Reading the Game

Baseball is a lot of fun to read about. Having never gone in for team sports, being a dedicated baseball fan, and appreciating the myth-making that accompanies this most literary of sports, I relish any behind-the-scenes book that promises not to be too technical.

Jim Brosnan's groundbreaking diary, The Long Season, and its follow-up, Pennant Race, check all the boxes. The Long Season chronicles the ups and downs of Brosnan's 1959 season with the St. Louis Cardinals. He's neither the star nor the goat. He's more erudite than his teammates, but still a regular guy (although that's not strictly true, given that only 1 in 5 players who are drafted and signed ever play in the major leagues -- and being drafted and signed is a long shot, too). And he isn't afraid to tell the truth about playing major league baseball every day. 

There's a lot of insider stuff here: jokes, funny situations, career worries, stories about famous players, and the like. Heroic, it isn't. It's a clear window into the daily grind of all those games and the ups and downs of a professional career where major successes and failures take place in public, subject to immediate commentary by teammates, opponents, broadcasters, and fans, and slightly delayed analysis and commentary by anyone and everyone. 

Brosnan's teammates call him Professor. His wife calls him Meat. That pretty much sums up the range of experiences offered in this seasonal diary.

Pennant Race is Brosnan's follow-up memoir, looking back at the 1961 season. The book wisely ends on a high note, with the National League championship, leaving out the Cincinnati Reds' loss in the World Series. Filled with anecdotes, jokes, astute observations, and the day-in, day-out rituals of professional baseball, it's more of the same, in a good way.

Excerpt (from The Long Season, just after Brosnan has been traded to the Reds):

The phone rang. [My wife} said, "Cincinnati, again. Gabe Paul. Who's he?"

Gabe Paul, the general manager of the Reds, wished me well, welcomed me aboard, and demanded to know why I wasn't in Chicago for the two o'clock game with the Cubs. His assurances that he was happy to  have me on his club were tempered with several phrases of displeasure. Where was my enthusiasm? Wasn't I as happy as he was? Why hadn't I hopped the first plan to Wrigley Field? His speech was succinct, his voice crisply modulated, his telephone manner formidable. "This guy can really talk," I thought. . . . 

Paul and I sparred for a few minutes; he parried my belated request for permission to report a day late. I answered his question about enthusiasm with an unnecessary blurb about the great opportunity it was to be associated with him. He feigned modesty, and urged me to grab opportunity when it came my way. "Don't vacillate," he said. 

Good God in the foothills! A general manager who uses the word "vacillate." That's enough to give anybody enthusiasm. We hustled out of town.