10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Right Guy, Wrong Book, September 21, 2003
This review is from: Planet of the Umps: A Baseball Life from Behind the Plate (Hardcover)
Anyone who read Ron Luciano's hilarious umpiring books about 20 years ago will remember all about Kenny Kaiser. Luciano was the larger-than-life ump (who met a too tragic end) with the penchant for over-the-top calls, and Kaiser the sidekicks featured in several of his anecdotes.
Kaiser's baseball career also met something of a tragic end, and he's been out of the game exactly four years now. "Planet of the Umps" is his own attempt at setting the record straight, describing the horrible conditions that Major League umpires were subject to before the 1970s.
However, if some of the material here seems familiar, it's because... you've read it before. Co-author David Fisher also ghost-wrote the Luciano memoirs. Granted, I haven't read Luciano in a few years, but I recognized at least three stories recycled wholesale from those earlier books. See pages 158, 167 and 172 for the repeat offenders. And, if memory serves me right, the one on 172 actually has a different ending.
"Planet" also suffers from extremely poor editing and fact-checking. Fisher spells several ump names incorrectly (here we read about Lee Wyer, Harry Wendlestat and Dutch Rennart), and, even worse, commits the Cardinal Baseball Sin: He misspells the name Ripken. Come on! The name Ripken appeared in major-league boxscores for 2,632 consecutive games... and also several All-Star games and three playoffs. Why would anyone even think it's spelled "Ripkin"? I'm sorry, but this incorrect spelling crops up so often I'm starting to doubt my own sanity.
Fisher/Kaiser also describe several games precisely as they didn't occur. The last out of Gaylord Perry's 300th career win, remembered on page 97, was not a strikeout. Kaiser lovingly recalls the length (4 hours, 40 minutes) of a 14-inning Seattle-Anaheim game in the 1997 season... however, those two teams didn't ever play an extra-inning games that year. In this era of Retrosheet, those mistakes are hard to forgive. It only takes about 45 seconds of web time to verify details... why not just get it right? Oh, and page 151 has the author watching ESPN several years before the network debuted.
Anyway.
"Planet of the Umps" is a short, easygoing read. It's a good source of classic baseball stories, especially if you're new to baseball bios. Baseball's own history is less than accurate, so you might easily forgive the lack of research. You can finish the book in a day, and the final chapter describing the undeserved ending of Kaiser's career is still a sad one. Buy the book, if even just to support the man himself. Just don't believe everything you read!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good stuff.. but a lot of it is already out there., June 1, 2003
This review is from: Planet of the Umps: A Baseball Life from Behind the Plate (Hardcover)
If you have the late Ron Luciano's books (The Umpire Strikes Back" and "Strike Two", you have a lot of the stories that former Major League umpire Ken Kaiser tells in this book. If you can't find Luciano's books (they are long since out of print), these stories are FUNNY and an insightful look into the world of an umpire. Argumentative, intimidating, and expressive is the man known as Ken Kaiser. He was one of the few umnpires to ever make the major league baseball players top 10 list of umpires.. at the same time he was on the BOTTOM 10 list of umpires!! I guess what I'm saying is, you'll either like it, or hate it. I liked it a lot, besides the repeated stories.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good stories but skewed viewpoint, December 20, 2003
This review is from: Planet of the Umps: A Baseball Life from Behind the Plate (Hardcover)
The best parts of this book are the stories about what it was like to be a minor league and major league umpire. The worst parts, from my perspective, are in Kaiser's biased views about the umpires' labor problems and the quality of umpiring in the majors. Kaiser goes on at length about how every umpire has his own strike zone, and complains about the attempts to standardize it. While it's true that calling balls and strikes is very difficult and that absolute standardization is probably impossible, it's also true that several umpires' strike zones had gotten completely ridiculous (Eric Gregg would regularly call strikes on pitches several inches outside, for example).
Kaiser says he trusted union head Richie Phillips too much when he agreed to resign along with most other major league umps. The problem wasn't just one of trust - it was one of arrogance. The umpires thought they were bigger than the game, that a mass resignation would force the owners to come crawling. They also failed to consider whom they were dealing with. Sandy Alderson accepted the mass resignation. This is the one time in labor history that a union broke itself. Major League Baseball owners have historically been poor labor negotiators, but they finally ran into a group of people who were worse. Kaiser doesn't face up to any of this, in my opinion. He admits it was a mistake to sign his resignation letter, but apart from that he seems to see himself as a victim.
I think the book is worth reading, as long as one takes some of Kaiser's views with a grain of salt.
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