Baseball DIY

Several baseball titles have caught my eye recently, for very different reasons. Thomas Oliphant has Praying for Gil Hodges, a memoir of the 1955 World Series. This was the year the Brooklyn Dodgers won and Hodges was a King. Oliphant apparently includes not only a breakdown of Game 7 but also looks into the impact of the game on the fans. I'm such a sucker for baseball history that this is pretty much a must-buy for me, but throw in Hodges and it is impossible to resist. Doris Kearns Goodwin calls it a "small masterpiece" in a jacket blurb and she's no slouch herself when it comes to the game. Looks like a surefire winner.

Howard Bryant is a columnist for the Boston Herald and has already written a very well received book on race and the Red Sox. His new book, Juicing the Game asserts that owners knew about the rampant steriod abuse in MLB and turned a blind eye in order to lure fans back after the strike. They wanted McGwire, Canseco and the rest to hit home runs, no matter the cost, because the fans like home runs. This is shaping up to be the biggest book of the season and I hope that it achieves the kind of popularity it deserves. Fans need to reconsider just what the game is supposed to be about: home runs, or actual strategy and sport. This all reminds of hockey and the days when brawls and fights were the lure for a lot of fans as opposed to the Gretsky style of precision skating. The message in both sports was pretty clear: pick your game folks, and remember that you get what you deserve.

Which means of course that Canseco was all our fault. Crap.