Now, for the fun part...

Book signing Thursday evening will be cool...

There are those writers who are shy, reserved and soft-spoken, uncomfortable making eye contact with readers, nervous about what they might slip and say. There are others who insist on being heard, often at maximum volume, like a Steven A. Smith. Nobody’s ever asked what the “A” stands for but I could offer a guess.

Then there are those writers who like meeting readers, don’t mind a little feedback, who see this whole writing-reading process, particularly with a daily Substack, as a sort of circular thing, we share similar interests, after all.

One might write with an audience in mind, like if I was writing about Florida State baseball, I would be pretty sure the oh-so-devoted Animals of Section B would probably give it the once-over and sometimes, they’d write back. So I would put myself in the third category, where I would probably prefer to be read rather than heard but I can adapt. As for maximum volume, I have two choices: BOLD or italic.

Writing books is pretty much the same process except this time the writer usually has spent a long-ass time researching, writing, editing, fine-tuning a book, then waiting, waiting, waiting for so long that when the damn thing finally comes out, you’re alternately excited, relieved and also curious to see if your audience finds in your work what made you write it in the first place. That’s why Book Signings are fun.

As you can see from the illustration above, Thursday night gives me a chance, in a wonderful setting at Midtown Reader, (hint: They have PIE!) to talk about my latest book, “Diamond Duels” - a book that I hope is as much fun to read as it was to write.

What I think makes the book unusual is if you are a baseball fan, even a modest watcher of the game, you’ll know the cast: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, David Ortiz, Derek Jeter, Stan Musial, Pedro Martinez, Sandy Koufax.

What you don’t know, I’ll wager, are the specifics of these players’ major-league baseball career. That a former Negro League curveballer named Sam “Toothpick” Jones so confounded Stan Musial that he held him to a .122 lifetime average. Or that Musial faced Milwaukee Braves’ Hall of Fame lefthander Warren Spahn 356 lifetime at bats — almost a whole major-league season of at bats against one pitcher!

Or that Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski, my favorite player growing up, could not solve the left-handed offerings of one Darold Knowles, who held Yaz, a Hall of Famer, to a sorry .077 (2-for-26). Even though Yaz played 23 major-league seasons and had more lifetime at bats than just about anybody not named Pete Rose, some lefties he couldn’t figure out. Knowles was one of them.

There’s some variety in “Diamond Duels” as well. A long chapter comparing Ted Wiliams and Joe DiMaggio on the field as well as how each one was covered by the media. Chapters on Pete Rose and Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson, the Mathewson chapter just might be the most intriguing in the book.

You see, Mathewson, an early baseball folk hero who once threw three shutouts in a single World Series, actually took a turn as a journalist in 1919, covering the World Series for the New York Times. That Series, as we now know, was fixed. Yet Mathewson’s stories downplayed the possibility of a rigged Series. Which was odd because there were so many pre-Series stories about the games not being on the level, writer Hugh Fullerton enlisted Mathewson to keep a separate scorecard to mark down questionable plays, which he willingly did. So he KNEW something was up, just didn’t write it in the newspaper.

Then, in my research, I came upon a YouTube video about the great baseball book “The Glory of Their Times” and I uncover an interview with Mathewson’s old roommate Rube Marquard. The first words out of his mouth are about what a gambler Mathewson was, how he always carried at least $1,000 in cash (this is 1905-1908 or so) along with a pair of dice and a deck of cards and that he’d seen him lose as much as $7-800 dollars in a night. This cast that World Series “coverage” in quite a different light, didn’t it?

You can read all about Pedro Martinez’s extraordinary 1999 season and his incredible All-Star Game appearance in Boston, a comparison between Lefty Grove and Sandy Koufax, a chapter examining the game’s strongest 3-4 combos (no, it ain’t Roger Maris/Mickey Mantle.)

Did you know the great Hank Aaron started his career 1-for-23 against the Dodgers’ side-arming fireballer Don Drysdale, who was not adverse to knocking a hitter down, sometimes twice in an at bat. He threatened Hank, never actually hit him and once he figured him out, Aaron wound up hitting 17 home runs off him, the most he got off any pitcher. This is what I mean by particulars.

So for all of my loyal readers out there, those curious about the book or those who like pie, hope you can swing by Midtown Reader, say hello. I’ll have a little slide show to open the event, take questions and sign books and chat with everybody who takes the time to come by. I’m really looking forward to it. Hope you are, too.

See you then!!! NOGO