My celebration of the game

"Diamond Duels" hits the stores today! Hooray!

The first time I pulled on a baseball uniform was in 9th grade in junior high for the Fairgrounds Jr. High Falcons. It was a miracle I made the team. I never played Little League — we didn’t have Little League in Brookline — and what few skills I had I learned from the Sports Illustrated book on baseball (which I actually brought out to the mound) and from Ted Williams’ book, “The Science of Hitting.”

Getting dressed in the Fairgrounds locker room, I remember figuring out the baseball socks and stirrups was a bit complicated. I needed some help. Once in my green and white uniform, hey, it was a thrill.

I wasn’t left-handed. I thought it was funny.

I wore No. 28, same as big-leaguer Vada Pinson, and I suspect our coach Paul Bellavance kept me because I’d played football for him and always busted my ass (I had to). But it wasn’t until a year later, in the second day of tryouts for the Nashua High JV’s, I realized that there were much better hitters but the one thing I had was a good throwing arm. I lied to our coach, Tony Marandos and told him I was a pitcher. I wasn’t, of course, had no windup or anything but a good arm but he taught me. And I learned. I was his ace, pitched for the varsity for two years, even won a game throwing a single pitch, went on to play American Legion baseball even beat my old high school teammates the one chance I got to pitch against them and struck out the SOB senior who made fun of me in the on-deck circle and was such a jackass.

I mention this today because my second book, “Diamond Duels” hits the stores today and, as a couple of friends who’ve read the book in galleys have already noted, I just love the game. I shared that love with my son, John, who was talented enough to make it all the way to the major leagues. He’s still playing the game. It’s in our blood.

Available now locally at Midtown Reader, Books A Million, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

In some ways, baseball saved me. Coming from Brookline where in a small class I was a smarty pants, once we went to junior high in the city of Nashua, I landed in Division 1-1, the brightest kids at Fairgrounds. I wasn’t at the head of that class, not close. When you’ve always been THE bright one and now, all of a sudden, you ain’t, you have to find something else. I found baseball.

When I hammered a home run in Mr. Bilodeau’s gym class (a lucky swing) and the class went wild, cheering for me, it was then that I decided I was going to become a baseball player. And somehow, I did. Still not sure how.

These thoughts all came back to me this morning as I sat in my living room with a copy of my eighth book, “Diamond Duels” in my hands. I finished the book last summer but with the publishing business, it takes a while for the thing to come out. My copies arrived last week. And even though your name is on the front and once you start to read it, you recognize your sentences, there’s still something shocking, exciting, mind-numbing that you wrote a book.

As I’ve explained a few times, “Diamond Duels” came about because John, playing in the Dominican, had an elderly pitching coach named Phil Regan, a former big leaguer, and the two were going to go play golf. I did some research work to give John some conversational fodder, found a site called “Stathead” and next thing you know, I was up to my nose in historic baseball matchups.

Stan Musial had 356 lifetime at bats against Warren Spahn? What? Whitey Ford had 31 more lifetime starts against the White Sox vs. the archrival Red Sox? What? Carl Yastrzemski, my previous all-time favorite until John arrived, hit .077 (2-for-26) against lefty Darold Knowles? What? Christy Mathewson had a gambling problem and he covered the 1919 World Series for the NY Times and pooh pooed any talk of a fix, all the while keeping a separate scorecard with journalist Hugh Fullerton, marking down questionable plays. WHAT?

As I hope you’ll see if you pick it up, “Diamond Duels” is just chock full of those kinds of baseball tidbits, undiscovered stories, items that will, I think, surprise you as they did me. Gregg Jefferies hit .469 against Pedro Martinez and Frank Thomas (.083 2-for-24 with 11 K’s) did not. George Brett hit .389 against Tom Seaver, .125 against Mike Messina. Joe DiMaggio was 0-for-8 vs. Satchel Paige. Barry Bonds hit 59% of his home runs (450 of 762) with nobody on base. Duke Snider had the most home runs off a single pitcher - 19 - off Robin Roberts. Stuff like that.

There is a long chapter on the Joe DiMaggio vs. Ted Williams rivalry, back-to-back discussions of Mathewson and Pete Rose vs. The Truth, all kinds of fun stuff that, if you love the game, I hope you’ll have as much fun reading this book as much as I did writing it. It’s unusual that when you get to the end of the book, you want to keep going. That was the case with “Diamond Duels.” There’s more out there.

Having done a few books, this is my eighth, it’s always a bit of a shock to hold the finished product in your hands. Sitting here this morning, thinking about that long ago junior high home run, pulling on a uniform for the first time, seeing your son play at Florida State, then later, incredibly, in a major-league uniform, the crowd cheering for him, even printing T-shirts with his name on it, you can’t help but think about all that baseball has brought into your life.

Yeah, it’s brought a lot of disappointment, too. John’s played for six different organizations and I grew up a Boston Red Sox fan so you know that story. But it has brought me and my family so much happiness, so many memories, so many wonderful people into our lives, “Diamond Duels” is, I think now, a celebration of the game, even though that wasn’t something I was thinking about when I wrote the thing.

No, I was thinking about how a pitcher named Ben Cantwell, who once was 4-25, held the great “Rajah” Rogers Hornsby, a .358 lifetime mark, to a .130 (3-for-23) batting average, a pitcher who never struck out more than 57 batters in a single season. How in the world did that happen?

That’s baseball, that’s how. You’ll find out all about it — as I did — in “Diamond Duels.”

John Nogowski will be doing a book signing of “Diamond Duels” at Midtown Reader on March 27 (a Thursday) at 6:30 p.m. Hope to see you! (Thanks for the pic, Deejer)