New York, New York: A Hell of a (Baseball) Town

As the Mets and Yankees prepare for another go-round of interleague play, fans might consider some of these titles that highlight a few key players for each --- in some cases both --- of the teams. You know, for those interminable pitching changes or commercial breaks.

Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry were prominent members of the 1986 Mets team that ran roughshod over the National League and won a nail-biter of a World Series against the Boston Red Sox. They are still involved with the ball club, serving in broadcast capacities for the SNY cable station.

Darling and Hernandez share the broadcast booth with Gary Cohen. Each offers insight particular to his expertise --- Darling as a pitcher, Hernandez as a Gold Glove first baseman and formidable hitter. Their knowledge carries over in two books that delve into the game’s nuances.

Darling looks at baseball from the hill in THE COMPLETE GAME: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound. Other authors have taken a similar approach, dissecting a solitary contest and offering Talmudic-like commentary. But Darling goes beyond: rather than one game --- which may or may not contain all the information he would like to impart --- he selects individual innings out of more than 2,300 during his 13-year career, recalling particular situations and strategies. Not every outing was a success; he purposely does not pick only his most heroic work, but a sampling that serves even better in explaining his craft. Darling tosses in some personal anecdotes along the way, but this is no tell-all about the bad-boy Mets of the mid-’80s. Like the image he presents on the telecasts, THE COMPLETE GAME is just the kind of thoughtful analysis that befits a Yale graduate.

Keith Hernandez has been down the book path before. He collaborated with Mike Bryan on a well-received deconstruction, PURE BASEBALL (1995), and IF AT FIRST: A Season with the Mets (1986). The former team captain gives his considered opinion once again in SHEA GOOD-BYE: The Untold Inside Story of the Historic 2008 Season. The “journal” format can be a bit redundant, as co-author Matthew Silverman prefaces each entry with a “precap,” followed by Hernandez’s commentary on the Mets’ second straight disappointing season, culminating with an anti-climactic farewell to their 45-year-old home on the same day they lost any chance at post-season play.

Not every game is included here, which can lead to gaps in circumstances. Like Darling, Hernandez doesn’t dish, but gives the benefit of his expertise to decoding the game. As can sometimes be the case, former ballplayers like Hernandez can come off as old geezers when they compare today’s brand of baseball with that of their own playing days. But he doesn’t do so in a mean-spirited way, which makes it more acceptable, less of a reproach than wishful thinking for smarter execution and better outcomes.

Darryl Strawberry was the poster boy for lost potential. Tall, thin, with a lightning-quick bat, he was hailed as the next Ted Williams when he joined the Mets in 1983. His booming home runs excited fans like no one since Tom Seaver, and the “Straw Man” was expected to lead the team back to glory. But the money and temptations --- drugs, alcohol and women --- led to his downfall, as he frankly discusses in STRAW: Finding My Way, written with John Strausbaugh.

Strawberry --- who finished his career with the Yankees in 1999 and is currently an in-studio analyst for SNY --- is unflinching in admitting his shortcomings, including several turbulent marriages despite --- or perhaps because of --- having grown up with an abusive father. He uses his book as a purgative, a way to try to expel his demons and embrace life as a Christian. But, as he also admits, man is frail and weak, and he fell time and time again, despite numerous chances and good intentions. If, after all this time, he is truly repentant and on the straight and narrow, good for him. If not, it is merely another sad tale of a fallen idol.

Another case of a player disappointing legions of fans has to be Roger Clemens, who was a sure-fire Hall of Famer until his star dropped precipitously with the revelation that he relied on performance enhancing drugs to prolong his amazing career. Two new books dispel the myth that Clemens achieved his prominence solely through arduous workout routines and strength of will.

Jeff Pearlman tales a look at the big picture in the biography THE ROCKET THAT FELL TO EARTH: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality. He immediately quashes the notion that Clemens was a tough Texan. In fact, his roots were in Ohio. As a young athlete, Clemens was unremarkable. It was only when he got into high school, and later college, that he developed the skills for which he was famous: tenacity and a desire to excel that bordered on the maniacal.

Pearlman, a veteran writer for Sports Illustrated and its website, chips away at Clemens, wondering why “the Rocket” felt he had to go through such lengths to achieve that “immortality.” Like Barry Bonds, another Hall of Fame-bound superstar before the specter of drugs overshadowed his accomplishments, Clemens --- who pitched for the Yankees from 1999-2003 and again in 2007 to close out his 24-year career --- surely would have earned that Cooperstown plaque without any “assistance.”

The cover of AMERICAN ICON: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime shows Clemens in what has been described as full “‘roid rage” mode, throwing Mike Piazza’s broken bat at the Mets catcher during the 2000 World Series. (Clemens hit Piazza in the head in an interleague game earlier in the season; the fact that Piazza had a career batting average of .421 with four home runs might have had something to do with that.)

AMERICAN ICON was written by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe and Christian Red of the New York Daily News. In this expose, they focus primarily on the relationship between Clemens and Brian McNamee, the trainer who purportedly introduced the pitcher to performance-enhancing drugs. Where most previously published material castigates McNamee as one of the vilest characters to be associated with the game, AMERICAN ICON places the blame firmly on Clemens, and casts him as a bullying, dishonest, hypocritical blowhard.

Some authors fall back on the use of “unnamed sources” in making their accusations, but the Daily News quartet have done just about everything they could to provide evidence that contradicts Clemens’s claims. Such relentlessness can take on the appearance of piling it on, and for all that research there is a decided lack of citation; I guess that would have added a couple of hundred more pages, but it seems important when pillorying someone like this.

When all the sad news about athletes with feet of clay has proven too much, pick up YOGI BERRA: Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra. The latest in a long line of books about the baseball lifer --- who served both the Yankees and Mets during his storied career --- was written to prove that, despite all the fun and goofiness, the Hall of Fame catcher was one of the best players in baseball’s history. A three-time MVP, 15-time all-star, and owner of 10 World Series rings during his tenure with the Yankees (1946-63), Berra’s talents belied his ungainly appearance. Short, squat and seemingly undisciplined at the plate, he nevertheless became a favorite during and after his playing days. Stories about his mangling of the English language have kept him a part of American culture long after he departed from the active scene. The fact that he has gone with the flow proves he’s no dummy, either.

Barra has been accused of unabashed unobjectivity in his adulation, but in light of recent developments in the last few years, it’s just what baseball fans need. His appendices include a detailed account comparing Berra with other great catchers as well as juxtaposing some of his “Yogi-isms” with quotes from some of the great thinkers.

“Never, never, never give up” - Winston Churchill

“It ain’t over till it’s over” - Yogi Berra

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan