‘THE DAILY ONLINE SPORTS MAGAZINE
"Summer of '98: When Homers
Flew, Records Fell, and Baseball
Reclaimed America"
by Mike Lupica
(Putnam, $23.95)
"The Perfect Season: Why 1998
was Baseball's Greatest Year”
by Tim McCarver and Danny Peary
(Villard Books, $19.95)
"Diamond Chronicles" sno MICLES
Edited by Don Zminda
(Stats, Inc., $19.95)
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Reviewed by Andrew Milner
Sportsiones Magazine
‘August 9, 195
The consensus among sportswriters began to form in June
of last year, after David Wells threw a perfect game and
Kerry Wood struck out 20 Astros, when Sammy Sosa hit
21 homers in 22 games and Mark McGwire was weeks
ahead of Roger Maris, and when the Yankees won and
won and won, that 1998 was not just a good baseball
season, or even an exciting one, but The Greatest
Baseball Season Ever.
One can easily imagine New York book publishers inking
the contracts even before the All-Star break, to
immortalize 1998's place in history. It was easy to
understand the good feeling. Baseball books written during
the early ‘90s generally painted an apocalyptic view of the
game. Peter Gammons's "Coming Apart at the Seams"
and John Feinstein’s "Play Ball" presented owners and
players in a battle to the death. The strike of 1994
cemented that dark view of baseball's future. In this
context, talking about baseball in any sort of reverent way
(as the Ken Burns PBS series did, for example) was
looked upon with suspicion — that is, until last summer.
Mike Lupica and the duo of Tim McCarver and Danny
Peary have each written 1998 retrospectives. These two
books are engaging, easy reads, and are occasionally
observant. But they simplistically reinforce the idea that
1998 was the best of all possible baseball worlds, and that
everything that occurred last year happened for the best of
all possible reasons. Neither of these books goes beyond
the surface of such a season.Readers get no investigation into Mark McGwire's
supplemental intake, let along any hint that his 70-homer
output might eventually be asterisked. They celebrate the
Yankees’ 114-win season (McCarver: "This Yankee team
not only wanted to win but knew just how to do it!"; Lupica:
"The Yankees had become as much an example as
anything about how right things were with baseball."), yet
neither book asks whether the filthy rich Yankees
represent a new era of the game in which we'll see 114-
win seasons more often — and 114-loss seasons.
McCarver and Peary's "The Perfect Season" is divided
into brief chapters on individual subjects. There are
touching tributes to recently deceased Richie Ashbum.
(McCarver's one-time broadcast partner), Harry Caray,
and Dan Quisenberry. A few chapters focus on the future
of such young stars as Kerry Wood and Jason Kendall.
But given their experience in the sport, these authors write
with astounding naiveté in their predictions, for example,
about Wood: "If it turns out he won't pitch long enough to
make the Hall of Fame, then at least he'll give fans a lot of
thrills. And, fitting for a shooting star, he'll go out in a blaze
of glory. If [this] flamethrower is destined to burn himself
out, then so be it." As if pitchers should risk injury and
career longevity for "thrills."
And they believe Jason Kendall is the next Johnny Bench:
"Rarely in baseball history has a catcher been referred to
as a great all-around player, but at a young age Kendall is
almost there." Be grateful McCarver and Peary aren't
investing your 401(K) money with the same recklessness.
Lupica presents a season-long narrative punctuated with
notes he wrote to his young sons during the McGwire-
Sosa home run race ("Dear Zack-o: He did it! No. 62,
baby! Your dad"), along with his own memories of the
Mantle-Maris race of 1961. Stories about how baseball
unites the generations have been done before, most
notably by Roger Kahn in "The Boys of Summer” and
"Memories of Summer."
Lupica isn't quite in Kahn's league, and occasionally he, as
McCarver and Peary do, lapses into meaningless baseball
romanticism. Lupica celebrates Darryl Strawberry's joining
the 1998 Yankees, seemingly free of off-field problems:
"Once he symbolized everything that was wrong with
baseball, all the arrogance and excesses and selfishness
of the modern athlete, all the ones who had been blessed
with this kind of talent and then tried to throw it away with
both hands. But now it was as if the magic of the season
had touched Darryl Strawberry too. What could possibly
go wrong for him now?" One hopes "Zack-o" won't later bedisappointed to learn of Strawberry's humiliating arrest in
the spring of 1999.
But Lupica is to be credited for several fine vignettes in
“Summer of '98," especially an interview with Matt
Williams. In August of 1994, Williams led the major
leagues with 43 home runs. On August 12, the strike
began, and Matt's run at 62 homers ended. Lupica notes
that Williams had grown to accept that his one shot at
immortality was gone, just as Mac and Sammy jostled their
way past Ruth and Maris. This chapter is reminiscent of
George Plimpton's 1974 account of Hank Aaron's pursuit
of #715, "One for the Record," in showing the human side
to a statistical chase.
Where the above two books get lost in excessive
rhapsodizing about baseball's allure, the one truly
satisfying account of the 1998 season, "Diamond
Chronicles," gets down to the nuts and bolts - Sosa won
the MVP award, but was he really more valuable than
McGwire? How long could Kerry Wood pitch? Who's going
to hit 756 home runs? 800?
"Diamond Chronicles" is a collection of material from the
America Online website for STATS (a sports data service
co-founded by Bill James), beginning with excerpts from
STATS interoffice email from early 1998 to early 1999.
While reading private electronic correspondence might
make you feel like an amateur Ken Starr, you get great
informal discussions of hot baseball topics.
Just as McCarver and Peary went crazy over Kerry
Wood's 20-K performance, the STATS gang was less
optimistic: Bill James predicted in May, "I'd bet that he
doesn't win 100 games in his career." This section is like a
great college bull session, where anything's fair game.
(James's comment on Sinatra's death? "Frank Sinatra's
publicist has just announced that he is planning another
comeback.) There's even a discussion of great sports-
related movies, such as "Raging Bull,""Cobb," and
"Brian's Song."
The book is filled out with selections from STATS columns
from analysts Jim Henzler, Mat Olkin, and Don Zminda.
These writers offer consistently well-researched and
accessible pieces. In his May 7 column, Zminda ranks the
top 10 greatest pitching performances ever; Wood's
masterpiece ranks 3rd. Olkin's article dated January 12 of
this year describes how Wood's workload led to his
possibly career-ending elbow injury. And one Henzler
piece convincingly argues that Mac deserved the MVP
over Sosa."The Perfect Season" and "Summer of '98" are well-
intentioned, well-written books, books meant to be drunk in
quickly, like cheap wine. "Diamond Chronicles" is a book
you're meant to pour into a beer glass and drink right now
with a group of your buddies. While the books by Lupica
and McCarver and Peary are at times admirable, | enjoyed
more the unpretentious approach of the STATS team.
Andrew Milner is a writer and editor in Philadelphia.