Major League Books

A historical and statistical must! END

While those are certainly convenient benchmarks, they arbitrarily overlook what came before as somehow "irrelevant" or not "modern". David Nemec's book proves that baseball is a story of gradual evolution, rather than an overnight coming of age. It can be argued that modern baseball began in 1871, the year that the first professional baseball (or Base Ball) league began play. The National Association of Base Ball Players officially recognized baseball as a business -- even if the Supreme Court still refuses to do so. Players were openly paid to play what many had argued was an amateur sport of gentlemen, clubs, exercise, and grand feasts. The NA had its share of problems -- gambling, contract-jumping, rowdiness, and organizational chaos. Teams came and went -- Philadelphia had three separate teams in 1875. One team, the Boston Red Stockings, was dominant in a field of teams with questionable talent. All a team needed to do was pay a $10 fee and they were in the association. Hence teams from Chicago and Boston were forced to play squads from Middletown (Connecticut), Fort Wayne (Indiana) and Keokuk (Iowa).

The National League of 1876 changed all of that. Unlike its predecessor, it centered around teams, not players. It instituted reforms such as the hated reserve clause and territorial rights and market threshholds. Gambling was not tolerated. Nor were Sunday games or beer at the park.

Baseball evolved over the following decades into the "modern" game that historians pick up from 1900. Batters were no longer out if their hits were caught after one bounce. Three strikes -- not four -- resulted in an out, while four balls -- instead of nine -- lead to a walk. Home plate became five-sided, and the pitcher's box was replaced by the familiar mound. This compensated for the move of the pitcher from 45 to 60 feet, 6 inches from the plate.

Nineteenth-century baseball also had its share of heros and characters. Cap Anson, who became the first player to amass 3,000 hits, was the primary figure behind the drawing of the racial color line to haunt the game for decades. Other greats included Dan Brouthers, Cal McVey, "King" Kelly, Wilbert Robinson, and so on.

Nemec's book captures the development of the game quite well through his season-by-season accounts from 1871 to 1900, showing the evolution of the rules of the game and the major events of each season. The book is liberally peppered with rare team and player photographs. Most importantly, the book is a virtual clearinghouse of statistics for nineteeth-century players.

Now for a few criticisms. While Nemec's style is chatty, with plenty of sidebars detailing unusual characters and trivia about nineteeth-century episodes, the text clearly reflects Nemec's passion for statistics. Some episodes revolve around debates over batting averages or pitching numbers that occured over a century after the fact. Nemec focuses on his personal disputes with accepted statistics, which is fine to a point, but he gets carried away with his "findings".

Also, while he spends a good deal of time on the changing nature of the rules of the game from year to year -- which is quite eye-opening -- he spends little time on some of the other, more subtle changes off the record books that were equally important. No mention is made of the development of modern equipment, such as masks or gloves, or how this affected the game or led to the changing of the rules. No discussions involved the way in which ballparks evolved, how baseball coverage changed, or how baseball became a truly modern business with expanding numbers and types of fans.

Having said all this, this is the most comprehensive and systematic treatment of nineteenth-century baseball yet compiled. If nothing else, this book's significance may lie in forging the path for other books to follow and expand upon its scope.

It is amazing how some people look at Japan and see what is not there. For instance, one reviewer on this book said how most "Japanese players never had much real education, as high schools were more like minor leagues, so the player mostly read mangas (comic strips) on bus rides."

Mangas are much more than comic strips. They are books, written by adults largely for an adult audience. Business people with degrees read mangas.

In fact, the ignorance of Japanese culture reflects in many unfortunate incidences between Japanese citizens and American citizens. Mr. Cromartie's slugging of a pitcher more than illustates this point.

Baseball in Japan is brutal. They burn out their pitchers, for instance, rather than rotate them. In this book you'll see that Warren Cromartie started out his first season first as the hero that was going to save his team, then as the first half of the season wore on he was viewed by the press as a bum who wasn't worth the money they paid for him (Japanese players were, and maybe still are, paid very low salaries for the receipts they bring in for their owners). He then became a hero who batted very well on the second half of the season. Did Mr. Cromartie improve his batting? Perhaps. But more than likely by the second half the season the pitchers in Japan had worn out their arms, and could no longer throw as well.

Get this to learn Japanese culture, Japanese baseball, and one man's confusion and eventual acceptance of both.

Cromartie came back to the States and played his last season with the Royals as a pinch hitter/1B and finished the season with a .307 average as a part time player.

Get this book. It's worth it.

Cromartie came back to the States and played his last season with the Royals as a pinch hitter/1B and finished the season with a .307 average as a part time player.

Get this book. It's worth it.

I grew up watching Warren Cromartie play for the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants during the late `80s. Cromartie was one of very few gaijin players who left a great impact, not only by the way he played the game, but also by his cocky attitude and behavior. For the Japanese media who love to stereotype American players as brashly self-arrogant, lazy, and powerful, Cromartie was such a perfect fit. Of course, they would not report on his side of story, this biography may be of a greater interest for those who viewed him as a gaijin those days. To me, the reader may miss the most interesting points if she just reads this book just as an account of "bizarre" experiences that an American went through in one of the most exotic places in the world.

With the presence of such colorful personalities as the manager Sadaharu Oh (whose career homerun record of 868 surpasses the American counterpart), his teammates, and old-fashioned traditionalists who would be labeled downright racists in many other civilized nations, the story never seems to bore the reader.

Unlike many other player biographies ghost written by mediocre sport writers, this is surprisingly an engaging book. Robert Whiting does a great job of incorporating his own views on cultural disparities between Japan and America into Cromartie's endeavor as a gaijin player. Many opinions expressed in the book overlap Whiting's other works on baseball, such as "You Gotta Have Wa" and "The Chrysanthemum and the Bad," but "Slugging It Out in Japan" is probably the most emotionally involved pieces of all.

As an added bonus, I met the author last year when my wife & I went to Baltimore to see the Rangers play there. Brett and some friends were coming back from Cooperstown for the HOF induction ceremony, and were in Baltimore to see the Orioles play. He himself told me about the book, and we had a few moments talking about the Phillies, as we're both from there. I wish I would have already read the book at this point, but Brett was a great guy to meet in person, too!

This book is now out of print. This is unfortunate as it should be required reading for all fans of Baseball. I would make two recommendations to Mark Winegardner if a reprint is on the horizon- 1) Add photographs to the next edition. Ideas: Tony in his player's uniform, Tony at the gravesite of the Ohio born HOF'er, Tony's wedding pictures, Tony w/ Mike Schmidt, etc. 2) Add an index at the back listing people covered in the book w/ page numbers.

Also, pull out the book while watching a game on TV, the pitching charts for both the pitcher and hitter add an enjoyable twist to the game.