Daily Archives: November 12, 2004

Bronx Banter celebrates a Boitday, Albeit Belatedly

A few weeks ago I posed a series of questions about the end of the 2004 Yankee-Red Sox season to a group of writers. Bill James was one of the guys I had contacted to participate. The first post I ever wrote here at Bronx Banter was about James. I just looked back on it and noticed that I celebrated my second birthday of hosting Bronx Banter last week and didn’t even notice it. I knew it was sometime in November dangit. (It was Em’s birthday yesterday and you can bet your sweet bibbie that I remembered that one!) Anyhow, James didn’t respond, until yesterday that is. So I threw a few more bp fastballs his way and here is what he had to say for himself.

Bronx Banter: Did you attend any of the playoff games?
Bill James: Three games of the series against the Yankees, all four in the World Series.
BB: How tense were you watching the ALCS, especially games 5 and 6?

BJ: One click short of a heart attack.

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It’s All About Timing

It’s tough to find successful “As-told-to” biographies. I imagine that most of them consist of the subject talking into a tape recorder for many hours and dumping the mess on a writer. Then the writer goes off to transcribe the ramblings in the attempt turn it into something coherent. I may be wrong, but rarely do these kind of books strike me as true collaborations. The results are often clumsy and artless, though they can still be entertaining. But it’s a pleasure when a book of this sort seems to capture the subject’s spirit, their rhythms and inflections. When the writer and subject actually connect.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, Ed Linn captured Leo Durocher’s personality vividily in their book, “Nice Guys Finish Last.” Another winning example is “Second Wind: Memoirs of an Opinonated Man,” by Bill Russell with the historian Taylor Branch (1979, Random House; currently out-of-print). Russell grew up in West Oakland, and I came across this book researching the Curt Flood project I’ve been working on. (Rusell was four years older than Flood but played high school basketball with Frank Robinson.) Anyhow, it is a terrific read, emotionally direct and tender. Well worth snatching if you ever find it in a used bookshop.

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At the annual charity dinner for Joe Torre’s “Safe at Home” foundation last night, Jorge Posada told reporters that should the Yankees sign Pedro Martinez, he would be cool with it:

“I don’t have anything against Pedro, if he’s my teammate,” Posada said. “Obviously, we’d work things out. I’d catch him. You know this guy’s a winner, he knows how to pitch, he does everything possible to try to win and keep in shape.

“I’ve got no problems getting things straight and going on. We are gentlemen here and we are adults, so we can work things out.”

Posada also lobbied for another Martinez, his old pal Tino, to return to the Bronx. Which Martinez would you rather see in pinstripes in 2005?