The Nation's Pulse/Nine for Baseball
Gold, Victor
THE NATION'S PULSE NINE FOR BASEBALL* A s a cultural genre, the insider's baseball diary came into its own not with Jim Bouton's Ball Four (as New. York literary scholars would have us believe),...
...What good indeed, considering the nagging vicissitudes of a big-time baseball career...
...oor Billy, born thirty years too 1 soon...
...No comprehension THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 27 s Autumn's Lowest Priced Ticket To You'll think you're there ..Sterling to the radio with Champs-I:N.80o...
...I had to be careful not to get bogged down with all that s--t...
...Page 7. "Hey, I admit I'm not a home run hitter...
...Martin, of course, is the star witness in that regard...
...Asked for a critique, Cardinal manager Solly Hemus peevishly replied, "If you think the book is funny, you should see the guy pitch...
...Billy was gone...
...Nails: The Inside Story of an Amazin' Season, by Lenny Dykstra with Marty Noble...
...Four times hired, four times fired by Steinbrenner—maybe five, if Lou Piniella falters in the season's autumn money months—Martin devotes this, his second book of Billy-lore, to his career as a manager for Oakland, Texas, Minnesota, Detroit, the Yankees, etc...
...a draconian response by modern lights, one sure to bring on arbitration, litigation, and editorial castigation from the para-sociologists of contemporary sports journalism...
...I guess he got what I got—instant fame...
...So it is that, by 1987 standards, Brosnan's seminal work, with nary a reference to labor-management problems, renegotiated contracts, or drug rehab, reads like booster material from the Commissioner's office...
...Trades s--k, man, unless you go someplace where you get a better chance to play...
...Ah, those Belle Epoque summers of the 1950s, before the advent of the counter-cultural enlightenment...
...Scott ain't s--t, Scott ain't s--t" over a nine-inning span might not get to the Houston pitcher, but it does tell American provincials who visit the Animal Kingdom that, at some point since Casey Stengel's tenure as manager of the lovable early Mets, New York sports fans stepped over the line from simple arrogance to errant slobbery...
...No denying, however, that as a player Billy the Kid produced when it counted, submerging his ego in the team concept prevalent in those years...
...Recorded entirely in idiomatic French by a team of top European broadcasters, Champs-Elysees features conversation about::urrent affairs, travel, thE., arts and entertainment along with interviewws,:and a sampling of today's best contemporary French music...
...Is there no compassion in the philistine Yankee front office...
...Stephen Greene Press, $15.95...
...TO: Champs-Elysies, Dept...
...though not popular enough to survive the publicity fallout from what came to be known as the Copacabana Incident...
...But '85, you see, was the year the Mets were supposed to win the National League pennant and the Series—a strong enough premise for an advance on a baseball diary for a player in the Big Apple, if not one in the Middle American hinterlands...
...But some people—some a ------ s—think I'm too small to hit any home runs...
...Big-time...
...or, to be fair to that city's civilized minority, the particular demographic segment of New York City that now makes attendance at Met games a venture into the Animal Kingdom...
...He'd just say, 'Hey, I screwed up...
...It All-New York...
...Nails," who came to the Mets from Southern California ("The Padres were horse---- when I was growing up"), ponders the lot of other ballplayers, like Alan Wiggins ("I guess he got f----d up with drugs for a while") and his friend, Billy Beane, traded to the Minnesota Twins: Page 15...
...Clearly, Brosnan's account of locker-room life with a bunch of losers was bound to provoke a backlash...
...Maybe after a special game that we won, or I won, I'd go out with a couple of players and have a beer or two...
...specialist or playing with a different team, "Nails," with his boyish Huck Finn looks, might have made the Wheaties box as the All-American role model...
...For another, Dykstra has what his publicist calls "play-hard-and-getdirty" style, an image that he cultivates not by off-the-field nightclub scuffling but by demeanor and, as his double-X-rated diary of the 1986 season shows, his language...
...That's kinda what made it all so crazy—me hitting a home run...
...Doubleday, $15.95...
...Words are exchanged with a group of loudmouths at the next table...
...Hey, it's a great time to make money...
...Consider: Billy is celebrating his 29th birthday, a night on the town at one of Manhattan's glitz spas, with Ford, Mickey Mantle, Hank Bauer, and their wives...
...If they meant for it to sell in the Animal Kingdom, some New York editor obviously f----d up...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987...
...The Kid...
...S--t, it was so crazy...
...Extra Innings: For fans whose interest in the national pastime isn't limited to the ecstasies and agonies of New York players and managers, Rocket Man, Roger Clemens's story of the rise and inevitable collapse of the 1986 Boston Red Sox, is recommended reading, along with the McCaffrey brothers' Players' Choice, a unique survey that finds 600 major leaguers voting on their all-time favorite players...
...Short takes from the Book of "Nails": Page I. "So there was Wally on first, and the Astros were p----d big-time...
...third, he defied all sports convention by choosing to write the book himself...
...Dell $3.95...
...that what we have here is an athlete in mid-career crisis, crying out, "Stop me, before I brawl again...
...And I heard it might have screwed up his life a little, all the instant fame...
...Facts on File, $16.95...
...If at First . . ., by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan...
...There is the odor, of course, the smell of the crowd—wafting marijuana smoke and cascading beer—and the home field chants (though grunts would seem a more appropriate term...
...What happened in 1985, however, was that the Cardinals—or as "Nails" would have it, "the f- ---- g Cardinals"—got hot, and denied the Mets and their budding authors a place in the sun...
...Playing in New York in 1985, however, Hernandez got a book offer—as did Mets manager Davey Johnson—at the outset of the season, before the team had won anything...
...If something like that were to happen to a young athlete who played on a championship team today —say, in Shea Stadium—the Incident would get him a standing ovation when he took his first turn at the plate, after a meeting with Commissioner Peter Ueberroth (a $500 fine) and an appearance in court (thirty days of community service, lecturing inner-city youth gangs on the social evil of rumbling in nightclubs...
...He was doing commercials...
...He was Stengel's favorite, a hustling overachiever popular with both his teammates and the fans...
...I heard he was ina TV movie...
...Say, until the end of the 1955 season when, after winning six world championships in succession, 1949-54, Stengel's Yankees finally lost a seven-game Series to the Brooklyn Dodgers...
...Why "Nails...
...Instead, given the simplistic sports ethic of the Eisenhower era, Martin was summarily traded from the Yankees to Kansas City within a month of the Incident...
...The point is made, I think, that Lenny Dykstra, as those who follow the Mets already know, has a dirty mouth, both literally and figuratively...
...Others protested Brosnan's irreverent style, arguing that his portrayal of his Cardinal teammates as something less than ideal role models *Billy Ball, by Billy Martin and Phil Pepe...
...My offhand guess: long enough for Master George to find sufficient cause to fire a field foreman with the audacity to get more sports page coverage than his boss...
...But you've got to be careful not to let everything get in the way...
...A one-punch fight takes place in a hallway...
...Page 2. "The passed ball had to worry Smith, too...
...Trades can s--k...
...The catch, however—sign of the times and place—is that the audience Dykstra plays to isn't All-American...
...Finally, there is Gary Carter's inside view of the game and what he and his collaborator saw as A Dream Season...
...Enough...
...I was real careful to stay in condition...
...For one thing, the nickname "Kid" had already been pre-empted by a teammate with seniority, Gary Carter...
...Players' Choice, by Eugene V. and Roger A. McCaffrey...
...Victor Gold is The American Spectator's new National Correspondent...
...But he does take time along the way to evoke memories of his playing days in the fifties, as when he describes a teammate: "As a player," writes Martin of Whitey Ford, "nothing ever bothered him...
...rin wo of this season's crop of base-1 ball books, Billy Martin's Billyball and Whitey Ford's Slick, are redolent of the good old days, when the worst offense committed by a member of the Yankee organization against public sensibility was the field manager's syntax...
...Baseball traditionalists, beyond even those of the Sportswriters' Ghost & Collaborators Guild, took offense...
...In the nearly three decades since The Long Season pierced the locker room wall, the spit-and-tell player's chronicle has become a publishing cliche, sometimes banal, other times titillating, but taken as a pop art form, a fair reflection of the state of the game...
...Readers at this point, early in the book, will begin to detect a certain lay wall repetition to Dykstra's narrative of what went through his mind during the Mets' championship season...
...If I played for the Mets," a visiting Houston Astro said early this season, "I'd draw the line on my wife and kids coming to a ball game...
...Box 158067 Nashville, TN 37215-8067 Do not sent cash...
...Louis Cardinals of the late 1950s, a forlorn club with a less-than-compelling story line...
...In another era, with a different P.R...
...Be patient, however...
...He is, by reputation, the biggest hot dog in the league, a chronic grandstander, showboat, and bow-taker...
...A Dream Season, by Gary Carter and John Hough, Jr...
...The press picks up the story and the birthday boy gets blamed for starting it all...
...If you had to win one game, you wanted Whitey pitching for you...
...Slick: My Life In and Around Baseball, by Whitey Ford with Phil Pepe...
...Subscribe now and receive the Autumn '87-Spring '88 series (a total of 14 editions) for just $118...
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...Amazing, truly amazing...
...Or, if you prefer, order only the Autumn '87 series for $69 (7 editions...
...If he messed up and lost a game, you'd never hear him complain, you'd never hear him alibi, you'd never hear by Victor Gold him blame anybody else for losing...
...Morrow, $16.95...
...Keith Hernandez was part of a World Series-winning team as a Cardinal in 1982, but no book was forthcoming...
...Dwight Gooden's Dr...
...And if he startedthinking back to how we came from behind to beat them a couple of times in the regular season, he must have realized he was getting into some serious s--t...
...A tape of Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York" is spun between innings, but the true Zeitgeist of the scene would be more accurately captured by random selections from the repertoire of thelate, lamented Sid Vicious or any passing skinhead group...
...He never had an ego...
...York literary scholars would have us believe), but a decade earlier, in 1960, with Jim Brosnan's The Long Season...
...the exciting audio-magazine from France...
...In Tennessee and Alaska call collect: 615-383-8534 Print Name Address City/State/Zip Tennessee residents add 7.75% sales tax...
...Rocket Man.- The Roger Clemens Story, by Roger Clemens with Peter Gammon...
...Indeed, one can only wonder how long Casey Stengel might have lasted as Yankee manager had George Steinbrenner been the team's plantation owner in those years...
...198Z CHAMPS-ELYSEES, INC...
...You've still got a family and a career...
...Brosnan, easily the most literate baseball player in the history of the game—a category that includes not only Bouton but ex-minor league infielder Mario Cuomo—gave fans a witty yet candid view of the national pastime in a book that broke new ground for jock letters in three areas: first, the author didn't wear a New York uniform...
...for American youth did the country a disservice...
...Bats: The Man Behind the Miracle, by Davey Johnson with Peter Golenbock...
...If there is a baseball team on today's scene that attracts the national media attention the Yankees drew in the 1950s it is the Mets, and if there is a latter-day equivalent of scrappy Billy Martin it is the Mets' Lenny Dykstra, called "Nails" by teammates and fans...
...Doubleday, $16.95...
...1—and who otherwise set the standard for the 1970s and eighties in complaints, alibis, and blame-shifting...
...Please send me ^ Autumn and Spring ^ Autumn only To order by VISA or MasterCard or for more information call: 1-800-824-0829...
...Penguin, $4.95...
...second, he didn't play for a championship team but for the St...
...X3 P.O...
...There are deeper, philosophical ruminations to come, as when "Nails" contemplates the fate of another young New York baseball star, the Yankees' Bucky Dent: Page 10...
...I'll get them next time.' " An interesting character study coming from a Billy Martin who, as a manager at least, had/has an ego commensurate with his old Yankee numeral—No...
...K, by Dwight Gooden with Richard Woodley...
...As he comes to the plate—jaw packed, tobacco juice drooling down stubbled chin—there is a calculated vulgarism about him which, unless one understands the public relations context Dykstra works in, is surprising...
...N evertheless, for bad or worse, New York remains New York, the capital of the American publishing world...
...Page 3. "I was rag'd—rag'd means p----d off...
...As aid;Eto comprehension, each 45-minute program conies with a printed French transcription and an extensive French-English vocabulary section...
...And if you f--k up those things, what good is all the money you make...
...But for all that there isn't one—not one—expletive in the Mets catcher's diary...
...K, originally published in 1985 as Rookie, is another publishing redundancy, re-issued to cash in on the "amazing" season (though ill-timed, as it turned out, because of Gooden's drug problem, revealed in 1987 after the book had already gone to press with the following Gooden lines about "the fast life": "This past year, both at home and on the road, I didn't go out much...
...If at First . . . and Johnson's Bats are pocketbook re-issues of diaries covering the 1985 Mets championship yearthat-wasn't, with added chapters covering the winning season that followed...
...It's great to come up in one organization and stay there...
...You'll receive a new issue twice-monthly beginning in early September...
...Bantam, $3.95...
Vol. 20 • September 1987 • No. 9
