Customer Reviews

Talkin' Baseball: An Oral History of Baseball in the 1970s

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pepe is both reminiscent and simplistic as a writer, not exactly a bad combination for a book on 1970s baseball. The book takes us back - in terms of players, teams, championship play-by-play, and photos - to perhaps one of the greatest eras in all of professional sports. Being a NY'er, Pepe puts great emphasis on the American League, and especially the Yankees. There is some good gossip here, especially of the clubhouse variety. If you loved this era and want to relive it for 400 pages, I heavily recommend this.

Phil Pepe does an outstanding job of taking us back in time to baseball's turbulent decade: the 1970's. His in-depth interviews, take you back as if you were there yourself. He does an excellent job of laying the groundwork for what would become the trademark of the seventies: free agency. His tale of Curt Flood and his drive to have the reserve clause abolished, is astonishing. He shows the readers that maybe Curt Flood hasn't received the recognition that he deserves for pioneering the free agency era. Pepe also show the tragic side of the decade with riveting accounts of the deaths of some of baseball biggest stars, such as Clemente and Munson. His inside look at the death of Thurman Munson and interview with his widow Diane is outstanding. It is handled with the delicate care that it should be while also telling the hard facts. His accounts of the games, players, and events that make up the 1970's is truly unbelievable. This book is a must for any baseball fan. My only regret was that the book was not longer because I had a hard time putting it down!

When I first spotted this book and saw it was written in the Terry Pluto style (player narratives with supporting author paragraphs), I picked it up because I grew up in 70's watching these guys play and was interested in their reminiscences.

Talkin' Baseball works on some levels because Pepe found some talkative ex-players who shared their stories and opinions, but there were a couple things that helped to lessen my interest in this book as I read it.

First, an overindulgent amount of space is given to the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox. In a way it's hard to fault Pepe because these are teams he covered at the time, but still, it does get a little old reading page after page of the exploits of three teams in two cities and at times scant mention of other teams. You'll see a huge amount of space devoted to the 1973 World Series because the Mets were involved, but only cursory attention paid to the 1974 World Series, which featured teams from Los Angeles and Oakland. Pepe seems to suffer from what I call "Ken Burns Disease," which is a fixation on baseball in New York and Boston to the exclusion of other places where the game is played. That's the only thing that I would criticize about Burns' "Baseball" series for PBS, but there's one more criticism I have of this book: Too much Phil Pepe.

Again, I checked out "Talkin' Baseball" because it appears to employ the Pluto style of the author setting up a situation, then getting out of the way to let the people involved tell the stories. That may have been Phil's notion when he wrote this, but too often you have to wade through paragraph after paragraph to finally get to what the subjects actually think, and even then you might get one paragraph from them. If you know nothing of baseball in the 70's, that extensive a backgrounder might be a bonus. To me, it was mostly annoying. After a while, I just stopped reading Pepe's italicized passages altogether and went straight to to the quotes. Made for a fast read. Oh, and about those quotes: I'm not sure I've ever read a book in which the author quotes himself in the third person, but check out the passage on Reggie Jackson in 1975 and you'll see Pepe quoting himself... immediately after his own backgrounder, no less.

Maybe I'm being hypercritical because, again, this is not a BAD book. I hae no problem giving Phil Pepe kudos for being a decent writer. It's just not nearly as good as it could have been because Phil can't (or won't) get out of his own way.

I was born in 1970 so I vaguely remember the last few years of the decade and the men who played the game. Pepe takes you on a year-by-year journey and gives you some of the unique stories that make baseball such an interesting sport. You will read about two pitchers who trade families (no kidding) and about how George Steinbrenner got his start with the Yankees. You will also feel the tragedies that baseball suffered in the 70's with the deaths of Roberto Clemente and Thurmon Munson. The book also gives a good perspective about the beginning of free agency and some needed background for the labor problems that plague the game even today. It is a great book for those of us who loved the game in the 70's and it is also a good book for those fans who were not around the game then but would like to learn more about the game.

Phil Pepe is a veteran New York sports reporter who has seen more than his fair share of ball games. The 70's were a decade of change and excess and baseball mirrored those strange times. Society started to accept men with longer hair, mustaches, crazy clothes and looser mores and baseball did the same. Players grew their hair long, grew mustaches and many teams changed their uniforms to contain gaudy bright colors moving away from the typical bland grays. The DH was introduced into the game, night baseball became more prevalent and of course the advent of free agency, all of which changed the game into what it is today. We read about the A's dynasty, the reemergence of the Yankees, the Big Red Machine, the tragic losses of Clemente and Munson, the wife swapping of two Yankee pitchers and other bizarre tales. There seemed to be more characters in the game at that time and Mr. Pepe gets into the changes and characters as told by the players themselves. You won't be able to put the book down as it is an easy and enjoyable read. A must for any fan of the game.

This book brought back a ton of memories for me as I grew up in the 70's and seeing the great photos made me feel like I was 10 again and just opening a new pack of baseball cards. The stories of The New York Yankees really made me laugh out loud and remembering the great Thurman Munson with the words of his teammates and family brought back vividly the day I heard of his tragic demise. Overall this book was very well done and an easy read with its interview style and getting the real story on several legendary moments from the participants was worth the price. If you love,like or have an interest in baseball and its past, this book gives you an idea of what caused most of us to fall in love with the game.

If you are a baseball purist and want an in-depth review of the decade of the 70s, this is your book! The collection of photographs alone is worth the price. Some of the transcripts from players and officials of the game are illuminating but I would have liked to have heard from some conspicuously absent notables (where is Pete Rose, for example?). But that is a small nitpick - I love reliving this decade and it brought back the memories!

Man, is this book good. I've just had a chance to flip through it (I have a preview edition) but I still can't say enough about it. If you love baseball, buy it as soon as it comes out.

The good parts of this book are really good. If nothing else, Pepe does a good job of getting as many players' names as possible into the stories, and does a great job of identifying EVERYBODY in the photographs. Most of the stories were very enlightening and I enjoyed them immensely. The book's chapters are also laid out very well. When the book is going well, it's a welcome recap of the decade where baseball meant everything to me.

So why give it 3.5 stars?

I finished it feeling rather disppointed (especially since I paid for the book). If you are interested in the Curt Flood lawsuit and Marvin Miller's spin on everything that happened in the 70's, you're going to love this book. I'm not that interested, especially in detailed descriptions of the issues that were involved during union/management negotiations. The book also spends way too much time on the Mets and Yankees. Lesser teams like the Cubs, Giants, Padres, and Twins barely merit mentions, and I seem to recall that Cesar Cedeno, Rod Carew and Randy Jones were as big a deals during that time as Graig (sp?) Nettles and Rod Guidry. Remember when Steve Carlton won about 27 games and the Phillies only won 50 whole year? This doesn't nearly rate as much ink as a discussion of Bernie Carbo's dope problems or Bud Harrelson's thoughts on the Tom Seaver trade. Mike Schmidt is quickly discussed, mostly from Tim McCarver's perspective. Andre Dawson isn't mentioned at all, except in lists of the Rookies of the Year and Best Nicknames. The Tom Seaver trade was a huge event, but I would submit that the Reds trade for Joe Morgan was an equally momentous occasion. In fact, I think Morgan appears only the book when he gets a hit in World Series recaps.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this book...in paperback...or from the library.

The Yankees were a fairly miserable team for most of the 70s, but you wouldn't know it from reading Pepe's book. It seems like every five pages we're back to a multi-page Yankees story, and if it's not the Yankees, it's the Mets. Several successful teams are grossly underrepresented; we hear about the Pirates, for example, only from Rennie Stennett. Several spectacular players are also rarely mentioned; Lou Brock appears only near the end and only as an afterthought, for example.

What there is in this book is very well done, however, and a treat for those who remember baseball in the 70s - or for those who don't, and have no idea just what it meant to play against Pete Rose.