Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius

 

Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius – Bill Pennington

This is probably the best sports biography I’ve ever read. It’s certainly the most detailed. Author Bill Pennington is a former beat writer that covered the New York Yankees, and I’ve learned that these guys are usually the best when it comes to writing about the game of baseball.  After all, they did (or still do) it for a living, and they’re also privy to an awful lot of information that the public doesn’t possess.

As the subtitle of this book states, Billy Martin was definitely flawed, and he was definitely a genius.  Unfortunately, whereas he was a genius when it came to knowing and managing the game of baseball, he was pretty much flawed in everything else in his life.  The ratio isn’t always obvious since Billy was pretty much involved in baseball throughout his whole life.  As long as he had a uniform on (he played on 7 teams, and managed a total of 5), life was overall good. So the alcoholism, constant brawling, and multiple failed marriages tended to get somewhat dismissed as being a tad irrelevant within his very active life.

After the preliminary “early childhood” part of this biography, we see what makes Billy tick as a young ball player.  He was never the type of player that overwhelmed lovers of statistics when reading a box score, but his personality more than made up for this. He had an infectious personality that made his teammates love him and his opponents loathe him. During the 1950s, we also read an awful lot about his off the field carousing with teammates such as Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, yet the author mainly keeps the nightlife stories PG-13 rated.  Of course, the times were different, and when ballplayers lived a hard nightlife during this period in history, the understanding was that the antics were kept out of the sports page and out of the public’s view.  In addition to Billy’s wild lifestyle, there are several fights he gets into with opponents during his playing career as well.  It’s somewhat ironic that some of the nastiest brawls that he would engage in would somehow lead to everlasting close friendships with this one-time adversary. A strange man indeed.

As you would expect, the best parts of the book are once Billy becomes a Major League manager. We read about how astute Billy is when it comes to knowing the idiosyncrasies of every player and every situation during the game. We also read how studied he is of some of the more obscure rules of the contest (who could ever forget the “pine tar” incident?)  If we’re honest, Billy Martin was a great manager. His personality, though, seems to always get him in trouble. He seems to lose his managerial jobs quite frequently.  Before he wears his ubiquitous Yankees jersey, he first manages the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers, and then the Texas Rangers.  Throughout these stints, he never falls below second place in the divisional standings. Since these were the days before the Wild Card was introduced to the sport (the author writes too much about this fact throughout the book; one of my minor grievances), a lot of Billy’s teams are somewhat forgotten in the annals of popular sports history. We’re reminded that these teams may have been better remembered at they had a chance and made to the playoffs as many teams do today.

Then he starts managing the New York Yankees. If you’re reading this book review and are somewhat a fan of the Yankees, can you recite how many times Billy was hired and fired as the New York Yankees manager by the irascible owner George Steinbrenner within a 13-year timeframe?  I couldn’t.  In fact, I even lost track while reading the book.  Every time you turn the page it seems as though Billy is hired, fired, or hired away from his manager job for a “special role” for the ballclub.  It’s a bit much.

In fact, it does become wearisome reading this book after a while. This isn’t the author’s fault. He’s telling it like it was. It’s just we get tired of the constant patterns and episodes that seem to replay over and over again. Every time the cycle begins anew for Billy Martin, it seems we read that:

Billy is rehired to manage the Yankees
Billy drinks a lot
Billy’s wife is mad at him because he spends too much time with his girlfriend
Billy’s girlfriend is mad at him because he spends too much time with his wife
Billy fights with his players
Billy drinks more
Billy gets in fights with strangers in bars
Billy fights with players on other teams
Billy fights with George Steinbrenner
Billy drinks even more
Billy fights even more
Billy is fired as manager of the Yankees
Billy misses baseball
Billy is rehired by George
Billy drinks and drinks and drinks

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I should also point out that the author never paints Billy as some sort of obnoxious monster, but I thought he treated his subject matter with more kid gloves then he deserved. I guess we must remember that once Billy was managing the team (any of his teams) he was widely loved by the fans of that team and most of his players. And he mostly won, which is the point after all.  I still can’t honestly say that I admired the man, nor I would have wanted to live his life in his shoes no matter how popular he was.  There’s more to life than baseball. 

Well, sadly that probably wasn’t true for Billy Martin.

The Institute

 

The Institute – Stephen King

Although not all Stephen King books have been about the “supernatural”, the vast majority of his works do have a touch of the “woo woo”.  Stephen King is such a great author, that in most cases, even the most hardened realist can enjoy his works.  Most people don’t believe in haunted cars, clowns in sewers, nor animal graveyards that can resurrect our pets, but we enjoy reading about such stuff as we suspend our disbelief.  What makes The Institute so powerful, is that this story came across as very real and believable to me, yet it still managed to scare the crap out of me.

The story starts out a bit slow and, for me, pointless.  We read about a drifter, a former cop named Tim Jamieson, who’s basically trying to erase his life as an ex-cop due to some unforeseen circumstances and finger-pointing.  He ends up wandering far from home in a small town in South Carolina working part-time as a “door knocker”; essentially a cop-like occupation with very little pay nor responsibilities.  I was dreading reading about this for 500+ pages.

But fortunately, this isn’t the real story (Tim shows up later; much later).  The real story concerns a 12-year-old boy who is a genius.  Luke is smart enough to be accepted into M.I.T. at his young age.  Luke also has a rare gift of being TK (telekinetic).  The government has known this since birth, and the government wants him.  Actually, they NEED him. Kids that have this gift (along with the gift of TP, telepathy) are essential to the survival of the free world.  Sadly, though, these kids are essentially used by the government, and then used up. And then disposed.  So the government kills Luke’s parents and kidnaps him, relocating him to “The Institute”.  Luke’s nightmare begins.

There are other kids here as well, and this place is a nightmare. Sure, the kids are treated o.k. in some aspects, but word gets circulated within this circle as to the purpose of the place and these kids know their future is essentially doomed.  Well, since Luke is a genius as well as having the rare gift of being telekinetic, if anybody can figure out a way out of this barbaric institution, Luke has that ability.

And a great, suspenseful story ensues.  This is one of those books where I had to “skim ahead” several times. Normally when I do this it’s because I’m bored with the story. Not in this case though.  My reason for rapidly moving through the pages was because the suspense was so nerve racking, I was too impatient to read all the details that were coursing through the narrative.  I simply HAD to know what happened next. This book kept me on the edge of my seat.

As mentioned, eventually drifter Tim makes his way back into the story and all sorts of events ensue. This book was extremely intense, but deliciously addictive and entertaining.  I should confess that had I known this was a story about “kidnapped” children who are essentially tortured, I would probably have passed on this one.  Such stories are too hard for me to stomach (I had similar sentiments about “Rose Madder”, King’s graphic book about a woman being abused by her husband).  The uncomfortable scenes in the book didn’t damage my tender heart too bad nor too often, fortunately.  We also see these kids bond together, and their grit and determination make the overall experience not as unpleasant as it could be.  The fact that these kids are mostly teenagers or pre-teenagers also takes a tad of the sting away.  True, no “torture” should be acceptable, but for some reason it’s easier to read about bad things happening to 14-year-olds as opposed to 4-year-olds. Note I stated “easier”, not “easy”.

I’ve read just about every Stephen King book released.  As I write this review, there probably have been about 70 or 80 that he’s released since the mid-1970s.  This one is probably in my top 5 of all time. Top 10, for sure.

The Book of Revelation: A Biography

 

The Book of Revelation: A Biography – Timothy Beal

When one reads a book about a book of the Bible, one might expect to see the words “a study of” or perhaps even “the history of” to enunciate the particular book.  But the word “biography”?  That might initially seem a strange complimentary word for a book of the Bible, but when one really looks at the book of Revelation and its place within the canon of scripture for the last 2,000 years, “biography” is actually very appropriate.  Revelation has a very complex history and has been interpreted many ways by church leaders throughout the ages, but most Protestant Christians have no idea of this.

This is a bit strange since, my guess is, Revelation probably gets more attention than any other book of the Bible; New Testament or Old.  After all, this is a study guide for the preparation of the “end times”, and the “end times” are right around the corner. Right?  I confess that I was a disciple of this somewhat warped eschatology for many years of my youth, and my personal beliefs about “the end” are much more agnostic these days.  I’m simply not as swayed towards much of what the many media messiahs scream about when they prey on the fears of the multitudes.

Anyway. What this book does is pick snippets of history; some well-known and some obscure, about how Christians everywhere have interpreted and/or used this book to try to explain the rather rich and sometimes frightening language.  To be fair, I would have preferred this book to be a bit more focused in many areas.  The author sometimes rambles and focuses on areas that I don’t think warrant the attention that he sometimes devotes. I also felt this way about another book of his that I read called “The Rise and Fall of the Bible”.   I have to state that I enjoyed reading this offering but wish it had been a tad more concentrated.

An example: We read that John, the author of Revelation (also known as “The Apocalypse of John”), is not the same John that authored one of our four gospels and a few epistles of the New Testament.  The “John”, the author tells us, is “John of Patmos” and a different person altogether. This isn’t the first time I’ve read this speculation, but since so many within today’s Christian community believe that the John is the same one as mentioned, I feel more study and information should have been espoused.  Again, though, maybe this isn’t what the author feels necessary when writing a “biography”.

Another example: We also read an entire strange chapter about a man named James Hampton, who around the year 1950, rented a large garage and “built” the entire book of Revelation in a rather impressive sculpture-like layout.  This wasn’t discovered until after Hampton died, and based on the illustrations we see in this book, it was quite the achievement.  However I couldn’t help wonder if such an accomplishment, while impressive, was somewhat inconsequential when studying 2,000 years of church history and the importance of Revelation.

Other chapters are more rewarding, however.  One of my favorite stories is how Martin Luther really didn’t think the Revelation should have been included in the New Testament, and based on how Luther had such enormous influence, you have to wonder just how different the last 500 years of Christianity would have been had he prevailed.  Well, what reversed Luther’s decision was that he had a close associate who was a talented wood cut illustrator named Lucas Cranach.  We must remember that “printing” in and of itself was a very new medium, and what could be better than also being able to print illustrations en masse ?   Especially something as vivid as scenes from Revelation?  So in a sense Luther caved into the demands of the public wanting illustrations to supplement the holy words and the rest is rich, detailed, conflicted history.

Obviously there’s a lot here covering the 20^th and 21^st centuries with all of the “Left Behind” and mass media that has been available, and Revelation has definitely left quite the impression with books, videos, and YouTube predictions. Again, though, the author seems to subtly think the whole present-day culture is overblown and not at all what the early church fathers taught, but he doesn’t come down with too heavy of a criticism.  Again, we have to remind ourselves that this is a biography.

So I found this book rewarding and educational, but I guess I was hoping for much more. I should also point out that this book is part of a series called “Lives of Great Religious Books” that came out about four or five years ago. Apparently these “great religious books” include everything from The Tibetan Book of the Dead to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.  I suppose my interest is a tad piqued by some of the titles, but I don’t think any of these offerings ever made too big a splash sales-wise, so I wouldn’t think it’s any major transgression if people look elsewhere to learn more about the various topics. I can especially state this about the book of Revelation. This book was interesting but by no means essential.