Volume 42, Number 4 · March 2, 1995
Good Sports & Bad
By Stephen Jay Gould
WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS REVIEW
Ball Four
by Jim Bouton, edited by Leonard Schecter
Collier/Macmillan, 472 pp., $15.00 (paper)
My Life in Baseball: The True Record
by Ty Cobb, by Al Stump
University of Nebraska Press, 315 pp., $11.95 (paper)
Cobb: A Biography
by Al Stump, foreword by Jimmie Reese
Algonquin Books, 436 pp., $24.95
Cobb
A film written and directed by Ron Shelton
Matty: An American Hero, Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants
by Ray Robinson
Oxford University Press, 236 pp., $12.95 (paper)
Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams
by Ed Linn
Harcourt Brace, 437 pp., $23.95; $12.95 (paper)
'I Ain't An Athlete, Lady...': My Well-Rounded Life and Times
by John Kruk, by Paul Hagen
Simon and Schuster, 255 pp., $22.00
Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of Baseball
by Mark Ribowsky
Simon and Schuster, 351 pp., $23.00
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
by Nicholas Dawidoff
Pantheon, 453 pp., $24.00
The Meaning of Nolan Ryan
by Nick Trujillo
Texas A&M University Press, 163 pp., $27.50; $13.95 (paper)
In 'Ode to the West Wind,' Shelley wrote one of our culture's happiest lines: 'If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?' Baseball fans have always lived by this maxim, as winter's talk (still called 'the hot stove league' to honor older places of public conversation) yielded to spring training and the start of another season. But not this year. While owners and players, tycoons all, continue their pointless and destructive strike, fans are reduced to writing and remembering. In choosing baseball's most ancient and distinctive genre—the sports biography—as my subject for this review, I can at least honor the continuity and change that fans once viewed as inviolable for the game itself, the guarantee of our fealty.
Review, 6165 words
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