Roger Kahn had written several other books on baseball, most notably The Boys of Summer, about the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson, but in this one, he's focused on the minor leagues. Specifically, the 1983 Class A (meaning, at least three levels below the majors), independent (meaning, unaffiliated with any major league franchise) Utica Blue Sox.
Kahn's writing about them because he, in a series of events that are largely not interesting enough for the amount of pages devoted to it, becomes president of the team. So, in addition to talking about the players and managers, and the fights with umpires and the grind of a season with no off-days for over two months, he also talks about the challenges of running a minor league team that doesn't have any financial backing from a big league club.
Kahn has to pay off the $3,500 debt the team's previous owners owed the power company, has to arrange for a bus service to get the players to road games, has to devise promotions to bring in more fans, sell advertising, on and on. The people helping him are varying degrees of competent and relatively new to running a ball team, so the lack of knowledge factors in.
During a critical game late in the season, Kahn is informed by his general manager that she didn't purchase enough baseballs, and the team may risk forfeiting if they run out. Which leads to Kahn calling sporting goods stores until they locate a guy willing to drive back to his store and sell them more baseballs, all the while the game is still playing. Or the attempt to honor one of their players on his birthday by turning off the field lights and having the fans hold candles and sing "Happy Birthday", runs a-cropper because nobody thought about the fact the field lights have to cool off after being shut down before they can be turned back on. Leading to a nearly 20-minute delay which nearly made the Blue Sox forfeit.
Kahn's an engaging writer, witty at times - the kangaroo court sequence on the bus is hilarious - thoughtful at others, willing to poke fun at himself when his big ideas (like the birthday stunt) fail. He captures the interpersonal forces at work on the team. The players whose nerves get to them, or who worry about how being so far from home could end their marriage. The players' frustration with the manager, Jim Gattis, who is never satisfied and constantly haranguing them about something. Is that driving them to play better in the hopes he'll shut up, or does it cause them to burn out? If he's giving them grief when they win 80% of their games, how much worse can he be when they go on a losing streak? Kahn, at least as he presents himself here, is trying to walk the line of supporting his manager and not pulling rank, but also trying to get the man to ease off for the good of the team. Of course, as he presents himself here, I'm not sure how effective he is, especially at reining Gattis in.
One bit on a purely baseball note that interested me, was the sense the Blue Sox had that the rest of the teams resented them for making the other teams look bad. After all, the Blue Sox's roster was full of players those same franchises had either discarded or never considered at all. For the castoffs to beat the ones deemed worthwhile made all the guys whose business was to recognize talent look bad. It's not so much the pride aspect that intrigues me, but that the other teams wouldn't jump at the chance to grab a guy one of their opponents discarded, especially once he showed he had a little juice. Maybe things were different in the '80s, less analytically cutthroat. Or maybe it's just the difference between getting outsmarted by someone you regard as a peer (a guy with the same job as you, but for a different big league club), versus someone you think is a piker compared to you (an independent team.)
I wonder how much of that was real versus perceived by the Blue Sox. Gattis is presented as clearly believing the league is conspiring to keep them from winning the pennant, and Kahn relates a few occasions where he tries to talk up some of his players to people in the offices of those other teams, only to be blown off. But Gattis seems perpetually aggrieved, and most of the Blue Sox are old for the level of competition. Maybe only by a year or two, but that is regarded as significant sometimes.
'Barry Moss found himself in a perplexing role. Gattis wanted to show the other players that he indulged no favorites. Even though Moss had grown up with him and even though Moss was his confidant and coach, Moss, the player, was a favorite target. Sometimes, in one of Gattis' daily sermons, he paused and turned to Moss and said, "Barry, in the fourth inning you looked real horseshit chasing that low inside pitch." Pause. Inhale. "Real horseshit."'
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