This is not the first book about Pete Rose. It's not even the first book about Pete Rose titled "Charlie Hustle." I have one from a number of years ago with that title. It is, however, a new book about that former baseball player, convicted tax evader, and admitted bettor on baseball before such a thing was legal, that is a comprehensive and tightly reported book about the life and times of Rose, and the circumstances that led to his rise and then fall from grace. Also, his failure to take responsibility for his own part in that fall.

O'Brien combines a thorough look at Rose's career in sports, and many hours of interviews with those involved, plus the documents compiled by the FBI, Sports Illustrated, and investigator John Dowd, to give us the most complete story yet of what exactly happened to Pete Rose, how he became who he was, what his actions, both good and bad, were, and how it all went right and then went wrong. It is partly a biography of a famous baseball player, but more than that it is a character study of a curious personality, and the character traits that both made him a good athlete, and a bad human being in many ways. Must the drives to be excellent so often lead a person to ruin? In the case of Rose, it seems so.

My nit to pick with this book is that twice (that I noticed) it mentions the area of "southeast Ohio" in reference to Cincinnati. The city is, of course, in southwest Ohio. I also remember some of these events, many of them in my youth, somewhat differently than they are portrayed here. No matter: memory is a funny thing, and living outside Cincinnati I was not as immersed in the culture of the time and place.

This book is the clearest and best accounting of what made Pete Rose who he was, both for good and for bad. One wonders how things might have been different is Rose had been able to admit responsibility for what he had done, rather than trying to cast blame on everyone but himself. Alas, this is an all too familiar human condition. Rose failed his wives, his children, and ultimately baseball fans everywhere. It is a sad story. It is a compelling story.

 This rambling, unfocused book is a love letter to the baseball scouts of the 20th century and the game they helped build. Using nine different scouts from different eras as a starting point, the book takes off from there and looks at players famous and not and how they helped shape baseball from the early 1900s into the 21st century.

You won't read this book for its brilliant prose or its focus on any particular person or theme. The author introduces a scout, and then takes off from there, giving their influences in the game and how they got their start, then how they got into scouting, and from there branches out into their scouting finds and their careers, flitting from one place to another much how a hummingbird flits from flower to flower. It's a sampler of baseball history, really.

The book does not focus much on the ins and outs of scouting, and despite the title does not look at how scouting has changed in today's world of travel teams and video. This is a look at the past, and how things used to be done. This is nostalgia, a look at a time gone by and how things were back then. This is about the Yankees and Cardinals of yesteryear, about the plethora of minor leagues in the 1950s, and how things used to be.

I noticed several factual errors in the text, and some repetitiveness in the writing, things which are not usually seen in books from University of Nebraska Press books which usually sport better editing. This book could have done with a good fact-checking pass, without harming the narrative. I downgrade the book a bit because of those flaws.

Still, if you buy this book, you buy it more for the trip down memory lane, or to learn about a piece of baseball's past. It is fun and enjoyable for those things. That is what books like this are for.

Dr. Balmer is a noted historian specializing in religion and a faculty member at Dartmouth with an impressive reputation. This is his first foray into a "popular" field, and it unites his professional interests in history and religion with his experiences as a sports fan, and in particular an observer of sports talk radio. In fact, this book began germinating nearly thirty years ago as the author first experienced the peculiar world of the sports call-in show.

The thesis of the book is captured in the subtitle: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America. In some ways, it could be argued (and Dr. Balmer does) that sports has replaced religion in the American psyche. The emergence of organized sports, especially in the college and professional ranks, has replaced the ties that used to be based on religion over the last 200 years or so.

This is a somewhat slim volume, at a bit more than 130 pages plus copious reference notes, in six sections: an introduction that presents the reason for the book and the thinking behind it; four chapters, each on a different sport (baseball, football, hockey, and basketball) that provides an overview of the history of the sport and the racial prejudices that often accompany it; and a final conclusion summarizing the author's conclusions. I was most captivated by the chapter on hockey, because I knew little of the beginnings of that sport before reading the book.

Dr. Balmer makes some astute observations on the place of sport in today's society, on how he beginnings of each sport depend in large part on religious underpinnings, and how each sport reflects a different aspect of society that is tied to the time and place of its origin and how it spread. The development of these entertainments has both had an impact on society and has been shaped strongly by that society. This is a strong academic effort. While the book is very readable from an academic point of view, it is not a breezy read for all; Dr. Balmer writes more with an academic viewpoint than that of a popular writer of books for quick consumption. Still, this is a book worth the time to read it for observers of sports and society.

 Originally planned to coincide with the 2020 Olympics, but postponed when that competition was delayed, it is out now: Total Olympics, a book about the highs, lows, and oddities about the Olympic athletes and the competition itself.

An attractive volume, a chunky hardback with no dust cover, the book is a bunch of short snippets of stories, about 300 pages and nearly as many entries of the best, the brightest, the bravest, and sometimes the least admirable people in Olympic history. You are bound to find something you didn't know in this wide-ranging volume, which covers all of the modern Olympics since 1896, including the short-lived "Intercalated Games" for off years, and a few looks back at the original events, though that history is a bit less reliable.

The stories are collected into six topics: Forgotten History, Legends, Wild and Strange, First, Discontinued Sports, and Forgotten Heroes. There is some bleeding over, but no topic choice can be too hard and fast. You will find out things about people from Jim Thorpe to Ian Thorpe, from Muhammad Ali to Suzy Chaffee, from John Carlos to Tommie Smith, from John and Sumner Paine to Babe Didrikson Zaharias. You will learn about sports from curling to auto racing.

I enjoyed this book, written in a light, enjoyable style. The detail is limited, with so much to cover, but the reach is admirable. I am a fan of the events and a student of history but this book told me a lot of things I didn't know; like how pistol dueling used to be an Olympic event (they used dummies).

If you enjoy watching the Olympics and revel in the international nature of the games, you will enjoy this book. It is heavy on the USA, but that is the target audience and you get a look at a lot of international competitors along the way. Good stuff.

Disclaimer: I received this book as a free review copy and did not buy it myself.

 The new autobiography by Dave Parker, with ghostwriter Dave Jordan, is an excellent read. The book, Cobra, concentrates on Parker's young life and time with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and reaches a climax with its stories of the 1979 World Championship season. It is an honest and forthright tale.

One of the greatest strengths of the book is how powerfully Parker's voice leads it. It seems like Dave is talking straight to you, the reader. Co-author Dave Jordan clearly worked hard on the book, which is so well organized and chronological, weaving together Parker's memories seamlessly. But Jordan disappears into the background so deftly that all you hear is Parker's voice. It is an exceptional accomplishment as the writer half of an autobiography.

The book is very strictly chronological, moving year by year. It picks up with Parker's time as a middle school athlete, moves into high school and his knee problems which knock him out of senior year sports completely. Parker is then passed over for football scholarships, his first love, but drafted by the Pirates in the summer of 1970 in the 4th round. After a decent bonus, he begins a pro career. We then move season by season into his minor league adventures, then to the majors in Pittsburgh with Willie Stargell and the gang. Most of the book is on those pro days with the Pirates. The latter part of his career, including his four years in his hometown playing with the Cincinnati Reds, gets somewhat less attention.

Parker deals honestly but discreetly with racial matters, hanging out with other Black players, a plentiful crew in those 1970s in Pittsburgh. He also comes clean about the 1980s cocaine problems, not throwing anyone under the bus but accepting responsibility for his actions. This book achieves a balance often difficult in the genre; honest, but without an apparent axe to grind. No scores are settled here, and when speaking critically, the book speaks softly. This is a celebration.

I highly recommend the book. Disclaimer: I did not buy this book, and reviewed it from a PDF provided by the publisher.

 How do you think baseball got its start? Most likely, you are wrong. The Abner Doubleday story set in Cooperstown was a created fiction, as was the story about Alexander Cartwright. Neither upstate New York in 1939 nor the Elysian Fields of Hoboken in 1846 were the birth site. So, how did baseball come about? Pick up this book, and let Thomas Gilbert tell you the long, complicated story of how this happened. The short version: a kid's game was transformed, over time and mostly in New York City, into a pastime for adults, which in a few decades became the National Pastime.

This book is as much a history of America in the mid-1800s as it is about baseball, because you can't talk about baseball without talking about the country where it was born. America shaped baseball, then baseball shaped America. There are a lot of hands involved in the birth, and not all of them are clean. Gilbert takes us on a ride with people like Doc Adams, Harry Wright, Asa Brainard, Henry Chadwick, Mike Walsh, Frank Jones, and Jim Creighton. You will learn how militias, volunteer fire companies, and chowder dinners are linked to the early days of baseball. You will find out about the lines between amateur and professional baseball, and how those became blurred. And you will encounter historical figures like William Lloyd Garrison, Millicent Fenwick, Aaron Burr, Matthew Brady, and the Bowery Boys, plus the strange history of Tammany Hall.

Gilbert writes with the cynicism and skeptical outlook needed for someone investigating a story that is purposely surrounded in mystery due to the money that became involved in it, and for the mystique-building used by people trying to popularize the sport and sell it first as a healthful way to exercise, then to sell sports equipment (read: Albert Spalding). It is well-written, informative, and a way to lose yourself in a misunderstood period of American history. It's about 350 pages of text, but it reads fast. Gilbert will engagingly tell you lots of things you didn't know, and that you didn't know you didn't know. Highly recommended.

 From the title, The Called Shot, you get a pretty good idea that this is a book about the Babe Ruth home run in the 1932 World Series. And it is, to a point. A better description is the subtitle: Babe Ruth, The Chicago Cubs, and the Unforgettable Major League Season of 1932. But even that isn't quite right. This is really a look at America in 1932, the depths of the Great Depression, through the lens of a baseball season, and the only pennant the Yankees would win between 1929 and 1935, in the last strong season of then 37-year old Babe Ruth, and the pennant race that ensued.

It's about Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby, Charlie Root and Charlie Grimm, John Dillinger and Al Capone, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, Billy Jurges and Violet Popovich, the Anamosa Mens' Reformatory, Guy Bush and Kiki Cuyler, the "Bonus Army," Earle Combs and Bill Dickey, Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig, Snap Hortman and Charlie Ireland, Bernard Malamud and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Judge Landis and Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Lon Warneke and Hack Wilson, William Veeck and William Wrigley. There are so, so many stories in this book. 

There are some errors; not all the stories ring true. Hack Wilson's 56-home run season is twice stated to be 1929; it was 1930, an error easily fixed by proper editing. The press of 1932 was not always worried about accuracy, and reliance on them probably leads to some incorrect statements. But there is such richness here, that a few misses do not diminish the totality of the work. It's a walk down memory lane to a time when there are few left alive to remember, and from the chaos agent that was the Babe to the loose laws of the city of Chicago, it was a different time. I think you will like this book.

Note; I received this book as a free review copy.

 Let's say you're a baseball fan. It started when you were a kid, watching games on TV, maybe going to a few in person, and you got into buying baseball cards, those little cardboard bits of delight, with an inedible stick of gum and 15 rectangles with a picture of a player on the front, and his stats on the back. Pure magic.

And let's say you grow up, and decide to get a pack of cards; not just any pack, but a pack from the year you started collecting cards, with the help of ebay where anything can be found and purchased. And you decide to take that pack of cards, and find those players on the card, and interview them in person and write up the interviews for a book. 

That's what Brad Balukjian did. He got a wax pack of 1986 Topps cards, back when the cards were still made on the brown cardboard and sealed with a layer of wax, and opened the pack to find 15 cards; one was a checklist card, but the other 14 carried pictures of big league players, and 13 of them long-time players of ten seasons or more in the major league. One was already deceased, but the others were alive, from Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk to All-Stars Rick Sutcliffe and Garry Templeton to journeymen Randy Ready and Jaime Cocanower. Over his summer break in 2015 from his job as an adjunct instructor of biology at a small college, he sets off on an 8-week journey across the country to find these pieces of the past, men in their late 50s and early 60s, former professional athletes.

The story is nostalgic and involving and funny and sad and...well, it's a must read. Whether you are a fan of baseball, or of road trip sagas, or just the life of Americans in America, this book is wonderfully written, absorbingly emotional, and shockingly personal. I think you will love it from beginning to end.

Disclaimer: I received this book as a free review copy.

 Book review: Billy Ball: Billy Martin and the Resurrection of the Oakland A's by Dale Tafoya.

Billy Martin was the greatest manager in baseball...in the short term. No one could turn a team around like Billy. Losers quickly turned into winners in his hands. These turnarounds came at a price. Billy, a terrific baseball man, was high energy and high pressure, and the burnout rate around him was almost as quick as the results.

Martin identified the players he thought could help him, and rode them hard. He used very aggressive tactics in managing, especially on the basepaths. Push hard, make the plays, out-hustle the other team and win, was the Martin way. All that required a level of energy that could only be sustained for so long. Sooner or later, things got away from Billy. It was always a hell of a ride along the way.

Tafoya, an A's fan, writes an affectionate book of the 1980-1982 era in Oakland, when a moribund team turned around and got to the playoffs. The 1979 A's club lost 108 games and looked pathetic and listless on the field. Martin was hired by equally mercurial owner Charlie Finley that offseason, and with few player acquisitions, the A's had a winning record in 1980 and made the playoffs in 1981. Fans came back to the Oakland Coliseum once again. Baseball in Oakland was saved. The savior, more than anyone, was Billy Martin.

As much as a story of Billy Martin, this is the story of a city and an era. The early 1980s were an interesting time in baseball, with free agency still new, a new age of the powerful manager in the mold of Martin, Whitey Herzog, and Jack McKeon, and the emergence of a future Hall of Famer in Oakland, local native Rickey Henderson. Billy Martin, most famous for managing the Yankees, returned to his Bay Area roots to take over the A's. Magic occurred, like a meteor burning across the sky.

Tafoya writes lovingly of all this, in a style that is mostly based on the accounts of participants and first-hand observers, with quotes from interviews conducted by the author and quotes taken from contemporary publications. That kind of approach leads to some repetition and overlapping observations, but it keeps things real and in the moment. This is a snapshot of time, remembered by those who were there.

Tafoya spends his first two chapters on the story of the A's leading to the moment, the third on a mini-biography of Martin, and spends the rest of the book on 1980-82. After the setup, we get the payoff. A's fans, fans of baseball history, and lovers of a good story will enjoy this book.

A signed copy of the book was graciously sent to me by the author for this review. Thanks, Dale!