percent—provided the winning run. For Ruth, it was 126 of 714, or 17.65%—a considerable difference.
This book isn’t about math, though, it’s the story of each of Williams’ game-winners. I wrote up each of the 110 homers in the context of the games they won.
Did you receive any notable outside help in pulling the manuscript together?
Tom Ruane of Retrosheet was very helpful in pulling together lists for me. I’ve never developed the skill of working with large databases. With access to all of Retrosheet’s data, Tom was able to provide me with several essential lists. That’s how I learned that Eddie Murray’s 23.02 percentage of game-winners (116 of 504 career homers) ranks first among the 500-home run club, with Williams at No. 2. Surprisingly, Ruth is only No. 16. Tom has been helpful with other SABR projects as well.
You mentioned another Ted Williams book in the works. What is that one about?
The working title is Ted & Jimmy. It focuses on Williams’s work leading early efforts to raise funds to fight cancer in children. When Williams first became a leading supporter of the work done by Dr. Sidney Farber at Boston Children’s Hospital, the notion of chemotherapy to treat cancer was mocked by many in the medical establishment. Having a celebrity like Williams support his efforts helped Dr. Farber become “the father of chemotherapy,” and no doubt saved many lives.
Buy “The Kid” Blasts a Winner here.
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NOW UP AT PBBCLUB.COM
Angels beat writer Jeff Fletcher was on hand for every moment of Shohei Ohtani’s MVP season as baseball’s greatest two-way player, and he leverages that insider access in Sho-Time. In Ohtani’s first two-way game of the 2021 season, he threw a pitch at 100 mph and hit a homer that left his bat at 115 mph, then went on to become the only player ever selected as an All Star as both pitcher and hitter, and became a member of Time 100’s most influential people of 2021. Along the way, Fletcher weaves in the history of two-way players, including Babe Ruth and unsung Negro Leagues players like “Bullet” Joe Rogan, Martín Dihigo, and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, as well as the Japanese athletes who preceded Ohtani in the majors. Jeff is interviewed here by Dan Good, author of Playing Through the Pain.
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TWITTER, MAN.
Some of this week’s highlights …
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BOOK DEAL UPDATE!
Dale Tafoya (Billy Ball) will have a book out in April from University of Nebraska Press: “One Season in Rocket City: How the 1985 Huntsville Stars Brought Minor League Baseball Fever to Alabama.” Sandy Alderson, president of the New York Mets and former A’s general manager, wrote the foreword. Also, Billy Ball will be released in paperback in March.
Also, our long, national nightmare is over: Paul Aron‘s The Lineup: Ten Books That Changed Baseball has finally been published by McFarland. Check it out!
And for another upcoming book, Jason Cannon (Charlie Murphy) continued work on his dual-biography about teenage friends Willie McCovey and Billy Williams. Last week he spent the afternoon with Allison McCovey, Willie’s daughter, and Orlando Cepeda, along with several other members of McCovey’s family, to talk about Stretch. He also met with former Giant Masanori Murakami, the first Japanese player in Major League Baseball, to get his unique perspective on playing with McCovey and the diversity within the Giants clubhouse during the 1964 and 1965 seasons.
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WHERE WE’VE BEEN
Rob Elias and Peter Dreier were interviewed about their books, Baseball Rebels and Major League Rebels for the Baseball & BBQ Podcast.
John Shea talked about Long Schott on 95.7 the Game in the Bay Area.
Luke Epplin went onto the Productive Discourse podcast to talk about Our Team.
Clayton Trutor discussed Loserville on 92.9 The Game in Atlanta, and on 99.1 The Hoss in Edmonton, Kentucky (where he also opined about ’90s sitcoms).
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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT US
Red Barber got a nice write-up in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
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WHAT ELSE WE’RE DOING
Lincoln Mitchell (The Giants and Their City) went onto WABC TV in New York to discuss the upcoming midterm elections. (Segment begins at minute 6:25.) He wrote about how California secession for the San Francisco Examiner.
Robert Whiting (Tokyo Junkie) was quoted in a Washington Post story about Shohei Ohtani.
Clayton Trutor (Loserville) wrote about one of Palm Springs’ all-time characters in “They Called HIm Gypsy Boots” for Palm Springs Life:, and about “The Ten Most Beautiful Voices in AAC Men’s Basketball Coaching History” for SB Nation.
Jim Overmyer (Cum Posey and Queen of the Negro Leagues) contributed another edition to the SABR Games Project, about the second Negro Leagues East-West All-Star Game of 1947, played at the Polo Grounds.
Andrew Forbes (The Only Way is the Steady Way) would like to send a shout-out to the woman with the young child waiting for her takeout order in a restaurant in Sorrento, Italy, who pointed to his son’s cap and said, “Toronto Blue Jays, yes?” and to tell her that he bears her no ill will for subsequently positing that they played hockey.
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WHERE WE’LL BE
July 22-23: If you are in Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, stop by Willis Monie Books on Main Street where Tim Neverett (Covid Curveball) and Erik Sherman (Two Sides of Glory) will be signing copies of their books. 4 to 6 p.m. on July 22, and 5 to 8 p.m. on July 23.
Aug. 3: Rob Elias will discuss Baseball Rebels and Major League Rebels in person, as part of Manny’s Mission Summer of Knowledge Series in San Francisco.
is available on Amazon.com,
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