Another Baseball Book

Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that baseball players have not exactly been role models of clean living, openness and diversity. Mickey Mantle died, most likely, of alcoholism; Babe Ruth was a powerful drinker; Ty Cobb, perhaps the greatest player in history, was a mean, racist, KKK-supporting SOB; others played under the influence of alcohol so well that it could even be considered "performance enhancing." We haven't even talked about steroids.

Yet the Baseball Hall of Fame still says one of the attributes of an HoF member is that he is to be a person of good character.

All this is in introduction to the book I just finished, Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame by Zev Chafets. Chafets digs into the history of the Hall, the politics, the shuffling, the revisioning of history in order to build the monument to the great American game. Some of the stories, like those I mentioned above are well known. Others, like the background of the Hall itself are more hidden. By the end of the book, it appears as if Chafets had at least the goal of uncovering the hypocrisy of the Hall itself.

The "monks" (as he calls them) of the Hall would not think that such a good idea. He talks about the mixed record on racial diversity; he mentions without detail the sexual preference closet; he spends a great deal of time and detail on perhaps one of the most important event of the past 50 years- getting rid of the reserve clause freeing baseball players from legal slavery. Curt Flood, whose actions led to that historic event is not in the Hall.

But in the end Chafets talks about Shoeless Joe of the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal, Pete Rose of gambling fame, and the up and coming issue that will define an era- steroids and who should or shouldn't get elected. He makes a very good case that the issue of "character" has been ignored countless times to allow appropriately skilled players into the Hall. He wonders aloud about the truth behind steroids (and cocaine and speed in the 70s) and whether they do produce the superstars from people who would probably have been superstars anyway (Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, A-Rod.)

In short, it is a good book giving an alternative view of history, one that takes into account the humanity of these very fallible men we have placed in such a difficult spotlight. We expect of them something that very few of us could live up to would we be thrust into that kind of pressure, fame, and now, fortune. It gives some real food for thought (and the winter hot-stove baseball league.)