As keen observers of the book publishing calendar know, Father’s Day is also America’s unofficial baseball book season. (Full disclosure: I participated in this ritual once.)
This year is no different. I like using this space to highlight the many different entry points from which fans arrive at baseball, taking careful pains to note there is no right or wrong way to consume the game: nostalgia for some, date nights for others, printed box scores for the rest of us.
Here are three books released this month that offer a little something for everyone:
“Game of Edges” by Bruce Schoenfeld
“The problem, though, was the club’s manager at the time … It was hard to imagine him sending an email, let alone sifting through analytical data,” Schoenfield writes. “Much of (the analyst’s) time was spent angling to find a conduit who would present the findings of the analytics team as his own.”
The author could have been reporting from the ground floor of the Oakland Coliseum when he wrote those words – he was around the A’s and Billy Beane during the early 2000’s Moneyball years, after all – but he happened to be writing from Wolverhampton, England. In 2017, the local professional soccer club was in the same throes of change that had swept over North American sports in the preceding decade.
“Game of Edges” is not the umpteenth attempt to update “Moneyball” for a new generation. Its scope is that of both a sequel and a prequel to the Michael Lewis classic, one that explains how analytical thinking came to dominate professional sports (not just baseball) on and off the field. Unsurprisingly, it starts at the top, where men whose net worth routinely runs into the billions came to understand sports franchises as high-reward business ventures and not mere toys.
The Dodgers figure into this narrative, though not explicitly as a baseball vanguard. “Game of Edges” helps contextualize all their novel non-baseball business dealings, such as its startup accelerator program and its blueprint to “revolutionize the fan experience.” The book offers a holistic look at how the business of sports changed the professional expression of the games themselves.
The implication is obvious: Pro sports teams no longer operate with the singular pursuit of winning, despite the lip service every owner pays to every fan’s grand ideal. If that ever struck you as odd, this is an essential read.
“Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption” by Michael T. Friedman
Beginning with Camden Yards (Baltimore) in 1992, and ending with the opening of American Family Field (Milwaukee) and PNC Park (Pittsburgh) in 2001, the league witnessed a new trend: the opening of 12 retro-inspired, forward-thinking “mallparks.” Another nine opened from 2003-12. What can we learn from this era?
Bud Selig was MLB’s commissioner for the duration of that period. He often reminded audiences that baseball was a “social institution.” The downtown ballpark boom fit that concept, bringing people together at a central location – not an isolated, cookie-cutter mausoleum – for the purpose of consumption both inside and outside the ballpark.
Within these ballparks, Friedman argues, we see a forced stratification of social classes that did not exist in previous eras: “Mallparks eliminated thousands of seats in distant locations with low-priced tickets that were accessible to working-class fans, as they emphasized consumption activities for upper-class patrons and corporate executives with upgraded amenities and experiences in exclusive suites and club sections.”
And what to make of the “ballpark village” ideal that took the Atlanta Braves out of Atlanta, and nearly took root in Oakland before John Fisher forced the A’s into a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas? After extracting a few lessons in architecture, economics and history from baseball’s recent past, “Mallparks” predicts a future tension between the cities and the suburbs for the next wave of ballpark construction.
“(Truist Park)’s designers seem similar to those of the urban planners who produced the raze-and-rebuild urban renewal schemes of the mid-20th century and the Disney ‘imagineers’ producing hermetically sealed theme parks and wholly formed, corporately governed towns. … It would not be surprising that as teams receive development control over the neighborhoods surrounding stadiums, they also attempt to impose a similarly ordered ersatz urban environment.”
“Penguin Power” by Ron Cey with Ken Gurnick
A six-time All-Star in a 17-year career (1971-87), Cey drew walks and hit home runs at a rate that would put him right at home in today’s game. He spent 15 seasons in the Dodgers’ organization in all, sharing 1981 World Series MVP honors with teammates Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager.
This memoir serves as a useful link to the team’s past, recalling anecdotes from a time when Walter and Peter O’Malley truly ran the club like the family business it was. “From the mid-1950s until the mid-1990s,” Cey wrote, “every player that wore the Dodgers uniform owed a debt to at least one of them or, in my case, all three” of Al Campanis, Tommy Lasorda, or Walter Alston.
Cey is an ideal candidate to chronicle the Los Angeles portion of the Dodgers’ history. He continued to work for the organization for more than 25 years after he retired, primarily on the business side. He’s a visible face around the ballpark for meet-and-greets – and why not? Cey is affable and seemingly knows everybody.
Some of his contemporaries have seen and done more in the game (Dusty Baker perhaps chief among them). Still, it makes for good reading when you can count Wilt Chamberlain among your friends, you can recollect spring trainings spent with Sandy Koufax, and you were staying in the San Juan Hotel in December 1972 not far from where Roberto Clemente’s plane crashed. Cey pulls back the curtain on these moments, as well as some memorable one-on-one conversations with teammates, managers, and Campanis.
On June 23, the Dodgers will celebrate the 50th anniversary of “The Infield” – the quartet of Cey, Bill Russell, Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey. Cey recalls how the group came up together in the minor leagues and eventually found their way into franchise history. It’s a useful recollection; Russell and Lopes never wrote autobiographies about their playing careers. Garvey did, but that book was published in 1986.
There is a back-in-my-day undercurrent to Cey’s writing, but it avoids the trap of persistent bitterness. “I don’t remember as much talk about (Jackie) Robinson’s impact when I was a young player as there is today,” he writes. “Baseball seemed to realize it needed to revisit this achievement and recognize its magnitude.”
Kudos to Gurnick for putting the “pen” in “Penguin.”