Category: MLB

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Mark McGwire: The Confession

Mark McGwire confirmed long-held suspicions today, admitting he used steroids during his playing career,  in an interview with the Associated Press.  McGwire had previously denied this publicly.

“I never knew when, but I always knew this day would come,” McGwire said in a statement issue today and posted on ESPN. “It’s time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected. I used steroids during my playing career and I apologize.”

McGwire said he first used steroids following the the 1989 season, briefly, and then in earnest beginning in 1993, including his record-setting 70 home run year in 1998.  He said he used off and on for a decade.  A source close to McGwire told ESPN he also used human growth hormone.  McGwire said he used drugs, in part, to recover from injuries.

“You don’t know that you’ll ever have to talk about the skeleton in your closet on a national level,” he told the AP. “I did this for health purposes. There’s no way I did this for any type of strength use.”

McGwire said he decided to come clean after becoming the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals.  Bud Selig and Tony La Russa were among those who praised the move Monday.

“I’m really encouraged that he would step forward,” said La Russa, who McGwire called to apologize to on Monday. “As we go along his explanations will be well received.”

During the 1998 season, McGwire stood silent while an Associated Press reporter, Steve Wilstein, was criticized by the baseball world and other journalists for reporting his use of androstenedione.  At the start of the year, McGwire also lied in a March 23, 1998 Sports Illustrated cover story, written by Tom Verducci.

Verducci wrote:

Many, including opposing players, believe he uses steroids. He denies the charge. Vehemently.

“Never,” says McGwire, though he admits he’ll “take anything that’s legal,” meaning dietary supplements. “It sort of boggles my mind when you hear people trying to discredit someone who’s had success. Because a guy enjoys lifting weights and taking care of himself, why do they think that guy is doing something illegal? Why not say, ‘This guy works really, really hard at what he does, and he’s dedicated to being the best he can be.’ I sure hope that’s the way people look at me.”

Personally, I remember reading that quote when it was new, and it’s bothered me since the andro controversy.  I’m glad McGwire has decided to finally get honest.  It takes guts to man up on a national stage, particularly when he had no reason he had to do so.  Still, this all somehow seems like too little, too late.

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Vlade, Texas Ranger

The Texas Rangers scored something of a coup yesterday, signing free agent Vladimir Guerrero to a one-year deal for $5 million, plus incentives, with a $1 million option buyout for a second year.  The 2004 American League Most Valuable Player was let go by the Los Angeles Angels after an injury-riddled season in 2009.  Guerrero now gets a great chance at redemption.

In my book, Guerrero is the bargain of the off-season, and I wish the A’s would have made a move for him.  True, he is about to be 35 in Dominican years, which is like 38 in the U.S. (unless he’s being honest about his age, unlike some of his countrymen, two of whom are referenced in this post.)  Regardless,  Guerrero is a potential Hall of Famer.  Baseball Reference rates him similar, as a batter, to five Cooperstown members, plus Larry Walker, who is likely to be inducted once eligible.  If I could have any outfielder from this generation to build a team around, I’d probably take Guerrero.

Guerrero also has something to prove in 2010, and his numbers suggest he hasn’t tapered off, just that he had a down, injured year in 2009. His .295 batting average marked the first full season in his career he hit below .300.  If that is an off year for him, I can’t wait to see what he does at his new home field, where he has hit .394 lifetime according to the Associated Press.  At $6 million, Guerrero certainly seems like less of a risk than Jason Bay at $66 million or Marlin Byrd at $15 million.

It’s been an interesting off-season, with deals skewing to either extreme.  There have been the overpriced bounties for Byrd and Bay as well as the typical windfall Adrian Beltre seems to get whenever he’s on the market and the staggering $82.5 million contract John Lackey got from the Boston Red Sox. My mom likes to look at houses every weekend with one of her friends; I’m pretty sure either of them could do a more responsible job, financially, as general manager of the Red Sox than Theo Epstein.  Come to think of it, my mom might make a kickass GM.  When I was growing up, she could stretch a dollar farther than anyone I know.  That just isn’t seen in large markets in baseball anymore.

Granted, there have been many bargains among this current free agent crop.  Guerrero wasn’t even the only one the Rangers got on Saturday.  They also picked up Khalil Greene, who finished second in the 2004 National League Rookie of the Year voting.  Greene has struggled with social anxiety in recent years, but at $750,000, is a minimal risk.  A number of other teams have landed veterans with one-year deals under $2 million, including Adam Everett, Troy Glaus, Kelvim Escobar and Scott Podsednik.

Podsednik got $1.75 million from the Kansas City Royals, his reward for hitting .304 in 2009 with the Chicago White Sox, where he made $500,000.  Podsednik is like the young child on a small allowance who goes from getting $0.50 each week to $0.75.  Congratulations, Scotty.  You still don’t have enough to buy the really cool toys.

A number of other quality players remain on the open market, including pitchers like Jon Garland, Erik Bedard and Ben Sheets and position players such as Randy Winn, Miguel Tejada and Hank Blalock.  I look forward to seeing how the winter winds down.

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Randy Johnson: Best lefthander ever?

I read a story by Carl Steward of the Oakland Tribune about the retirement yesterday of Randy Johnson that included a curious bit. Steward opined:

From an inauspicious start as a gawky 6-foot-10 kid from Livermore who threw the ball hard but didn’t have much clue where it was going, Johnson evolved into one of the eternal legends of the game, certainly one of the top dozen pitchers ever and arguably the best to ever throw from the left side. Certainly, he is right there alongside Sandy Koufax, Steve Carlton, Lefty Grove and Warren Spahn.

That got me thinking.  My first instinct was that Steward may have been engaging in some homerism. Urban Dictionary defines this as hometown bias, with an example: “The local newspapers practice homerism, predicting that the hometown teams will win and complaining about the refs when the local teams lose.” Steward was on the 43-minute conference call yesterday where Johnson announced his retirement.  Frankly, I’d be jazzed too if I’d been apart of that.

Granted, looking over the career numbers, there is some cause for debate.  Of the group, Johnson has the highest number of strikeouts and most Cy Young awards, with five, though out of fairness to Spahn and Grove, the award was not given out until 1956.  The others also have the benefit of having some years away to enhance their legacies.  Maybe I’d feel stronger about Johnson if he had pitched in the 1930s, striking fear into Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  Then again, Johnson had to face Barry Bonds in his prime and spent much of his career in the Kingdome, which was essentially the baseball equivalent of a pinball machine.

I’d take Johnson for sure over Spahn or Carlton, but I have a harder time when it comes to Koufax or Grove. If a general manager assembling an all-time dream had any of these players in their prime available to pitch Game 1 of the World Series, how could he pass over Koufax for Johnson?  It just doesn’t compute. The last four years Koufax pitched, he was essentially untouchable.  Only a bum arm cut his career short, made him the sole member of this group not to win 300 games and disqualified him, at least in my book, from being the best lefthander ever.  But in terms of sheer talent, I believe he is the best.

For overall career, I’d take Grove over Johnson.  Johnson won three more games lifetime, but Grove got his 300 in an era where hitters ruled supreme.  Consider that Grove is generally acknowledged to have had his best years from 1929 to 1931, when he went 79-15.  The batting average for the American League was .284 in 1929, .288 in 1930 and .278 in 1931.  For context, in 2002 when Johnson went 24-5, the National League batting average was .259.  If Grove pitched today, especially in the NL, the results would be mindblowing.

All this being said, it will be a long time before another player like Johnson comes along.  He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer, no doubt.

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The best $5 I ever spent

Over the past few years, I have increasingly begun to use www.baseball-reference.com, an encyclopedia of players and their career numbers.  With this blog, I now use the website pretty much constantly.  In a pinch, I can, among other things, look up the stats of a player I’m writing about, see who he was similar to and even check what percentage of the Hall of Fame vote he received. I actually find it difficult to write without being able to access the site. I don’t know what sportswriters did without the Internet.

On the site, visitors are allowed to sponsor the page of any player for a nominal sum.  With the sponsorship, one can post a personal message and a link to their site.  The lowest fee to sponsor is $5, though I’ve seen asking prices over $100 for top players.  Most of the game’s immortals are taken, but interestingly, the pages for a number of figures from the Steroid Era are available.  Currently, Roger Clemens’ page is free for $80, Sammy Sosa’s for $75, Rafael Palmeiro’s for $40 and Jose Canseco’s for $56 (though for some reason, Ozzie Canseco is taken.)

That’s all more than I can afford or could justify spending on this sort of thing, though the idea of getting a $5 player has long appealed.  I considered sponsoring Aloysius Travers, after I wrote a post on him back in May and saw his page free for $5.  However, I didn’t jump and kicked myself (not literally) after another sponsor stepped forward. Over this past weekend, however, I finally grabbed another player.

I will preface this by saying that I’ve started thinking I should write a book.  Recently, I read a baseball book by a first-time author and couldn’t help thinking: Man, I am totally as good of a writer as this guy.  The only thing separating him and me is that he put the work in. Fear has held me back in the past, coupled with the idea that I am not a good enough writer, would never finish a book and, even if I did, would get rejected by publishers.

I’ve realized, however, that regardless of the outcome, I enjoy the process of writing and talking to old baseball players.  Also, I’d rather try and fail at something than spend my life wondering what might have been.  If the most that comes out of my effort is a self-published book that few people read, it will still be a baseball book with my name on it, and that’s pretty cool.

The player I might like to do a book on is named Joe Marty, who I wrote about here back in June. Injuries and World War II robbed Marty of a long career, though when he was coming up with the San Francisco Seals in the 1930s, scouts thought him more talented than his teammate Joe DiMaggio.  DiMaggio of course went on to a Hall of Fame career.  Marty opened a bar in Sacramento and became, as an old-timer told me, “his own best customer.”  Thematically, the book seems rife with possibilities, and I also like being able to write about Sacramento, my hometown.

Thus, I plunked down $5 for Marty’s page.  For now, what I put on there is a placeholder.  If I ever do the book, it will be noted.

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The All-Decade Team

P- Roy Halladay

I nearly chose Johan Santana, but reconsidered after comparing numbers.  Halladay had slightly more wins, two more All Star appearances, two 20-win seasons to Santana’s one, and, in the statistic that unexpectedly clinched it, five times as many complete games.  Randy Johnson gets third place, mostly for what he did at the beginning of the decade.

C- Ivan Rodriguez

For sheer talent, Joe Mauer wins overwhelmingly.  But I can’t justify naming him the best player in a decade he only had five near-full seasons in.  Rodriguez gets the nod for his defensive wizardy, offensive clout and what he did for the Florida Marlins in 2003.

1B- Albert Pujols

No contest.  The three-time MVP and eight-time All Star may be the decade’s best player.  I’d vote him best second baseman if I had to, since he played three innings there in 2008.

2B- Jeff Kent

Were it a five-year contest, the winner would be Chase Utley.  Were it a three-year contest, the winner would be Dustin Pedroia.  But we’re talking a full decade and for that, future Hall of Fame member Kent is the man.

3B- Alex Rodriguez

In a perfect world, Rodriguez would be the shortstop here.  And in a perfect world, he also wouldn’t have done steroids.  Faults aside, he still trounces the competition.  His 394 home runs are the most over the past nine seasons and he also won three MVP awards in that span.

SS- Derek Jeter

I’d probably give this to Hanley Ramirez if he had a few more seasons under his belt.  That guy’s electric.  But Jeter might still be most deserving.  His credentials include four Gold Gloves and just two seasons without an All Star appearance or a batting average above .300.  This says nothing of his class.

LF- Manny Ramirez

True, Manny won’t win any defensive awards.  But neither did Barry Bonds this decade.  And Manny stayed relevant all 10 years, while Bonds fizzled halfway through.

CF- Andruw Jones

The toughest choice here, especially considering how Jones has looked these past few years.  However, prior to 2008, he won the Gold Glove every year of the decade and was, for the most part, a comparable hitter to Carlos Beltran, the next-best center fielder.  Jim Edmonds is not far behind either man.

RF- Ichiro Suzuki

On the other hand, this is probably the easiest choice, next to Pujols.  Suzuki has won a Gold Glove every year of his career, has hit .350 or better four times and averages 231 hits for 162 games.  Count him as one of the few first-ballot Hall of Famers from this generation.

DH- David Ortiz

It’s a shame news emerged last year that Ortiz flunked a drug test in 2003.  Otherwise, he’s the kind of guy his position is designed for.

RP- Mariano Rivera

Were we, once again, measuring success over a shorter period of time, Jonathan Papelbon would win.  But for the decade, Rivera had an ERA below 2.00 six times, finished in the top five in Cy Young voting three times and, of course, had the most saves.

Manager- Terry Francona

Two World Series titles.  For the Red Sox.  The last man to do this?  Someone named Bill Carrigan.  When Babe Ruth played for the team.  I rest my case.

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Baseball, the great equalizer

My friend Chris has been in California, visiting from Washington D.C. recently, and today, we did something that has become a tradition of sorts for us.  We went to visit Helen.

Helen is a 92-year-old woman who used to live next door to Chris’s family when he was in elementary school.  I never knew her as more than the nice lady who always gave back our balls whenever we hit them over the fence into her yard, but Chris’s mom Carinne kept in contact with Helen after they moved.  I first saw Helen again a few years ago when Chris’s family had her over for dinner.  Carinne mentioned ahead of time that Helen had played baseball as a young woman, so we talked about the game at dinner. Everyone at the table was amazed when I knew who’d played in the 1962 World Series, which Helen attended.  I read a 500-page book of baseball trivia when I was eight, and I still know most World Series winners.  And any Giants fan should know of 1962, the year that Bobby Richardson snared Willie McCovey’s line drive and stole a championship for the Yankees.

We went this afternoon to the assisted living facility in downtown Sacramento that Helen lives in now and spent an hour talking with her.  I hope I am as active at 92 as she remains.  The wall of her apartment is plastered with cut-outs from the sports section of the Sacramento Bee, pictures of men like Randy Johnson and Cliff Lee, as well as many of the Sacramento Kings.  We talked baseball, of course.  She knew of the death of Art Savage, the owner of the Sacramento River Cats.  And though Helen was sick over the holidays she also knew of Mark DeRosa’s recent signing with the Giants.  I said I didn’t know if I liked the move but that I thought DeRosa might be good off the bench and that he had a good bat.  She noted he could play several infield positions (a good point, admittedly.  DeRosa is definitely an upgrade over Rich Aurilia.)

For some reason, the 1969 World Series also came up, and Helen wanted to know the name of the player who was at bat when a wild pitch went in the New York Mets dugout, where manager Gil Hodges ordered black shoe polish to be smudged on it to look like the player got hit.  The umpires bought it, the player got on base and the next batter made a critical hit that helped secure the championship for the Mets.  The name of the batter escaped me at first.  I said Donn Clendenon and that didn’t seem right, nor did Tommie Agee. Then I remembered Cleon Jones.  I mentioned this to Helen and also said I had seen a broadcast from that series on YouTube.

I find baseball one of those topics in life that helps allow a connection for people who might not otherwise have much to talk about.  It’s easy, regardless, to take a little time out and visit someone like Helen, and I feel good after doing it.  It’s a nice thing to do, and my mom instilled a respect for seniors in me at a young age.  All the same, I’m glad Helen and I share a love of baseball.  We should watch a game on television at some point.

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A gift from a friend

One of my favorite stories from The Onion, a satirical newspaper I like to read, tells of a White House slam dunk competition that results in no slam dunks. “I tell you, this is some sorry stuff I’m seeing,” celebrity judge and former San Antonio Spur George “Iceman” Gervin is quoted as saying in the story. “The three-point contest was bad enough, but this is just depressing.”

Well, I now have something comparable that’s real.

One of my best friends lives in Washington D.C. and works on Capitol Hill, running the mail room for a senator. My friend just came into town to visit over the holidays, and he presented me with the official program from the 48th Annual Roll Call Congressional Baseball Game this past June. I have a lot of baseball programs from over the years. This is probably the only one that includes ads for the National Archives, the Congressional Federal Credit Union and something called the German Chancellor Fellowship Program.

The program includes a recap of the 2008 game (the Republicans won, for the eighth straight year) and a roster of both teams. Former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler, a representative from North Carolina, was part of the Democratic team; Florida representative Connie Mack IV, meanwhile, is listed with the Republicans, as is Tom Rooney, part of the family that owns the Pittsburgh Steelers. There’s even a Congressional Baseball Hall of Fame, denoted on pages 16 and 17 of the magazine, which shows pictures of all the members, including NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent.

There seems to be a Hall of Fame for everything these days.

I showed the program to my mom, a conservative Republican who is generally enthusiastic about politics. I thought she might think the program was nifty, but she just shook her head. “They have entirely too much money,” she told me.

I may have to agree with her. Then again, as the game is played at the home park for the Washington Nationals, it should at least give the locals a nice break from typically bleak baseball.

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The “What If” Dream Team

I’ve been kicking around the idea lately of creating a dream lineup for the players I feel were held back from immortality by one misfortune or another.  These are the players who generally suffered some kind of catastrophic injury, left the game in shame, or died young.  Barring these fates, many if not most of the following men would have been Hall of Fame members.

They are as follows:

P- J.R. Richard: From 1975 to 1979, he averaged roughly 17 wins and 240 strikeouts per season.  Had his career not been cut short in 1980 by a stroke at age 30, he would probably have accumulated 250-300 career wins and earned a Hall of Fame plaque.

C- Ray Fosse: A poster child for the dark side of the All Star game, Fosse was just 23 and a bright young catcher for the Cleveland Indians when Pete Rose barreled into him to score the winning run in the 1970 contest.  Fosse was never the same thereafter.

1B- Nick Esasky: He really only had one good season, hitting 30 home runs for the Boston Red Sox in 1989, which earned him a large free agent contract.  Esasky played just nine games thereafter, however, having to retire in 1990 because of vertigo.  Alfred Hitchcock later made a film about this.  I think.

2B- Ken Hubbs: He was Rookie of the Year and a Gold Glove winner in 1962 at age 20, but died before the start of the 1964 season in a plane crash.

3B-Heinie Zimmerman: One of many players who was barred from baseball due to gambling in the early part of the twentieth century, Zimmerman is largely a forgotten name today.  However, had he not been thrown out of the game in 1919 at 32, the .295 lifetime hitter would have likely rounded out his career with something over 2,000 hits, perhaps enough for a Hall of Fame bid.

SS- Dickie Thon: He was never the same after missing most of the 1984 season after taking a beanball to the face.  The sponsor ad on his Baseball Reference page probably says it best: Just a Mike Torrez fastball away from the Hall of Fame, Dickie was a forgotten Astros great, and an inspiration to us all.

RF- Tony Conigliaro: Pretty much the same story as Thon, except it happened on the Red Sox in 1967.

CF- Lyman Bostock: A sweet hitting outfielder for the California Angels, Bostock got murdered in a drive-by shooting at the end of the 1978 season. Riding in a car with a woman he had met 20 minutes before, Bostock was shot by her jealous, estranged husband.

LF- Joe Jackson: He got banned for being apart of the Black Sox scandal that threw the 1919 World Series and aside from Pete Rose, is perhaps the best player not in the Hall of Fame. Funny how baseball works sometimes.  Babe Ruth was a preferred name at whorehouses across the country, Ty Cobb admitted late in life to killing a man in the street in 1912, and Barry Bonds will probably get into the Hall of Fame before federal prison, if he ever even gets convicted, but Jackson, a lifetime .356 hitter, has little to no shot at Cooperstown.

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The Defensive Dream Team

In the spirit of this site, I now offer another “Best of” list, this time a lineup of players I would want, were I assembling a defensive dream team.  The number of Gold Gloves won by each player is listed next to their name in parentheses.

P- Greg Maddux (18) – Far and away the best defensive pitcher in the history of the game.  After Jim Kaat, who earned 16 Gold Gloves, the next best-pitcher has half as many Gold Gloves as Maddux.

C- Johnny Bench (10) – Ivan Rodriguez has more Gold Gloves, but Bench handled better pitching staffs.

1B- Keith Hernandez (11) – He has the most Gold Gloves of any first baseman and also had 2182 hits and a .296 lifetime batting average.  Hernandez never got more than about 11% of the vote for the Hall of Fame and dropped off the ballot after 2004, but could be a good candidate eventually for the Veterans Committee.

2B- Ryne Sandberg (9) – This was a toss up between Sandberg, Bill Mazeroski and Roberto Alomar.  I initially wanted to go with Mazeroski who was elected to the Hall of Fame a few years ago largely on the strength of his defense (that and hitting the winning home run in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series.)  I re-evaluated after seeing that Sandberg and Alomar had better, almost identical numbers.  I’m going with Sandberg, I guess, because I like him more than Alomar who seemed like something of a jerk.

SS- Ozzie Smith (13) – This, on the other hand, was no contest.  Smith did backflips along with all sorts of other acrobatics, has the most Gold Gloves of any shortstop and redefined the position.  He wasn’t called The Wizard for nothing.

3B- Brooks Robinson (16) – Another simple pick.  Who else was I going to choose, Mike Schmidt?  Highlight films were invented for guys like Robinson (and Smith.)

OF- Willie Mays (12), Roberto Clemente (12), Larry Walker (7) – Mays and Clemente were easy choices.  Mays probably has two or three of the all-time best catches in baseball history from his perch in center field, and Clemente won an equal number of Gold Gloves, with a cannon arm in right field.  I struggled to pick a leftfielder, though, and ultimately went with a second rightfielder, Walker.  My rationale?  I once saw Walker throw out a slow-footed Tim Wakefield at first from right.  In my opinion, right field is the toughest position in the outfield– anyone who plays there needs a great arm.  Any good rightfielder can do just fine in left, where defensive liabilities often wind up.  This was the case with Bonds late in his career, though as a young player, he was lights out in left.

Bench: Pre-steroids Bonds (8), Pre-injured Ken Griffey Jr. (10), Omar Vizquel (11), Rodriguez (13)

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Book Review: Bash Brothers

As faithful readers of this space will know, I interviewed Jose Canseco in April 2008 on his promotional tour for his book, Vindicated. While researching Canseco in the days leading up to our meeting, I came across a notice for a forthcoming book on the former Oakland Athletics slugger and his teammate, Mark McGwire. The book was titled Bash Brothers, with the subhead, A Legacy Subpoenaed.

After contacting the publisher, Potomac Books, I interviewed the author, Dale Tafoya. However, my story wound up focusing on the signing, and I felt like Tafoya’s quotes would take away from the narrative, so I decided not to mention him. Tafoya accused me of using him for information, which would have been more ludicrous if he’d known me; in a sense, I’ve been researching Canseco since I was six. Most of what we discussed was stuff I already knew.

I subsequently received a review copy of Bash Brothers and was unsure what to do with it. My editor at the East Bay Express declined a review, since he’d just published my Canseco story. I contacted an acquaintance at the San Francisco Chronicle, they passed as well and the book thus sat unread. Eventually, it fell behind my bookcase, along with my unread review copy of Vindicated.

I always felt guilty about this and at times wanted to read the book but since that would have necessitated moving my bookcase, which would have necessitated getting all my books off of it first, I did not. However, I moved apartments this summer and finally recovered Bash Brothers. After finishing reading The Boys of Summer this fall, it was time to review Tafoya’s work.

I read Bash Brothers and all in all, it wasn’t bad. In fact, I rather liked certain parts, including the chapter that talked about an old Reggie Jackson spending a final season in Oakland to tutor Canseco and McGwire. Tafoya also commendably did four years of research putting together the book. He takes two pages at the end to list 112 people he interviewed, including former A’s players Dave Parker, Bob Welch, Dave Henderson and Dennis Eckersley and one-time baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, who wrote the foreword for the book.

Missing from this group, though, are McGwire and Canseco. In fact, the book gives no mention to whether they were even contacted (Canseco was happy to talk with me; he arrived at his signing an hour early for our interview.) The book never produces a smoking gun, either, for McGwire or Canseco having used steroids, only quoting excerpts from Canseco’s bestseller, Juiced, offering vague quotes from McGwire’s former strength coach, Curt Wenzlaff, and saying McGwire had a younger brother who got into bodybuilding and probably did steroids.

Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts got Alex Rodriguez to admit to using steroids by alleging this in a book; two San Francisco Chronicle reporters obtained grand jury testimony that confirmed Barry Bonds juiced as well. Somehow, it doesn’t feel that Tafoya went deep enough in his research, though he has a great bit from former outfielder Ben Grieve, retired and angry at all the juicers who prospered while he stayed clean and struggled.

Tafoya himself came in something of an unknown, with the book flap saying he studied journalism at a community college. The front of the book lists a slew of other titles from the publisher that I’ve never heard of. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I would love to have a baseball book with my name on it, even if few read it.

Tafoya’s writing itself is nothing special. “The game of baseball was out of its element, it seemed,” Tafoya writes of the Congressional hearings Canseco and McGwire appeared at in March 2005. “As compelling as each opening statement appeared, more riveting moments seemed ahead. Feeling like scattered chunks of bread surrounded by a swarm of starving seagulls, Canseco and McGwire threatened to evoke the Fifth Amendment when cornered with a self-incriminating inquiry.” The book is filled with writing of this sort that always seems just a little off, stilted, reaching.

Even the title is awkward. How exactly does one subpoena a legacy? Then again, I may have been a bit biased coming off The Boys of Summer. Very few sports books are that poetic or well-written. I’m not any worse for having read Bash Brothers. I found it interesting enough, though I probably wouldn’t recommend it to a non-sports fan. I say this as someone who insisted my mom read The Boys of Summer.

Now all I need to do is read Vindicated.