Three Basebal Books: A Day in the Bleachers; Nine Innings; and Power Ball

Arnold Hano, A Day In the Bleachers
Original publication 1955
This edition Da Capo Press, 1995
© Albert Hano 1955, 1995
ISBN 978-0-307-81332-1

Arnold Hano war a fan of the New York Giants (and, although this book contains an “Afterword,” discussing some of the things that happened to the Giants’ players, he does not discuss what must have been a wrenching event—the Giants’ move to San Francisco before the 1958 season).  And this is a fan’s book.  His view of the game—Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, played at the Polo Grounds in New York against the Cleveland Indians—chronicles his feeling and reactions to the day and to the events of the game. 

Although (obviously) he wrote his chronicle after the fact, he intended it to read as a contemporary account of the game (and, for the most part, succeeds).  He wrote as a life-long Giants fan, and so does not write objectively.  But, from his walk from his home to the Polo Grounds to his final words, he is a Giants fan, and he reacts to the ebb and flow of the game as a Giants fan.  Only occasionally does the tone slip, most prominently in his description of Willie Mays’s amazing catch—and throw—of a ball hit by Vic Wertz, which is now mostly referred to as “the Catch.”  As it must, because we all know that Ways caught Wertz’s drive and then made (even more amazingly) a perfect throw that prevented Al Dark from scoring from second after tagging up.  But his description of the play is breathtaking.

The Catch:
https://www.si.com/mlb/video/2016/03/02-11

As a reader and baseball fan (although one who saw almost no baseball in person until I was nearly 30, and who saw very little even on television, and whose favorite team is one I see only rarely even now), I regard this short book with awe.  It captures both the rhythm of a baseball game, it captures the emotional highs and lows fans experience.  A book that stands the test of time.

The box score may be found here:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1195409290.shtml

Daniel Okrent, Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game
Original publication 1985
This edition Houghton Mifflin, 2000
© Daniel Okrent 1985
ISBN 978-0-618-05669-9

In 1980, Dan Okrent had the idea of attending, and writing about a single baseball game.  Or, more accurately, to think about baseball as seen through the experience of attending a single baseball game.  The game that is the focus of this book was played on June 10, 1982, at Miller Park, in Milwaukee, between the Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles, both teams then members of the American League East division.  Going into the game, the teams had the same record—28-17—and were in contention for the division title (the Brewers ultimately finished first, at 95-67; the Orioles finished 1 game back.

At the time Okrent conceived this project, Pete Palmer and John Thorne were working on their ground-breaking work, The Hidden Game of Baseball (also to be published, as it happens, in 1985).  And Bill James had just published the first commercial edition (1982) of his Baseball Abstracts, a book that also contributed to a revolutionary change in the way we think about baseball (he had self-published 5 previous editions of the Baseball Abstract, 1977-1981.  Had Okrent’s project involved looking at a single baseball game, in depth, in 1986 or 1987, I suspect he would have written a very different book.

But the book he did write is, in its own way, path-breaking.  What he did was to take us, half-inning by half-inning, through the game.  Mostly, he focused on events around the game, not the game itself (although he does tell us, batter by batter by pitcher what happened).  And it’s clear that he had access to the people running the Brewers, from Bud Selig (principal partner and club president) to Harry Dalton (general manager, and his staff) to Harvey Kuehn (the manager).  (The Orioles are a decidedly minor partner in the story.)  What the book is really about, then, is not just one (as it turned out pivotal) game, but about the place of one team the larger context of Major League Baseball, and its relationship to the city in which it is located.

So we begin with the story of how the Brewers (nee the Seattle Mariners) wound up in Milwaukee, their early tribulations, and how the major leagues were changing from 1970 to 1982.  The changes to the game included, among other things, the creation of a salary arbitration mechanism (dating to 1973), to the revolutionary ending of baseball’s “reserve clause” (and the attendant creation of a system by which players gained the right to negotiate with more than one possible employer.  And the explosion in player salaries that was a consequence. 

He also gives us a detailed account of how the 1982 team was constructed (a story told in bite-sized chunks) and of the personal characteristics of the key players on the Brewers during the 1982 season.

This is a fine book, and one which, if you have not read it will be well worth your time.  But you need to keep in mind that much of the revolution in the analytics of baseball occurred after Okrent wrote his book,

Rob Neyer, Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game
HarperCollins 2018
© 2018 Rob Neyer
978-0-06-285361-5

I previously wrote a separate review of Neyer’s book, which can be found here:
https://wordsmusic-doc.blogspot.com/2019/01/rob-neyer-power-ball.html
My conclusion, which I see no reason to change is:
“If you are a baseball fan, this is, I think, one of the most important baseball books you can read this, or any other, year.”