I was three years old the first time I got a pack of baseball cards, four when I went to my first game, five when I started Little League. I began to read about baseball history a few years later, and for most of my childhood, I idealized the game. I read its stories, saw my favorite players as icons and was mostly unaware of their flaws. I connect a lot of the innocence of my youth to how I felt about baseball, how it played into my relationships with friends and family, how those memories still make me feel today. It’s one reason I love the game.

I still love baseball, though somewhere between the 1994 strike, the subsequent steroid scandal, and my own coming of age, I began to see ballplayers and people in general as human. Today, I know that some of my favorite players from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Pete Rose all had their flaws as human beings. And that’s fine. Personally, I find these types of players easier to relate to.

I mention this all because a book debuted on March 8, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn. It’s only the latest work on the Hall of Famer (and not even the only one that came out on March 8, given Kostya Kennedy’s book on DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak) though Charyn takes a new tact, seeking to repair the tattered image of his hero.

Ostensibly, Charyn’s book is a response to Richard Ben Cramer’s 2000 biography, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life which was controversial in its portrayal of DiMaggio as a cold, calculating loner. Cramer wasn’t the first writer to offer a less-than flattering look back at a player who was lionized if not deified by the press during his career. Gay Talese broke rank with his landmark 1966 feature in Esquire magazine, capturing DiMaggio alone in San Francisco, mourning the death four years prior of ex-wife Marilyn Monroe, and telling a well-wisher and fan, “I’m not great. I’m just a man trying to get along.”

Then there’s David Halberstam’s classic 1989 book on the 1949 American League pennant race between the Yankees and Red Sox, Summer of ’49. Halberstam wrote in an author’s note of being rebuffed by DiMaggio for an interview, saying the only time he reached him on the phone, he “spoke to a very wary former center fielder.” Halberstam continued, “He said he would see me, and thereupon avoided all further entreaties. So be it; if there is a right under the First Amendment to do books such as this, there is also a right not to be interviewed. I’m sorry he didn’t see me; he still remains the most graceful athlete I saw in those impressionable years.”

Like Halberstam, Charyn portrays DiMaggio as a uniquely gifted player, though he does so with more poetic license. I’m not sure if all the literary devices work. The phrase idiot savant is used multiple times to describe DiMaggio the player, as if describing some Rain Main in pinstripes. Charyn also repeatedly refers to DiMaggio as Jolter, only clarifying on his final page that the nickname comes from a poem by famed sportswriter Grantland Rice, An Ode to the Jolter. It got a little grating. Still, Charyn writes gracefully enough to forgive the occasional awkward metaphor, and at 146 pages, the book can be read in a sitting. I found myself drawn in early on.

The book’s title refers to DiMaggio’s long period of mourning after Monroe’s death. Charyn writes of DiMaggio, who had roses sent to Monroe’s grave three times a week for 20 years, as the one person close to Monroe who never tried to use her. He also said DiMaggio was deeply impacted by her death, writing:

Did the Jolter really survive Marilyn Monroe? He lived another thirty-seven years with the trappings of success…. [but] the Big Guy was unconscious half the time, going through the motions without the least spark of fire. It’s no accident that Richard Ben Cramer in his biography of the Jolter skips over the years from 1963 to 1998 with the knowledge that nothing internal happened to the man; the mark of these years on him was as minimal as the diary he would keep, whether he visited the White House or was waiting in an airport lounge. It would get even worse as he went from memorabilia show to memorabilia show that was a peculiar kind of hell; he was a performer in his own living death and never even knew it. He’d been mourning Marilyn all along, in spite of his little flings and fixations on former Miss Americas. He missed Marilyn beyond reason. He couldn’t repair himself.

It’s a bold take, and I’m not sure I go for it. I don’t know if I see DiMaggio as a victim or a tragic figure, but I also don’t fault him for being something short of the image people expected of him or even one he cultivated for himself. Jim Bouton wrote in a follow-up to Ball Four, “Why can’t Mickey Mantle be a hero who has a bit too much to drink from time to time and cries into his glass that he will soon be dead, like his father and his uncle? Why do our heroes have to be so perfect and unflawed?”

They don’t.

1. The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter: When this book was updated in 1985, a reviewer wrote, “This was the best baseball book published in 1966, it is the best baseball book of its kind now, and, if it is reissued in 10 years, it will be the best baseball book of 1995.” I don’t know how any baseball book can top this one. Ritter spent five years interviewing roughly two dozen former ballplayers from the Deadball Era and beyond. More than providing unique historical perspective, their stories are entertaining, funny, and inspiring to a writer like myself. There must be more of these stories out there.

2. Baseball by Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward: I got this book for Christmas in 1994, a few months after watching the accompanying PBS special, and I still open it occasionally. I don’t know if I’ve read every word, but some of the stories I’ve read countless times. So much of my ethos and knowledge base as a writer and baseball historian comes from this book, which covers more than a century of the game’s history. I’ve even used the bibliography, a veritable who’s-who of great baseball books, to gauge how much of the sport’s essential literature I’ve gotten to.

3. Ball Four by Jim Bouton: Bouton wrote this diary of the 1969 season, and while many of the then-groundbreaking revelations seem tame by today’s standards (players in the book pop amphetamine pills and womanize), I still get great replay value from it. Bouton’s writing was fresh, honest, and entertaining in 1970, it doesn’t seem dated today, and it’s almost weird some of the book’s players have passed, like Greg Goosen whose death was announced Sunday.

4. Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker: Wilker’s memoir is told through his childhood baseball cards, and as someone who collected almost obsessively as a child, it could well have been my life story. It helps that Wilker’s writing is vivid, humorous, and well-influenced. When I emailed Wilker in preparing a review of his book, he told me he drew inspiration from one of my favorite writers, Tobias Wolff.

5. Summer of ’49 by David Halberstam: Halberstam brought the approach of a Harvard graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam reporter to the story of the 1949 American League pennant race, interviewing almost every living member of that year’s Red Sox and Yankees when he wrote this book in the 1980s. Seemingly, only Joe DiMaggio stiffed Halberstam, though Ted Williams provided wonderful material.

6. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn: I like The Boys of Summer a little less than Summer of ’49, because Halberstam was able to remove himself more from the work. But that’s also part of the magic with Kahn’s work, as much a memoir of his time as a young reporter covering the Brooklyn Dodgers as it is a chronicling years later of the players in retirement. Duke Snider’s death on Sunday reinforced the historical value of Kahn’s efforts, as did the deaths of fellow Brooklyn greats Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, and Jackie Robinson.

7. The Lost Ballparks by Lawrence Ritter: While not on the same magnitude as Ritter’s first work here, this is a fun book which has been in my collection since childhood. It features the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field, Shibe Park, and many more bygone parks, telling how they stood, when they were demolished, and what remains of them today. My grandparents own a ranch near Tracy, California, and I used to enjoy exploring some of the derelict old buildings on their property as a kid, wondering what remnants of the past I could find. That part of me finds books like this fascinating.

8. Baseball As I Have Known It by Fred Lieb: Lieb published this book in 1977, approaching his 90th birthday, recounting everything in his baseball writing career from its beginnings in 1911. There’s so much baseball history here that Lieb witnessed, from the death of Ray Chapman to the career of Babe Ruth to the illness and death of his friend, Lou Gehrig. This is another one-of-a-kind book from a writer with a unique life. The only sportswriter I can think of who worked longer was Shirley Povich who wrote for the Washington Post from 1923 to 1998.

9. Game of Shadows by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada: Williams and Fainaru-Wada built this book out of their reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle on the BALCO steroid scandal which implicated Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield among others. I don’t know of a more sober, comprehensive look at baseball’s biggest scandal in 20 years.

10. The Last Boy by Jane Leavy: I’ve been remiss on posting something here about this book, which I received a review copy of in the fall and finished last month. I should hopefully have a longer piece up in the next few weeks. For now, what I’ll say is Leavy set the standard for baseball biographies with this book, taking five years to interview more than 600 people connected to Mantle and craft an evenhanded look at the controversial Yankee center fielder.

At the beginning of the 20th century, baseball was practiced in the style favored by New York Giants’ manager John McGraw: Play for the single run with a base hit, followed by the hit and run, a sacrifice or a stolen base.

But by 1921, Babe Ruth was in his second season with the New York Yankees, redefining what one ballplayer could do. His 59 home runs was more than eight entire teams in the majors that year, and not only did the long ball he hit so effectively create more runs, more quickly, it also proved to be a fan favorite.

The stage was set for an epic change in baseball strategy and its ruling elite, and this shift has been recreated in Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg’s book, 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York. I give the book five stars out of five. It’s a well-researched, well-documented account of what may be the single most pivotal season in baseball history.

Spatz and Steinberg provide interesting insights into the minds of the hard-driving McGraw and his Yankee counterpart Miller Huggins. Before the season began, McGraw said of his rivals, “Unless we have bad luck, I do not fear any club in the National League.”

Although the Giants got the best of the Yankees in the 1921 first all-New York World Series, capturing the title by 5 games to 3 in the best of nine set, Huggins nevertheless managed the Bombers to the teams’ first six American League pennants and three World Series championships.

Huggins’ slugging Yankees ended the dead ball era forever and catapulted the team into number one status in the New York baseball world ahead of the Giants. Brooklyn, then known as the Robins, was nowhere as far as fans outside of Flatbush were concerned.

Before Huggins took over the Yankees in 1918, he was the player/manager for the St. Louis Cardinals. And prior to taking the helm for the Cards, the 5’4”, 140 pound  Huggins was one of the most skilled second basemen of his era. At various times during his career with the Cardinals and his native Cincinnati, Huggins handled 15 or more chances or figured in three double plays.

Hall of Fame Yankee pitcher Waite Hoyt remembered his former manager: “Huggins was almost like a school master in the dugout. There was no goofing off. You watched the game and you kept track not only of the score and the number of outs, but of the count on the batter.  At any moment Hug might ask you what the situation was.”

By 1923, when Yankee Stadium opened (see video here), the Bombers started on a seven-decade stretch of mostly dominant baseball. Before 1923, the Yankees and the Giants shared the Polo Grounds.

1921 is full of New York’s rich history as well as the colorful sports journalism of the time from reporters like Damon Runyon and Walter Trumbull. As an example of the descriptive prose found in the sports section in those early days, consider this analysis from Trumbull about Game 5: “The Giants ran bases with all the skill of a fat lady with the asthma racing for a street car.”

The book also has 53 illustrations, many never seen before, that colorfully supplement the author’s text and offer one more reason 1921 is a valuable addition to any baseball library.

By all appearances, Ernie Fazio is doing well.

Decades removed from baseball, the former Houston Colt .45′s and Kansas City Athletics infielder lives in Alamo, California in a sprawling house currently listing for $1.5 million. This past weekend found him celebrating news of his daughter’s engagement to a son of former Oakland Raiders offensive tackle John Vella. At 68, Fazio says he is in good health and looks it too.

So why did Fazio sue Major League Baseball? Fazio is among 872 players who don’t qualify for a pension or health benefits. I learned of Fazio from Douglas J. Gladstone’s book, A Bitter Cup of Coffee, available on his Web site, which follows these ballplayers’ efforts to obtain benefits. Fazio has a good life. Not every player in the book is so lucky.

Fazio said he’s been involved for two years in a lawsuit for benefits. Prior to that, Fazio was a lead plaintiff in an unsuccessful 2003 suit against baseball. “I’m doing it for the other players,” Fazio told me during an interview at his home Monday. “Everybody that played in the major leagues should be vested.”

Starting in 1947, baseball offered pensions to any player with five years service. In 1969, this was lowered to four years. Then in 1980, the stipulation for vesting changed to one day of service for health benefits and 43 days for a retirement allowance. But the changes weren’t retroactive, so Fazio and others who played less than four years between 1947 and 1979 got nothing. Their brief careers were what’s termed in baseball as cups of coffee, and Gladstone writes, “One might even suggest that these men gulped bitter cups of coffee.”

Fazio received $100,000 from Houston upon signing in 1962, and he said he invested, which helped him buy his house 35 years ago. He’s worked primarily in sanitation since leaving baseball. Other players affected have had varying levels of success. Some stories are moving: men disabled from playing, others facing illnesses without help from baseball.

Count Gladstone among their supporters– his views are clear from the outset of his polemical, engaging book. Gladstone told me independent houses were interested in publishing his 192-page work in 2011 but he chose to self-publish in April because time matters. Dave Marash writes in the foreword:

This is all about 874 former players, all of them now at least middle-aged. None will ever play again, and every year, they are dying off…. And, as of now, they are getting little or nothing from the game they loved. Fixing this inadvertent injustice can be done, if both the owners and [the] players decide to do it. It will cost them marginal money to do so. They say they’ll look at it in their next 2011 negotiation, but they should stop looking and start acting now. A simple side agreement could be executed anytime.

I admire Gladstone’s advocacy, though I have less faith the economics would be simple, especially in these tough times. Giving 900 men, say, a $5,000 pension would cost $4.5 million annually, even if this would gradually decrease to nothing as players die. As Gladstone writes, baseball has no legal obligation to provide assistance, and while it would be admirable, I understand why it wouldn’t be feasible.

I support universal health care, though and until America does too, I think baseball should help its former players. I understand this is a polarizing issue, and I generally strive to keep this site free of politics, though I will say that to stand idly by while non-vested players grapple with medical woes doesn’t just seem petty, cheap, or cold. It seems inhumane.

Baseball could grant medical coverage to these men– it can do whatever it wants, really– or if it insists on following the 1980 agreement, I have another idea: Why not give the non-vested players another cup of coffee?

As mentioned earlier, it takes one day in the majors for someone to qualify for lifetime medical coverage. There are currently 872 non-vested former players and 30 big league teams, so in September, when rosters expand from 25 players to 40, each team could offer these men one-day gigs as coaches or even inactive players. It would mirror an event Gladstone writes of when teams gave signing bonuses to former Negro League players who fell short of vesting requirements. Under my idea, with each team helping about 30 players over the season’s final month, this could get knocked out by playoff time next year.

It might not be quite what Gladstone, Fazio, and others are aiming for. But this cup of coffee wouldn’t be nearly so bitter.

Related: A recent interview Gladstone gave to CBS News

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from a representative of a publishing company, Sourcebooks. The rep said New York Times bestselling author Len Berman has a new book due out this fall, The 25 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. The rep wrote:

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on his list, which include Alex Rodriguez (preposterous if you ask me) and excludes names like Rod Carew, Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr. and several other 90′s players that have proven themselves above and beyond many that made the list.

I welcome story ideas, and I’ll write about interesting topics that relate to this site. Berman’s book met those criteria, so I encouraged the rep to send me a copy. He obliged and also included Berman’s bestseller, The Greatest Moments in Sports, which I’ll review in the next few weeks, once I read it.

I finished Berman’s newer book yesterday, and it wasn’t bad. It’s meant for children, similar to many baseball books I had growing up. The book didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know, but it offers good information for children learning the history of the game. The 25 players are mostly fine ambassadors to baseball, offering kids a slice of America’s pastime at its best. In alphabetical order, Berman’s top 25 players are:

• Hank Aaron
• Johnny Bench
• Ty Cobb
• Joe DiMaggio
• Bob Feller
• Jimmie Foxx
• Lou Gehrig
• Bob Gibson
• Josh Gibson
• Rogers Hornsby
• Walter Johnson
• Mickey Mantle
• Christy Matthewson
• Willie Mays
• Stan Musial
• Frank Robinson
• Jackie Robinson
• Alex Rodriguez
• Pete Rose
• Babe Ruth
• Mike Schmidt
• Warren Spahn
• Honus Wagner
• Ted Williams
• Cy Young

(As I’ll make clear before the end of this post, my top 25 differ somewhat.)

Berman, an eight-time Emmy Award-winning sportscaster, determined picks with a Blue Ribbon Panel consisting of Ralph Branca, Frank Deford, Steve Fortunato, Roland Hemond, Jeffrey Lyons, Chris Russo, and Bernie Williams. The panel members apparently voted subjectively on who they considered worthy, with the 25 highest vote recipients making the book. Given how much baseball changes every generation, the panel’s unscientific look might have been the fairest selection method. Still, a quantifiable ranking system may have helped, too.

I have recently begun to pay more attention to one of the latest crazes in the baseball research community, a metric called Wins Above Replacement (WAR.) This rates the number of extra wins a player theoretically provides over an average replacement, incorporating both offense and defense and suggesting a player’s overall worth. Using TheBaseballGauge.com, I found the 25 best players for career WAR. They are as follows, with players who didn’t make Berman’s list in boldface:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Ty Cobb
3. Walter Johnson
4. Honus Wagner
5. Cy Young
6. Barry Bonds
7. Willie Mays
8. Tris Speaker
9. Stan Musial
10. Ted Williams
11. Hank Aaron
12. Eddie Collins
13. Mickey Mantle
14. Roger Clemens
15. Rogers Hornsby
16. Christy Matthewson
17. Grover Cleveland Alexander
18. Lou Gehrig
19. Rickey Henderson
20. Mel Ott
21. Frank Robinson
22. Nap Lajoie
23. Joe Morgan
24. Greg Maddux
25. Tim Keefe
    

WAR isn’t perfect, and in general, stats often don’t tell the whole story. No metric could fully measure the contributions to baseball of Jackie Robinson, who has an eternal spot in my top 25. Still, looking at WAR and other formulas popular within the Society for American Baseball Research can double-check for worthy old-timers like Speaker and Collins.

Berman notes in his postscript, “Who knows? Maybe this book will turn into a ‘doubleheader.’” That route offers plenty of material. I could list 50 great players who didn’t make the cut including Carew, Ripken and Griffey. I don’t know if they make my top 25, and I think if Rodriguez is on Berman’s list, Bonds should be there as well (personally, I don’t feel like honoring either man or Clemens.)

Here’s my top 25:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Willie Mays
3. Ted Williams
4. Ty Cobb
5. Walter Johnson
6. Hank Aaron
7. Satchel Paige
8. Lou Gehrig
9. Cy Young
10. Honus Wagner
11. Jackie Robinson
12. Stan Musial
13. Christy Matthewson
14. Tris Speaker
15. Rogers Hornsby
16. Eddie Collins
17. Pete Rose
18. Rickey Henderson
19. Josh Gibson
20. Joe DiMaggio
21. Greg Maddux
22. Roberto Clemente
23. Mickey Mantle
24. Sandy Koufax
25. Joe Jackson

I encourage anyone who’s interested to post their top 25 in comment form here.

I periodically review baseball books. For a compilation of my reviews, go here.