Averell Smith has been an ace in politics for years. Now he’s trying his hand in baseball history and is enjoying similar success.

The San Francisco Chronicle has called Averell “Ace” Smith “a pro at digging up dirt,” and one of the country’s most feared political opposition researchers. His critics have called him experienced, bright and aggressive, but “frequently over the top.”

Smith has been a political strategist and a campaign manager. He worked on the mayoral campaigns of Chicago’s Richard M. Daley and Los Angeles’ Richard Riordan, and the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton in 2008 and Howard Dean.

So, Smith not only can get down and dirty, but he also can spin a compelling story.

That serves Smith well as he tackles a subject that blends baseball with politics. And during the 1930s, and for very different reasons, few men were more feared, over the top and unafraid to get down and dirty than pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige and Dominican Republic strongman Rafael Trujillo. While Paige’s fastball was described as having bulletlike qualities, Trujillo’s bullets came from real guns and he was not afraid to give the order for his men to shoot them.

Those two characters dominate Smith’s book, The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $26.95; 212 pages). Baseball plays a large role in Smith’s work, but the more fascinating subplot concerns the politics and intrigue waged by Trujillo, known as El Jefe (The Chief), who rose to power in 1930 and remained entrenched as the Dominican Republic’s most dominant figure until his assassination in 1961.

Trujillo was smart enough to keep a tight rein over his government and canny enough to take advantage of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” during the 1930s. Because of the growing threat of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt wanted Western Hemisphere countries as allies and conveniently looked the other way if they committed any atrocities. As Eric Paul Roorda wrote in 1998, the Good Neighbor Policy showed Latin American dictators like Trujillo that they could run their governments any way they wanted, so long as they had the same enemies as the United States.

Paige, meanwhile, was an opportunist not afraid to jump teams if the money was right. One example was nicely documented in Tom Dunkel’s 2013 book, Color Blind, when Paige bolted from the Negro League’s Pittsburgh Crawfords to pitch for a team in Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1935. So, when Dr. Jose Enrique Aybar, a dentist who ran the baseball team in Ciudad Trujillo, approached Paige with a $30,000 offer to pitch in the Dominican Republic in 1937, Paige bolted again, jumping as soon as he saw a bankbook with his name on it and that the five-figure deposit was verified in his account.
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Aybar’s opening bid was “meant to awe,” Smith writes. “And it did.”

​Baseball fans are passionate. Baseball fans love to argue. Who was the best, who was better? It’s a universal trait among fans.
And New York baseball fans have always been passionate and argumentative. Just listen to sports talk radio in New York — that’s kind of an oxymoron, because I have yet to hear callers to talk radio stations in New York talk. Scream? That’s more like it.
Diehard Mets fans can take heart — there is plenty to debate about when it comes to this team. What was their greatest game? Their greatest moment? Their all-time lineup?
The answers — or at least a jumping-off point to start the debate — can be found in Brian Wright’s new book about the Mets. In Mets ins 10s: Best and Worst of an Amazin’ History (History Press; paperback; $21.99; 288 pages), Wright offers some juicy tidbits of Mets history and gives the reader a wonderful history of a franchise that began as lovable losers but then shocked the sports world by winning the 1969 World Series.
Well-researched and written in a conversational style, Mets in 10s is certain to spark some (hopefully) friendly debate. As the title implies, Wright ranks certain categories of Mets history from one to 10. As you read this book for the first time, you will see the subject and wonder if your No. 1 pick is the same as Wright’s.

​For the collector who enjoys looking into the future, the 2018 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball set is the perfect vehicle. Members of the U.S. national team are in the spotlight in this set, and it offers younger prospects, current stars and retired greats. That includes players from the collegiate national team and the 18-and-under national squad.

The 2018 edition uses the formula that worked well in 2017: base cards, parallels and hits. For retail blaster boxes (the focus for this review), Panini America promises two autograph or memorabilia cards on average.

I was fortunate to buy an above average box, as I pulled one autograph, one relic and an autographed relic. For the $19.99 price tag, that’s a good deal; if you buy a hobby box, which lists somewhere in the neighborhood of $65, there will be a hit in each of the five packs. Sure, the names may not mean anything right now — but there’s always the chance that one of these players could make it to the major leagues and become a star, and that autograph or relic card will be a treasured gem.

The base set contains 100 cards, and because I bought a blaster box, all 30 base I pulled were the retail-exclusive Longevity cards. It was fun to pull cards of players who had successful major-league careers, like Ken Griffey Jr. and Mark McGwire, and it also was nice to pull a card of a player from Tampa like Alex Faedo.

The card design is vertical on the front, with the exception of team cards. A blue border adorns the top of the card and parts of the top left and right borders, and the rest of the borders are silver foil. The player’s name sits above an action shot, stamped in gold foil and next to a similarly stamped USA Baseball logo. The backdrop for the player’s name is red.
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The images are a mixture of posed and action shots. My favorite shot was card No. 86 of M.J. Melendez, a second-round pick of the Kansas City Royals in 2017 who currently plays for the Lexington Legends of the South Atlantic League. Melendez, a catcher, is standing, mask off, and gripping the baseball while sneaking a peek down the third-base line. His expression is like “yeah, go ahead and take a longer lead.” Entertaining.

​The card backs sport a large USA Baseball logo and the card number in the upper left-hand corner. Underneath each player’s name is a five-line biography, followed by another line that lists vital statistics such as height, weight, and whether the player bats and throws left-handed or right-handed.

In addition to the base cards, I found a pair of parallels: A Ruby team card of the national 15-and-under team, numbered to 249; and a Sapphire card of Nick Pratto, numbered to 49.
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There were three hits in the blaster box I opened. The first was a sticker autograph card of 17-year-old Blake Shapen, an infielder from Shreveport, Louisiana. The autograph is boldly written in a blue Sharpie; an on-card signature would have been nice, but this was still a very nice card.

The second hit was a Jumbo National Team relic card of pitcher Ryley Gilliam, numbered to 299. This relic lives up to its name, with a huge swatch of Gilliam’s uniform on the card; the player is almost an afterthought.

The only criticism I have with the card is that it is all white; a more attractive swatch would have been one with at least one more color. Or even a pinstripe.

The third hit was an Silhouettes Signatures Jersey card of Alex Boychuk, a 15-year-old catcher from Hoschton, Georgia. The card is numbered to 199 and the autograph is on a sticker. The uniform swatch is beige-colored.
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The 2018 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball set is perfect for collectors who like to look into the future. The extra hit in the blaster box was a definite plus.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Chris Brindell-Watt, a North Carolina middle school history teacher and Philadelphia Flyers fan who found an old hockey stick signed by Hall of Fame goalie Bernie Parent.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/stick-save-nc-teacher-finds-vintage-bernie-parent-memorabilia-at-thrift-store/

​I’ve always had a soft spot for Lou Gehrig. The first baseball book I read as a child was Paul Gallico’s Lou Gehrig: The Pride of the “Yankees”, which was first published in 1942. There have been plenty of books written about Gehrig since, topped by Ray Robinson’s Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig in His Time and Jonathan Eig’s Luckiest Man.

Even more books have been written about Babe Ruth, and more are planned this year, including a biography by Jane Leavy (The Big Fella) that will be released in October.

Ruth and Gehrig were the heart of the New York Yankees’ batting order in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Together, they played in four World Series, winning three of them. From 1925 to 1934, when they were full-time teammates, Ruth and Gehrig combined for 772 home runs and homered in the same game 72 times. Between them, they averaged 274 RBI each year.

Ruth was flamboyant and driven to excess in his off-the-field escapades, while Gehrig was quiet, workmanlike and did not seem to care that his teammate usually stole the limelight.

They were friends early in their relationship, but somehow that friendship soured into a stony silence. Some called it a feud, but it’s hard to use that term when one party — Gehrig — never said a word about it. Robinson called Gehrig “a private, armored man in a public environment.”

In his latest book, Tony Castro explores the love-hate relationship between the two sluggers. In Gehrig & the Babe: The Friendship and the Feud (Triumph Books; hardback; $25.95; 273 pages), Castro examines both players and their personalities, and the incidents that probably led to their estrangement. I say probably, because it has never been definitively established what the cause was. Gehrig and Ruth took those secrets to the grave, as did Gehrig’s wife, Eleanor. There are hints and possibilities that have been brought up before, and Castro visits each of them.
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Castro recalls a conversation he had with Johnny Grant, a young radio newscaster who had sneaked onto the set of the movie Pride of the Yankees hoping to land a bit part in the film. Instead, he struck up a friendship with Ruth. Grant asserts that Ruth told him that he “let my friend down,” and when he asked the Bambino why, the former player finally said “Women. It’s always broads, keed.”

When Grant pressed for more details, Ruth waved him off. “I’ll tell you the full story another time. It’s too petty,” he said. “Friends shouldn’t part over broads, but they do, all the time.”

Theories abound over why the two men grew distant with one another. One revisits the story that Gehrig’s mother, Christina, was appalled by the way Ruth’s younger daughter, Dorothy, was dressed when she and her stepsister visited the Gehrig household. Christina Gehrig, a highly opinionated and closed-minded woman who exercised control over her adoring son, lit into Claire Ruth, the Babe’s second wife and Dorothy’s stepmother. It “blindsided Claire and created a rift that no one saw coming,” Castro writes.

Ruth later confronted Gehrig in the Yankees locker room, and both men had to be separated. In Gehrig’s view, his mother was off-limits to criticism. Criticize Mom Gehrig, as she was affectionately known, and Lou would cut you off in a heartbeat. Even Babe Ruth, who loved Christina Gehrig's cooking and was a frequent visitor to the Gehrig household before tensions set in.

Castro said the relationship between Gehrig and his mother “bordered on the psychologically unhealthy,” and wondered if there had ever been a major sports figure “who has hung onto his mother’s apron strings” the way Gehrig had?

One could argue that tennis great Jimmy Connors was greatly influenced by his mother, but not to the extent of the Gehrig mother-son relationship. Connors was independent in ways Gehrig never approached.

The other rumor Castro explores — and it was more salacious than just an episode involving an overbearing parent — was the actual relationship Eleanor Gehrig may have had with Babe Ruth. During a barnstorming tour to Japan after the 1934 season, Eleanor Gehrig went missing for two hours. She was found with Claire and Babe Ruth in their stateroom, drinking and eating caviar. Castro quotes Leigh Montville’s marvelous biography of Ruth, The Big Bam, that intimated that “before she had known Gehrig, she had known the Babe,” and that Ruth “did not suffer many platonic relationships with women.”

Eleanor Gehrig always denied there had been a sexual relationship between her and Ruth. In her 1976 book My Luke and I, she described Ruth as “a pot-bellied, spindly legged, good-natured buffoon.”

Castro notes that Gehrig’s best friend on the Yankees, Bill Dickey, was reluctant to talk about any rifts, intimating that “it is just too unpleasant to think about even now.” Dickey conceded that something came between the two men, “but I don’t want to tell you about it.” Dickey took that information to the grave, too.

Castro, who has previously written two books about Yankees players — Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son, in 2008; and DiMag and Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers, in 2016 — utilizes an extensive bibliography for his narrative on Gehrig and Ruth. That includes two books about Gehrig from 1941, works by Claire Ruth, Dorothy Ruth Pirone, Eleanor Gehrig, Gallico, Robinson, Eig, Montville, Robert Creamer and Harvey Frommer. He references both of his books and even lists Leavy’s 2018 biography as a source.

He lists Grant as one of the “godfathers” for this book, and adds the other godfather was writing colleague Dave Thomas, who pointed out that the feud between Los Angeles Lakers stars Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant was “the modern-day Ruth and Gehrig.” It’s an astute observation.

Two facts that Castro revealed were fascinating to me. One was that Juanita Jennings, who had some dalliances with Ruth, claimed to be the mother of Dorothy Ruth. It had been assumed that Dorothy had been adopted from an orphanage by Babe and Helen Ruth, and some news stories after Helen’s death in 1929 mentioned it. The International News Service reported on Jan. 16, 1929, that “Neither Ruth nor the family of his wife have any legal claim to Dorothy as the Ruths took her from a Brooklyn, N.Y., Catholic orphanage on a ‘continued custody’ basis.” The Associated Press reported two days earlier that Ruth and his wife announced in September 1922 that a daughter had been born but “they had decided not to announce it earlier.” No mention of adoption in the AP version.

Jennings, Castro wrote, did not admit to being Dorothy Ruth’s birth mother until shortly before her death in 1980. So, it’s another mystery taken to the grave by those who knew the answers.

The other fact I had not seen before was what Ruth said to Gehrig when he embraced the Iron Horse after his “Luckiest Man” speech on July 4, 1939, which caused Lou to smile. Castro reports that Ruth hugged Gehrig and said “C’mon, kid … C’mon, kid, buck up now. We’re all with you.” That embrace graces the cover of Gehrig & the Babe and has been a staple of all books about Gehrig.

Rud Rennie, writing in the New York Herald Tribune, phrased it differently, quoting Ruth telling Gehrig to try out the fishing rod he'd been given and catch all the fish in the sea.

I agree with Castro's version, which came from a report out of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle after Gehrig's speech.

The friction between the two men, Castro quotes University of Hawaii English professor Frank Ardolino, developed from their different personalities, public personas and the influence of other people on their relationship. “Given all of these factors, their feud seems inevitable and regrettable,” Ardolino concludes in a paper he wrote for the Society for American Baseball Research.
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Castro explores all those attributes and combines it into a neat package. While some questions may forever be unanswered in the Gehrig-Ruth friendship and feud, Castro’s book provides some excellent context.

​When you think of gypsies, you think of exotic fortune tellers and tarot readers. In the past, Topps Gypsy Queen baseball has had fortune tellers. Now, it is adding tarot to the mix.

This year’s product includes an insert set called Tarot of the Diamond, a 22-card offering that has artistic renditions of players with a traditional tarot background. Pair that with the returning Fortune Teller insert set, which makes predictions about future player achievements, and it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that Gypsy Queen is working toward an exotic feel.

In opening a blaster box of 2018 Gypsy Queen baseball, a collector will find seven packs of six cards each, plus an exclusive five-card pack of parallels. The base set has 300 cards, and there are an additional 20 short prints. The blaster I opened had 37 base cards, plus a green parallel of Angels pitching/hitting sensation Shohei Ohtani and a Bazooka back parallel of Marlins pitcher Jose Urena.
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Other parallels include cards with missing nameplates, Indigo (numbered to 250), a Gypsy Queen logo swap, Red (numbered to 10) and a 1/1 Black card. For those who buy hobby boxes, there is a chance to get a Black and White parallel, numbered to 50.

For those who enjoy more variations, there are 20 cards depicting players without caps. Also, there is a Jackie Robinson Day variation, with players shown wearing the Hall of Famer’s No. 42 jersey.

The card design features a drawing of the player with his name in the lower right-hand corner of the card. The player’s team and position and featured in the upper right-hand corner of the card, with a distinctive “GQ” located in the lower left part of the card. Every card I pulled from the blaster had a vertical design, which I love.

The card backs contain four lines of biographical type, with the player’s name in capital letters above the description.

As for inserts, I did receive a Tarot of the Diamond card of Boston’s Rafael Devers, and a Fortune Teller card of Amed Rosario that predicted that the Mets shortstop would be the youngest Opening Day starter in the National League and would contend for Rookie of the Year honors. The 22-year-old did start on Opening Day and went 2-for-4 with two RBI.

I did get a treat in my blaster box, as I pulled an on-card autograph card of Rays pitcher Jacob Faria.
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The Gypsy Queen set is a nice-looking product with plenty of variations that are sure to stymie master set collectors. The fact that the autographs are hard-signed makes it a much more attractive product, too. 

Here's a story I did for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1959-1960 Darigold Farms regional sets of the Spokane Indians, a Pacific Coast League affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers:
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​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1959-60-darigold-farms-sets-featured-future-major-league-stars/

Here is a podcast I did through the New Books Network with author David Rapp, who wrote Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America through the University of Chicago Press:

newbooksnetwork.com/david-rapp-tinker-to-evers-to-chance-the-chicago-cubs-and-the-dream-of-modern-america-u-chicago-press-2018/

Here is a podcast on the New Books Network I did with Amy Bass, the author of One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together, her recently released book through Hachette Books:

newbooksnetwork.com/amy-bass-one-goal-a-coach-a-team-and-the-game-that-brought-a-divided-town-together-hachette-books-2018/

​It was the year Mickey Mantle became Mickey Mantle.

Since joining the New York Yankees as a raw rookie in 1951, Mantle had been anointed as the next great Yankee, the player who would carry on the tradition of greatness set by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio.

Mantle had shown flashes of brilliance, with tape measure home runs and the speed to beat out drag bunts or flag down long fly balls at Yankee Stadium. He had helped New York win four pennants in his five seasons, but there had been this nagging feeling that Mantle had not tapped into his vast potential.

That changed in 1956, when Mantle won baseball’s Triple Crown and led New York to a comeback World Series victory against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mantle looked the part of a hero — blond, crew cut, heavily muscled, the prototype of the All-American Hero. But he was a flawed hero, and the media did a good job of hiding it in 1956.

Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith take a fresh look at Mantle in the context of the 1950s in their latest book, A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle (Basic Books; hardback; $28; 277 pages). It was true that the times dictated that sportswriters only covered what took place between the foul lines, and that was a blessing for Mantle, who was not shy about taking a drink or enjoying the company of women.

“With the help of the very best sportswriters in New York,” Mantle emerged “as an American icon,” the authors write.

Mantle had that alliterative name that “evoked power and poetry, arousing the kind of admiration reserved for baseball immortals.”

And 1956 showed Mantle at his powerful best. He hit 52 home runs and drove in 130 runs while scoring 132. He batted .353 and had a .705 slugging percentage with 188 hits and 376 total bases. All were career highs except for home runs (he’d hit 54 in 1961).

Roberts and Smith take a different approach with Mantle. There have been plenty of books written about the Yankees slugger, and many of them point to his excesses, particularly his drinking habits, which led to his death in 1995 after he had cirrhosis of the liver and needed a transplant to stay alive. Cancer and hepatitis C also sapped his strength and vitality.

The authors concede the vices and diseases that led to Mantle’s death, but that approach “ignores much of the joy of his life.”

“To fully understand the man, his impact on baseball, and what he meant to America, it is necessary to look at his life as he lived it,” Roberts and Smith write, “not as a study in retrospection.”

That’s why they decided to visit Mantle as he was in 1956, when he was at the peak of his career. Mantle was beginning to blossom in 1955, leading the American League in homers (37), triples (11), walks (113) and slugging percentage (.611). Excellent numbers, but Mantle was injured toward the end of the season and had little impact in the World Series, playing in only three games and going 2-for-10 as the Yankees lost to the Dodgers in seven games.

Roberts and Smith wanted to answer three questions about Mantle: How did he become a hero? Why did it happen in 1956? And what did he mean to America?
Men sang his praises, and Mantle managed an aw-shucks duet with singer Teresa Brewer in her 1956 song, "I Love Mickey."

Both Roberts and Smith have the credentials to answer those questions.

Roberts is a distinguished professor of history at Purdue University and has been at the Indiana campus since 2006. He graduated magna cum laude in 1972 from Mansfield College and earned his master’s degree the following year from the University of Nebraska. He was awarded his doctorate in 1976 from LSU. Roberts has written 16 books, covering such subjects as boxers Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis; the relationship between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; actor John Wayne; Pearl Harbor; Ronald Reagan; Bear Bryant and Joe Namath; and the Alamo. He specializes in the meshing of popular and political culture.

Smith earned his bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University in 2004 and earned his master’s two years later from Western Michigan. He received his doctorate in 2011 from Purdue. He and Roberts collaborated on the 2016 book, Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.

The authors’ bibliography is extensive, tapping into such diverse sources as Leonard Shecter, Glenn Stout, Dick Schaap, David Falkner, Peter Golenbock, David Halberstam, Jane Leavy, Ben Bradlee Jr., Richard Ben Cramer, Roger Kahn, Bill James and Jules Tygiel. That’s just a sampling. The footnotes are extensive and rich in detail, which is what would expect from a pair of college professors.

Their research was deep, too, as they combed newspaper records in the National Archives to get a fuller, richer picture of Mantle. They tell a wonderful anecdote by comedian Billy Crystal, who was at Yankee Stadium the day Mantle cracked a home run that nearly became the first fair ball hit out of the park. Only the façade in the right field upper deck prevented the ball from bouncing on the streets.

Roberts and Smith answer their three questions by noting that Mantle “dramatized the daily struggle” for individual goals. He was a symbol of what was good about America — young, strong, vigorous, clear-eyed. That it happened in 1956 was due to a few changes Mantle made in his batting stance, particularly standing deeper in the batter’s box. Mantle’s chase of Babe Ruth’s home run record — for much of the season he was far ahead of the pace the Bambino had when he 60 in 1927 — also fired the imagination of baseball fans.

Mantle was unable to sustain that pace, particularly in September, but he still became the first Yankees hitter since Ruth to hit 50 homers in a season.

The narrative for A Season in the Sun is smooth and builds tension through several subplots. There was the resurgence of Ted Williams, who threatened to spoil Mantle’s Triple Crown year by challenging for the American League batting title. A youthful Al Kaline challenged Mantle in the RBI race. Today’s baseball fan is aware of performance-enhancing drugs, but few in 1956 realized the extent of the usage of Dexedrine, or “greenies,” to keep players alert and “up.”

Then there was the World Series, where Mantle only hit .250 with six hits, but three of those hits were homers. One homer was the first hit in Game 5, which gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead. Mantle did excel on defense, making a lunging, back-handed catch of a Gil Hodges line drive in left-center field at Yankee Stadium that preserved Don Larsen’s perfect game.

When the season was over, Mantle could look back at a stunning year of achievement. He would play for a dozen more seasons, but never approach the year when his hitting, power, speed and defense were hitting on all cylinders.

The book's title, A Season in the Sun, is reminiscent of two memories from the 1970s. It is the title of a 1977 book about a college baseball team by noted author Roger Kahn, and a variation on the 1973 song by Terry Jacks, “Seasons in the Sun.” Kahn’s book was sunny, while Jacks was singing a depressing collaborative song, with lyrics written by poet Rod McKuen and a tune composed by Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel that was originally titled “Le Moribond.”
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In 1956, Mantle had joy and had fun, and a great season in the sun. Through excellent research and a conversational narrative, Roberts and Smith show that joy Mantle experienced.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2017-2018 Dominion basketball set, which has a mid-May release date.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/panini-adds-dominion-to-basketball-lineup/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about some LeBron James memorabilia from this year's NBA All-Star Game:
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/83081-2/
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​Relievers in baseball face high-pressure situations when they enter a game, so when they are not sweating out bases-loaded jams, they have time to reflect.

That makes them very good storytellers. Jim Brosnan began the trend in 1960 with The Long Season, followed by Jim Bouton’s epic Ball Four a decade later. You can put Skip Lockwood into the same category. Lockwood, who played for six teams during his 12-year major-league career, may not break new literary ground in his autobiography. But he sure tells some great stories.

In Insight Pitch: My Life as a Major League Closer (Sports Publishing; hardback; $19.99; 229 pages), Lockwood is disarming and descriptive, weaving firsthand stories about an infielder-turned-pitcher who was “not good enough to be a star, not bad enough to headline a trade.”

Claude “Skip” Lockwood is now 71, and his stories about his years in the majors are fresh and funny. Lockwood began his career with the Kansas City Athletics in 1965, then played for the Seattle Pilots, Milwaukee Brewers, California Angels, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox. He spent the bulk of his career with the Brewers (1970-1973) and the Mets (1975-1980) and earned 65 of his 68 career saves while pitching in New York as the team’s closer.

Lockwood later earned a master’s degree in science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and concentrated on sports psychology. Being a reliever was the perfect foundation for his later education, because in baseball “it seemed like I stood at the brink of disaster daily.”

And it was difficult to stare down those difficulties when your glasses constantly fogged up, as Lockwood relates in several humorous episodes. He brings the reader onto the pitching mound, into the bullpen and into the clubhouse.

While he was unable to help turn a double play as a young infielder, Lockwood does manage to turn a few good phrases in Insight Pitch. Slugger Dave Kingman, for example, slid into second base “looking like a ballerina in a batting helmet.”

As a rookie, Lockwood got a baptism of fire his first day in the batting cage, as an Athletics coach named Babe hit him several times and later started a fight with the 17-year-old. While Lockwood does not give the batting practice pitcher’s last name, he is referring to Babe Dahlgren, the man who replaced Lou Gehrig at first base when the Iron Horse’s consecutive games playing streak ended in 1939. Lockwood notes that Babe “was the first major-leaguer to fail a drug test,” which is inaccurate. Dahlgren was rumored to have smoked marijuana and in 1943 became the first major-leaguer to take a drug test. He underwent a battery of tests to prove he did not have marijuana in his system, a story New York Times columnist Murray Chass repeated in 2007. Still, Lockwood accurately portrays Dahlgren as a bitter, angry former player who could never shake the rumors about his past.

At times, one gets the impression that Lockwood was a baseball version of Forrest Gump, sharing locker rooms and experiences with men like Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Yogi Berra and Don Mossi (I can never pass up a chance to mention the bushy-browed, large-eared reliever known as “The Sphinx”).

Lockwood’s story about getting the upper hand in negotiations with Athletics owner Charlie Finley is humorous and shows the negotiating savvy he would need during the 1970s when he was the Brewers’ player representative.
Lockwood even had a brush with Bouton when both were with the Pilots. In Ball Four, Bouton quotes Lockwood asking, “hey Jim, how do you hold your doubles?” after a game where the struggling knuckleballer allowed several two-base hits.

“Hate to lose a funny guy,” Bouton wrote after Lockwood was sent to the minors in 1969.

Speaking of funny, Lockwood tells about a prank pulled on him by Mets clubhouse manager Herbie Norman. When Lockwood came to the Mets, he arrived during a game and had to get to the bullpen fast. Norman was more than accommodating, whisking the new reliever to the outfield bullpens at Shea Stadium. Lockwood began shaking hands with his new teammates until the bullpen coach yelled at him for mingling with the wrong team. Norman had dumped the Mets’ new pitcher into the opposition bullpen — on purpose.

“Sorry, kid,” Norman said later. “I couldn’t resist.”

Lockwood points to the influence of Cleveland Indians trainer Nelson Decker, who helped him succeed through mental imagery. “Picturing and imagining became a discipline and a language to me,” he said. What he allowed and controlled in his thought processes would have a big impact in his pressure-cooker role as a closer.

Lockwood opens his book with an anecdote about throwing at a batter’s head when he was a Little League pitcher, and ends it with a poem, where he says that “My actions on the field turned out to be nothing more than dreams believed.”

“Baseball connects the dreamer and the dream,” he concludes. “Part hope … part real … part magic.”
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Insight Pitch helps the reader experience a player’s dreams and the magic of making it to the major leagues. Certainly, there was heartbreak along the way, but in Lockwood’s case it was a fascinating ride. And he turned those experiences into a fascinating read.

​It’s not surprising that the title of Joe Maddon’s biography should be as unorthodox as the man himself.

But there has always been a method to Maddon’s madness, and he has the results to prove it. It’s impressive enough to take the Tampa Bay Rays to a World Series berth, but it is almost legendary to snap a 108-year jinx and help bring the Chicago Cubs their first World Series title since 1908.

In Try Not to Suck: The Exceptional, Extraordinary Baseball Life of Joe Maddon (Triumph Books; hardback; $25.95; 294 pages) co-authors Bill Chastain and Jesse Rogers trace the long path Maddon traveled to become one of the top managers in major league baseball. Chastain was The Tampa Tribune’s original beat writer for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays when the team entered the American League in 1998, and he currently covers the Rays for MLB.com. Rogers, a longtime observer of the Chicago sports scene, has been a mainstay for ESPN on radio, television and the internet since 2009.

Both men have seen Maddon at various stages of his career, so it’s a nice blend to get perspectives from two different writers.

The book’s title came from a meeting Maddon had with Javier Baez when the 22-year-old player was promoted to the Cubs from the minor leagues. Maddon, wanting to put the young player at ease, stressed the importance of being a professional and not wanting to embarrass yourself. In typical Maddon fashion, his words came out as “try not to suck.”

The phrase stuck, and the Cubs’ marketing department had a field day with it. Maddon is a quotable guy, and both Chastain and Rogers provide plenty of examples: Embrace the target, do simple better, and 9=8 are some of the more memorable ones.

Maddon’s story is one of determination and grit. He paid his dues in the minor leagues as a coach and manager and served a successful apprenticeship as Mike Scioscia’s bench coach for the Angels in the early 2000s — a period that included a World Series title in 2002. After being passed over as a managerial candidate, Maddon finally landed with Tampa Bay — considered a graveyard of a franchise — when he was hired as manager in November 2005.

Maddon introduced a new culture that was felt in the clubhouse and noticed by the media and fans. Sportswriters discovered that Maddon was a quotable manager whose perspective went beyond baseball. Even during his rocky first season, Maddon kept his perspective. One radio talk show host derisively referred to him as “Merlot Joe,” citing Maddon’s fondness for good wine, but even that phrase was endearing. While Maddon could argue with the umpires when needed, he was never going to be confused with Billy Martin or Earl Weaver. But things began to change in Tampa Bay.

Behind Maddon's laid-back façade was a manager who had a burning desire to win. It resulted in an American League pennant and World Series appearance in 2008, and it looked as if Maddon would be a fixture in Tampa Bay for many years.

That changed when a loophole in his contract allowed him to jump to the Chicago Cubs in 2015. With the Cubs’ storied history and a front office that wasn’t afraid to spend some cash, Maddon got the team into the playoffs in 2015 and in the World Series for the first time in 71 years in 2016. After a frenetic seven-game triumph over the Cleveland Indians, Maddon and the Cubs were the toast of the baseball world.

It would be easy to say that a biography about Maddon “writes itself,” but that would be a disservice to the authors. Both Chastain and Rogers conducted interviews with players and managers and had three interviews with Maddon. Research included 19 publications and a website, so there was a good cross-section of information to find.

Maddon came from a hard-working family and gained a reputation as a sound baseball man who leveled with his players. That is what the reader will find most endearing in Try Not to Suck. Maddon’s gimmicks to keep a clubhouse loose are interesting and amusing, but the bottom line is that he commands respect and knows the game.
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Chastain and Rogers achieve that with an easy writing style. Chastain has always excelled at storytelling, so this project was a nice fit. As Maddon and the Cubs prepare to chase another World Series title in 2018, communication and innovation will be key elements. A blueprint on how it can be achieved can be found in the pages written by Chastain and Rogers.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Topps' Living Set baseball product:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/topps-living-set-baseball-offers-a-never-ending-checklist/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a photo on sale via RMY Auctions. It's a 1927 photo of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig showing off their barnstorming uniforms.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/photo-of-the-day-gehrig-and-ruth-model-barnstorming-uniforms/

It is a rare book that, in a literal sense, grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you. As the United States grapples with a polarized atmosphere of distrust, with immigration remaining a hot-button issue, Amy Bass has provided a valuable wake-up call that shakes you to the core.
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Bass’ fourth book, One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books; hardback; $28; 304 pages), views a high school soccer team from Maine through cultural and social lenses.

​Bass writes about the Lewiston High School boys’ squad, a roster filled with players of Somali descent. The Blue Devils’ pursuit of a state championship in 2015 is a central theme, but it is merely a foundation for the more interesting subplots that took place in a predominantly white community that struggled to accept an eastern African culture.

This is the fourth book for Bass, who is director of the honors program and a professor of history at the College of New Rochelle in suburban New York City. In One Goal, she has combined a trained historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s inquisitiveness to uncover a compelling story. Journalism is part of Bass’ DNA; her father, Milton Bass, was a columnist for 60 years at the Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts. Her mother, Ruth Haskins Bass, also worked at the Berkshire Eagle as a police reporter and building editor.
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Bass’ scholarly interests include African-American history and modern American culture with an emphasis on sports. She received her undergraduate degree at Bates College in Lewiston, so she is familiar with the dynamic of the city. Lewiston, once a bustling mill town during the Industrial Revolution, had fallen upon bad times. Its only claim to fame over the past half century had been as the venue for the heavyweight boxing title rematch between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston, a 1965 fight that smelled of a fix when Liston lost via a “phantom punch” in the first round.

​A favorite saying in Maine, Bass writes, is that “You’re always from away.” That worked fine in Lewiston when French-Canadians from Quebec came to work in the factories beginning in the 19th century. But as the 21st century dawned, the tune was different when thousands of refugees arrived from Somalia. Longtime Lewiston residents were uncomfortable with people whose language, religion and customs were markedly different. Racism, Bass writes, “lived a robust life beneath the surface of any town,” and Lewiston was no exception. Visions of the movie Black Hawk Down put Somalis in a negative light.

In 2002 the mayor of Lewiston wrote a “Maxed-Out letter,” suggesting there were enough Somalis in town. But when a white supremacist group staged a rally in Lewiston a few months later, residents rallied and united against the hatred. It was a much-needed breakthrough, although even as late as 2012, a different mayor of Lewiston told the BBC in an interview that he wished the Somalis would “leave their culture at the door.”

Schools and athletics would become the catalyst and a much-needed balm to ease tensions. Bass writes that the schools in Lewiston “became the front line” for the transitions taking place. Lewiston was a place where Somalis could live peacefully, far away from the turmoil and carnage in their home country. To this day, that holds true; on Feb. 23 of this year, at least 18 people were killed as explosions rocked Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu.

Longtime Lewiston High School soccer coach Mike McGraw saw the potential in the young Somalis playing pickup games in the city. Molding the group into a cohesive unit, McGraw and his squad weathered racial taunts to bring an elusive soccer state championship to a school nestled in a traditionally hockey-mad area.

It wasn’t easy. There had to be trust between the coaching staff and players, but McGraw, a crusty traditionalist who played by the rules and was a stickler for details, showed his ability to adapt and use some inventive schemes to take advantage of his players’ speed and strength. He also had to make allowances for Muslim holidays, prayer sessions and fasting (which sometimes took place before matches). And, as the players have joked, McGraw doesn’t care where his players come from, “as long as they pass the ball.”

McGraw was able to achieve success because of a hard-working, diligent group of assistants (Dan Gish, Abdijabar Herst. and Per Henrikson), supportive school staff (Athletic Director Jason Fuller and Principal Shawn Chabot), and community members like Denis and Kathy Wing, along with other members of the school’s booster club.

On the field, the players followed the lead of their parents who pulled together to help each other in their new community, adhering to the idea of Ilko wada jir bey wax ku gooyan — together, the teeth can cut. The team’s slogan of pamoja ndugu — “together brothers” — cut across racial, social and cultural lines and transformed groups of individuals into a team.

“Home” is a big part of One Goal, too. In a piece she wrote on her blog on Christmas Eve 2017, Bass noted that in her book, the word “home” appeared at least once on 69 different pages. Home games, road games, homes left behind or burned to the ground, she writes. Homes where people are welcome, and homes where people live in fear.

All those ideas are ably communicated in One Goal. While the history is interesting, and the social and cultural implications are fascinating, there is the cohesiveness of the story — and Bass is a fine storyteller. She resorts to play by play only when necessary, building the drama as the Blue Devils advance toward a state title that barely eluded them in 2014. In 2015, that goal would be reached in dramatic fashion, and a community celebrated together as brothers and sisters.

The rise of the Lewiston soccer team, Bass writes, shows what happens “when America works the way it is supposed to; the way it reads on paper.” The idea of building a wall to deter immigrants, an idea that helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016, pales in comparison to what a soccer team in “one of the whitest states in America” achieved. Rather than building a wall, the Blue Devils soccer team helped tear down racial barriers, even if only temporarily.

Bass shows how trust, faith, hard work and some uncanny soccer ability helped bring glory and pride to a town that still struggles with coexistence between very different cultures.
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More importantly, she demonstrates that in the United States, you don’t have to live like a refugee.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a card set put out in 1948 by Signal Oil, honoring the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League:
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1948-signal-oil-set-oakland-oaks/​

It’s hard to believe that WrestleMania is heading for its 34th show this year. If you’re a professional wrestling fan, then WrestleMania is the squared circle’s version of the Super Bowl or even the Daytona 500. Vince McMahon Jr. forever changed the landscape of pro wrestling during the 1980s, piledriving the competition along the way.

Topps’ 2018 WWE Road to WrestleMania recaps the big wrestling events and storylines of 2017 with a 100-card base set. It is an excellent lead-in for wrestling fans looking to refresh their memories about the old angles from 2017.
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The base set is broken into three parts: The Raw Men’s Division, which covers cards 1 through 46; the Cruiserweight Division (47-55); and the SmackDown Men’s Division (56-100).

A blaster box includes 10 packs, with seven cards to a pack. There also is one memorabilia card per blaster. The box I opened had 20 Raw cards, six Cruiserweights and 21 SmackDown cards. In addition, there were 20 WrestleMania 34 roster cards, which are part of a 50-card insert set.

The design of the set is good, with plenty of action shots mixed with posed podium shots, stare downs and arms raised in triumph. And, there is a card of Elias with a guitar slung over his shoulder. Wrestling always keeps its connection to music, whether it is the Honky Tonk Man or manager Jimmy Hart. Music and anthems go hand in hand with wrestling.
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The card backs are full of information about each wrestling, with history, feuds and achievements highlighted.

The blaster also contained two of the 10 Hall of Fame inserts, a subset that continues across WWE products. This set pays tribute to Andre the Giant, and there are plenty of highlights. The two cards I pulled recounted Andre’s unbeaten streak from 1973 to 1987, and when he won the WWE title in a match that was televised on NBC’s “Main Event.” Both cards made references to the World Champion but danced around the fact that the champion was longtime WWE headliner Hulk Hogan.

Hogan was fired from the WWE in 2015 after racist remarks surfaced. Hogan then would sue Gawker, which published the remarks and a sex tape. Hogan would settle for $31 million as lurid details emerged during testimony.
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Knowing McMahon’s penchant for the dramatic, Hogan may return in a future WWE event. However, it seemed a little silly to exclude his name, unless there is some legal wrangling I am unaware of.

The hot card in the blaster box I opened was a Brock Lesnar WrestleMania 33 Mat Relics card, numbered to 199. The piece of the ring mat is a nice bit of memorabilia.

Topps’ WWE products are always colorful, with great detail provided for the many storylines that prevail in sports’ (or, entertainment, if you prefer) version of the soap opera. Good vs. evil is always clearly drawn, and the babyfaces and heels are easy to spot. Sometimes they shift gears, but it only adds to the intrigue.

The WWE Road to WrestleMania is a nice setup for the big bash in New Orleans on April 8.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1957 Braves Spic and Span set, a 20-card regional offering put out by a Milwaukee dry cleaning company:
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1957-braves-spic-and-span-set-has-stars-but-is-pricey/

The card back retains its basic design, with year-by-year statistics dominating the design. One of the nicer innovations through the years is the inclusion of the player’s Twitter handle, if he has one. It’s a nice way to keep up with your favorite player. The card number adorns the top-right corner of the card, with “Series 1” underneath.

The hobby box I opened gave me 325 out of the 350 base cards, which is always a great start if you are a set collector. Some of the subsets include League Leaders, Team Cards, Future Stars, World Series Highlights and Combo Cards. 
Collectors should remember that Topps likes to throw in short print and super short print variations. The best way to tell is to check the code on the card back. Base cards end with 87, while short prints end with 43. The last two numbers on super short print cards are 44.

It didn’t look like I found any variations, but I will double check once I put the cards in my binder and examine  the card backs.

Parallels should be familiar for Topps collectors. Rainbow parallel fall once every 10 packs, or three to a hobby box on average. I pulled four from the box I opened. Other parallels include Gold, which are numbered to 2018; Vintage (99), Independence Day (76), Mother’s Day Pink (50), Father’s Day Blue (50), Memorial Day Camo (25) and 1/1 Platinum and printing plates. Hobby and jumbo exclusives include Black (67) and Negative, with Clear parallels (10) exclusive to hobby boxes.

As for inserts, one pays tribute to the 35th anniversary of the 1983 Topps set. There are 100 cards in this set, and a hobby box should yield nine on average. That is how many I pulled, including names like Corey Seager, Trey Turner, Addison Russell and even Jose Canseco.

MLB Awards is also a 50-card insert set and honors award winners in hitting, pitching and fielding. I pulled six of these cards (two above the average Topps projects), including Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Daniel Murphy, Brandon Crawford, Charlie Blackmon and Marcus Stroman.
Superstar Sensations is another 50-card subset that offers an interesting card front. There is a small color action player on the right side of the card, accompanied by a larger black-and-white shot. I pulled the average — four cards — and got Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander and Ichiro.

Topps Salute is a 100-card insert set that continues to pay tribute to holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day and Jackie Robinson Day. Legends and rookies are also celebrated in this subset.

The Topps Now counts down the top 10 cards bought the day after a player turned in a strong performance, or whether a key event was held. I pulled two cards – one of Judge and one of Derek Jeter. The odds were pretty good I’d pull both of them — Judge appears on seven cards in the set, while Jeter is on two of them. The only non-Yankee in the set is the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger.

The Home Run Challenge insert falls one per hobby box. The back of the card has a scratch-off space with a code. Collectors go to Topps.com/Promotions and choose the game you think the home run hero will connect for a round tripper. If the player homers in that game, you win a prize and are entered in the grand prize drawing — a trip to the 2019 Home Run Derby, which will be contested at Cleveland’s Progressive Field. I pulled Jake Lamb of the Diamondbacks, who hit 30 homers during the 2017 season.

Collectors who enjoy buying retail will find different inserts to chase. Target has a 30-card tribute to Jeter, while Walmart has a 30-card look at the Cubs’ Kris Bryant. Legends in the Making is a 30-card subset available at both retail outlets, along with the 30-card MLB Opening Day set.

The hot card in the hobby box I bought was part of the Major League Materials relics set. The card I pulled was of Dodgers’ pitcher Kenta Maeda, and it contained a gray uniform swatch. For fans of retail, blaster boxes will contain an MLB Players Weekend Commemorative Patch.

The Silver Pack I received for buying the hobby box yielded four 1983 Chrome Promo cards. I pulled Jose Altuve (Astros), Garrett Cooper (Yankees) and Paul Goldschmidt (Diamondbacks). The fourth card I pulled was a gold parallel of Astros shortstop Carlos Correia, numbered to 50. There are 50 of these chrome cards.
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As usual, Topps gets out of the gate quickly and effectively with Series 1 baseball. The photography is sharp, and the action shots can be fresh and innovative. There are, of course, the usual stock poses, but the vibrant colors make them seem colorful. ​

Here's a story I did for Sports Collector about the impeding release of the 2017-18 Upper Deck Series 2 hockey set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2017-18-upper-deck-series-2-hockey-set-for-valentines-day-release/

Here is a link to the podcast I did with Sridhar Pappu, author of the book, "The Year of the Pitcher." Great stuff:

newbooksnetwork.com/sridhar-pappu-the-year-of-the-pitcher-bob-gibson-denny-mclain-and-the-end-of-baseballs-golden-age-hmh-2017/