Bill Nowlin

In which is chronicled the first season of American League baseball in Boston, under the flag of the Somersets (a/k/a Americans, as relentlessly dubbed by the contributors herein). After sections detailing the formation of the American League and the club itself, most of the remainder of the book is taken up by player profiles and a chronology of the year. The player profiles do not emphasize the 1901 season itself, rather serving as mini-biographies, which makes them longish, and, taken with a goofy emphasis which leads to such anomalies as a nobody who played in one game receiving a longer profile than Old Cy Young, makes them sometimes tedious and weighed down with an avalanche of genealogical detail which would have the head of the LDS genealogical library begging them to stop. The chronology is generated partially from newspapers of the day and is also interesting, if also a bit long. For a book which purports to have four editors, the book is a little sloppy; spelling and usage are acceptable, but paragraphs repeat at times, and different contributors basically go over the same territory in different places. As a reference book, this has worthwhile information, and fans of the Red Sox or of deadball baseball will enjoy it, but any wider audience is difficult to visualize.… (altro)

Red Sox vs. Yankees: Hometown Experts Analyze, Debate, and Illuminate Baseball's Ultimate Rivalry from Bill Nowlin and David Fischer illustrates what makes baseball fun for many fans, namely, comparing stars and arguing about who is better. Just to make clear, I am neither a Red Sox nor a Yankees fan. I grew up and have remained an Orioles fan, so the times I have ever pulled for these two teams have been few and far between. But they have had some of the greatest players and teams and a discussion about those players touches on some of the biggest names.

First, what they did. Each writer chose, position-by-position, their all-time team. Many of these position battles were pretty clear cut, while there were a few surprises, even a hall-of-famer left out of the starting line up. For each position, however, they listed their honorable mentions and this was where a lot of the fun in the book resides. Learning about the few names that were unfamiliar and learning that some of the names you knew were better, or worse, than you remembered was a trip down memory lane. Then a simulated best-of-7 series was run between these two all-time teams. I'm not giving away the winner.

Then each writer chose the team they considered to be that franchise's best single team, for example, as an Oriole fan I might have to decide between the 1966 team and the 1971 team (c'mon, 4 20 game winners, not likely to ever happen again with the way pitchers are used now). They discussed the strengths and weaknesses of some of the great teams and then their rationale for the ones they chose. I was a little surprised about one of them but the explanation made sense. Then another simulated series was run between these teams.

This is a fun book for baseball fans in general. It is especially great for fans of the two franchises. If you're a fan of another team you'll find yourself thinking about who you would put on your all-time team.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.… (altro)

A Look at Baseball Scouts and their Profession, says the subtitle. This book, built around a couple dozen biographies in the usual style of the Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project, is an exploration of what baseball's scouts do and how they go about their jobs. As always with SABR's BioProject books, the biographies are very good to excellent, and much of the supporting material is useful and interesting. Unfortunately the book lacks some helpful contextual information which makes it less than useful to a reader who's not already aware of the organizational environment scouts work in.

I rather expected the book to begin with an overview of the place scouting occupies in the typical baseball organization, with other chapters explicitly discussing the history and development of scouting practice, the role scouting plays in player development (and perhaps some discussion of how specific organizations have employed different scouting/player development strategies), and an explication of the things scouts look for when they watch a baseball game. The book contains all of that material, at least in part, but only the what do they look for part has a specific discussion, and that is tucked into a rather brief chapter introduction. The other general topics can be gleaned from the book's material, but at best there are only partial summaries.

The result is a specialist's book, best suited to a fan who already knows the context. There's some very valuable material if you fit that profile. Dan Levitt's chapter describing Ed Barrow's decision formalizing Yankee scouting and player development is just terrific. Also valuable are the word portraits of Al LaMacchia (by David King), Jack Doyle (Neal Mackertich), Joe Cambria (Brian McKenna) and George Omachi (Bill Nowlin). Less valuable for a scouting book are the portraits of Charley Wagner (Nowlin) and Sam Hairston (Rory Costello); both are excellent biographies but concentrate on the person's playing career and give few details about their work as scouts.

Not all of the chapters are biographies. While, for instance, the Tom Greenwade (Jim Sandoval & Rory Costello) chapter includes the standard biographical details, including the Mickey Mantle signing which is his most famous success, there's also a long discussion of the below-the-radar work the Dodgers put into signing Jackie Robinson. Fred Glueckstein nicely tells the story of the signing of Tony Lazzeri, from the standpoint of the Yankees organization. Ron Anderson's interview with George Digby is, I'm afraid, more interesting for what it shows of Anderson's excellent interviewing technique than for anything Digby says; personally I'd have edited it, but an introductory note would have been worthwhile. There's a short chapter about the Scouting Bureau, and Astros intern Ben Jedlovec offers a dramatic essay about draft day preparations. Bill Nowlin has a great profile of Deacon Jones and what Deacon's job as an advance scout involved. And Gib Bodet's disparaging description of his National Cross-Checker job is absolutely delightful.

This is an excellent resource for further research. Virtually every chapter has a bibliography, some of which are quite extensive. Most chapters have footnotes, as well.

I've left lots of material out, much of it excellent. It's a valuable book if you're looking for what it contains; my only real concern is that there's too little explanation of why and how scouts matter.

This book is currently only available to SABR members, but will soon be made available to the public. I'll post a link when that occurs.



This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal.… (altro)