Maury
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Holtzman Baseball Reader |
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A close pal's new book
is catnip for baseball fans
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
Let’s start with the obvious.
Jerome Holtzman is my best
friend in sportswriting. We go back together some 45 years when
we traveled around the baseball circuit at big games, All Star
events, World Series contests, winter meetings, Hall of Fame
inductions at Cooperstown and union negotiations.
He taught me an awful lot about the business as a beat reporter
and later columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago
Tribune while I was working for the New York Post. He wrote the
best sportswriting book ever called “No Cheering in the
Press Box” and he was always supportive of my efforts.
He is a fascinating, no-nonsense guy with a dozen books to his
credit, about 5000 columns, enough magazine articles to fill
a factory and more opinions than Churchill.
Holtzman is retired now (aren’t we all at this age?) but
may be busier than ever with his role as Baseball’s Official
Historian and prolific author.
He took the time to put together his best work in a new book
simply called The Jerome
Holtzman Baseball Reader
(Triumph Books, $19.95). His back jacket photo is worth the price
of admission. It shows Holtzman on a bench with former Chicago
Cubs manager Don Zimmer, another face that can’t be imitated,
as he puffs his thick cigar, is squeezed into his open white
shirt and tight suspenders and lets the sun shine on his white
hair, thick eyebrows and paunchy middle.
“What does a sportswriter do?” a questioning young
journalist might ask.
He can simply study this picture of Holtzman and Zimmer for any
explanation needed.
This collection of Holtzman essays covers the game from back
to forth, top to bottom, century to century.
There are fresh, new intimate tales about Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb
and Ted Williams. There is a delightful story about baseball’s
only midget hero, Eddie Gaedel. There is a hurrah for a baseball
grunt, scout Hugh Alexander. There is the resurrection of long
lost Ron Necciai, a man who actually struck out 27 batters in
a nine inning game.
Holtzman gives attention to Ron Santo, the former Cubs third
baseman and current broadcaster, to fireballer Bob Feller, a
Navy World War II hero, to legendary Stan Musial, to rambunctious
Leo Durocher and scandalous Shoeless Joe Jackson.
He covers the joys and the tragedies in this game, the highlights
and the lowlights, the truth and the gossip in one delightful
episode after another.
It is impossible to select a favorite column from a favorite
writer. Try picking your favorite kid, your favorite movie, your
favorite frat party. They are all tied for first.
Let’s just concentrate on one chapter for the sake of Holtzman
flavor. This is the one about Moe Berg, the mysterious former
catcher and pal of Holtzman’s identified in his book as
“A Great Companion.”
I knew Berg a little as a former ball player, a teammate of the
young Ted Williams in Boston, a Brooklyn catcher labeled by my
favorite baseball person, the iconoclast Casey Stengel, as a
“a guy who speaks 10 languages and can’t hit in any
of them.”
Berg spent 15 years in the big leagues, hit .243 in 662 games
and seemed to hang around mostly because he was good in the bullpen,
protected the team’s baseballs and was helpful to all his
managers.
He was supposed to be an OSS man during World War II. When I
began showing up at Yankee stadium in the late 1950s he was often
around, dressed immaculately in his dark suit, white shirt, dark
tie and shined shoes. Berg attached himself to Holtzman sometime
around the early 1960s.
“Moe, you old son of a gun,” Holtzman told his friend,
“When you die I’m going to write your story, what you
are really like.”
“Wonderful;” he would shout. “marvelous.”
Then he would say, “Do it, do it, tell everything.”
So, Holtzman did it.
Holtzman enjoyed his company. Berg freeloaded in Jerry’s
room, went with him to the ball park, dined on press box delights
and offered private opinions on current players. Berg was one
of those guys who loved not being pinned down by anyone or anything.
The few times I sat with him in press boxes, when Holtzman was
not around, I found him a little tiresome. Not quite a bore but
not quite stimulating. He had a unique way of disappearing into
the night air.
Maybe it was me. Maybe I simply didn’t have time for a guy
who offered expertise on everything in the most subtle of ways.
Holtzman bought his tales. He accepted his life style. He believed
his fibs about all the women he romanced.
“Moe did have a secret. He didn’t have a regular job.
He must have been rooming with me four or five years before this
occurred to me. When I confronted him with my discovery he would
offer faint denials,” Holtzman wrote.
Holtzman tells of Berg strolling down the avenue with newspapers
folded under his arm, observing the world as it passed before
him in review and saying, “Isn’t that wonderful?”
or “Marvelous, marvelous.”
Jerry loved the guy. I didn’t. I saw Berg pick up newspapers
in a press box and walk off with them. Not so marvelous.
I don’t know about Moe Berg. To me, he wasn’t wonderful
or marvelous.
To me, Holtzman’s Baseball Reader, now that’s wonderful,
marvelous and about the best buy in sports journalism around
today.
©2003 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The book
cover illustration is courtesy Triumph Books.
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