By Bill Madden
One of the pleasures of the journalism business is the chance to talk to some of the veterans of the field about their years in the business. They've been around the block more than a few times, and have encountered a variety of interesting people and gone through all sorts of experiences.
Bill Madden is one of those veterans. He's been around the professional ranks for about 55 years, depending on how you count. Madden has been on the baseball beat in New York for 50 of those years. It's time for him to empty out the notebook and search through the memory bank.
The resulting book is "Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown." It comes across as the chance to have a nice, fun chat with the man himself.
While Madden has covered a variety of teams and sports over the years when necessary, his biggest job has been to follow the comings and goings of the New York Yankees. He arrived on the job at the New York Daily News shortly after George Steinbrenner took over as the team's owner. It's fair to say that there wasn't a boring moment for the first 20 years or so of Madden's work days.
One never knew what Steinbrenner was liable to do in a given moment. He loved the attention handed out by newspapers, especially when it meant the Yankees were on the back cover of the New York City tabloids. Steinbrenner and Billy Martin attracted publicity like moths to a fly, even if they couldn't figure out how much they needed each other.
There were other names added to the mix, of course. Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Dave Winfield, Ron Guidry, Rich Gossage, Graig Nettles. As Madden writes, he never had to worry too much about finding some material for a first-edition story - the piece that was designed to be printed in the newspaper before the game itself ended. Madden only had to walk around the clubhouse before a game with a pen, and stories would appear out of the ether.
Madden used some of those stories in a few books earlier in his carer. It's safe now to tell some of the details attached to the anecdotes. For instance, when Madden was thinking about writing a book on teinbrenner, another Yankees' executive not only gave Madden permission to write it, but helped convince others in the organization to talk to the author freely about George's life.
Speaking of Steinbrenner, Madden does a good job of recapping the story behind the owner's suspension in the early 1990s. I hadn't followed the details that closely, but Madden makes a very good case that Fay Vincent was quite arrogant during that process. That issue turned out to be one of the nails in the coffin of the Commissioner of Baseball, who was fired soon after that.
Speaking of surprises, Madden also takes an interesting look here at the memorabilia scandals that hit sports (but mostly baseball) in the 1990s. Bill wrote a column on baseball cards for The Sporting News starting in the 1980s, and he began to explore that entire hobby as the years went by. Turns out corruption was quite rampant in that particular business, as some of the old-time merchandise was less than authentic.
Madden only has one chapter that's something of a "get off my lawn" moment. It comes at the end, and it's about baseball analytics. You might have guessed that. He's not sold on the movement in that direction, particularly when it wipes the human element out of the game. Perhaps we are overdoing it in some cases, but analytics are simply one tool of many in the toolbox.
The veteran starts the book with what might have been a better ending. He won the Spink Award for Career Excellence in baseball reporting in 2011, which essentially makes him a member of the Hall of Fame. It's a good launching point for some stories about the greats of the game. For example, Madden went on a car ride to Cooperstown once with Joe DiMaggio. When the Yankee Clipper was asked about Lou Gehrig, DiMaggio said he was a great team ... and added that Gehrig once had an affair with Mae West. Can't say I saw that coming.
"Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown" goes down quickly and smoothly. I zipped through it in a few hours. While Yankee fans probably are the target audience for the book, an interest in the Bronx Bombers isn't exactly a prerequisite for enjoying this. Most baseball fans will enjoy the conversation.
Four stars
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