Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball [Paperback]

John Schulian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005

A report from the true heart of baseball, this anthology leaves behind the bad boys and big names of the major leagues to take readers to the places where the spirit of America’s game resides. These are a veteran sportswriter’s dispatches from the bush leagues and the sandlot, his tributes to the Negro leaguers, mining-town dreamers, and certifiable eccentrics who give baseball its heart and soul, laughter and tears.

 

John Schulian, a long-time Sports Illustrated contributor and former Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist, puts together a portrait of a disappearing America—a place inhabited by star-crossed Negro Leagues slugger Josh Gibson; by a vagabond player still toiling for the Durham Bulls at thirty-six; by the coach who created the Eskimo Pie League for kids in a Utah copper-mining town. When he does venture into the big leagues, Schulian gives us the underdogs and the human touches, from Bill Veeck peg-legging toward retirement as the game’s last maverick team owner, to musings on Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe at Christmas, to Studs Terkel’s reflections on baseball. In the end, though, this collection belongs to the kid at a tryout camp, the washed-out semipro following the game on his car radio, the players who were the toasts of outposts from Roswell to Wisconsin Rapids—and to the readers who keep the spirit of the game alive.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In this sparkling collection of essays, Schulian, a contributor to Sports Illustrated and formerly a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, offers a reminder that baseball hasn't always been about endorsements, million-dollar deals, and agents. The game once had a heart and still does if we look hard enough. Over the last 25 years or so, Schulian has been attracted to baseball's eccentrics and dreamers, and here he brings together his accounts of some of them. His profile of the late Max Patkin, long known as the Clown Prince of Baseball, recalls how Patkin's comic antics helped sell minor-league baseball when it was struggling to attract fans. Similarly, his account of Rocky Bridges, journeyman player and successful minor-league manager whose rough edges kept him from a chance to manage in the bigs, reveals the kind of grassroots character who once gave baseball its personality. There are also poignant glimpses of Josh Gibson, the Babe Ruth of the Negro Leagues, whose talent couldn't bypass the racism of his times, and of a California League team comprising ex-major leaguers and former phenoms who refuse to give up the dream. Schulian is one of the very best sportswriters of the latter part of the twentieth century. His work resonates with time and place, compassion, and humanity. This is a wonderful collection that deserves a huge audience. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“For baseball fans, John Schulian’s Twilight of the Long-Ball Gods is the perfect antidote to winter. Schulian does something remarkable in this book: He brings to life an all-but-lost world of semipro teams and American Legion ball, of old Negro leagues and the Class D minors. . . . Schulian can flat-out write. Boxing and baseball have, by far, produced our best sports prose, and Schulian crafts sentences with the best of American journalists. Quotidian struggles here become the stuff of literature because American mythology, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed more than a century and a half ago, places the quest for individual success at the center of our national epic.”—Elliott J. Gorn, Chicago Tribune

(Elliot J. Gorn Chicago Tribune )

"Schulian puts it all together in prose as sparkling as the view of the sun twinkling off the boats in the harbor from the upper deck in Wrigley Field."—Ron Rapoport,Chicago Sun-Times

(Ron Rapoport Chicago Sun-Times )

“[The stories] focus on the lesser-known corners of the game, such as semipro ball, sandlot leagues and the old Negro Leagues, and they are all gems.”—Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

(Henry Kisor Chicago Sun-Times )

"In this sparkling collection of essays, Schulian . . . offers a reminder that baseball hasn''t always been about endorsements, million-dollar deals, and agents. . . . Schulian is one of the very best sportswriters of the latter part of the twentieth century. His work resonates with time and place, compassion, and humanity. This is a wonderful collection that deserves a huge audience."—Booklist

(Booklist )

"''Long-ball'' a hit even for non-fan. . . . Chapter after chapter of enticing sketches, stories spun of people’s dreams, of their hopes, their failures, their ordinariness, their endurance, achievements."—Geeta Sharma-Jensen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

(Geeta Sharma-Jensen Milwaukee Journal Sentinel )

“Some of the best baseball writing you will ever read.”—Doug Moe, Madison.com and Capital Times

(Doug Moe Madison.com and Capital Times )

"One key piece in this volume examines the life and legacy of Negro League great Josh Gibson, weaving together interviews with Josh''s son and former teammates. Schulian''s work has been widely anthologized, and aficionados of good baseball writing will appreciate this tome."—Library Journal

(Library Journal )

"Baseball has belonged to poets almost as long as star-crossed love, but who''d have thought Salt Lake City—not exactly the center of the baseball universe—would get its very own baseball poet laureate. . . . As another baseball season works its way into our consciousness . . . Schulian''s book is a fresh breeze to combat not only the rainouts, but the wave of steroid scandal that has the game currently cornered. Like all baseball poets, he brings a depth to the subject that transcends its shortcomings."—Lee Benson, Deseret Morning News

(Lee Benson Deseret Morning News )

“TWILIGHT is a nostalgic and romantic look at the game of baseball during a time that very much needs. Give this one a solid 3 balls out of a possible four and make sure you crack it open to read when the modern game, and its crisis,’ begin to wear you down.”—Athomeplate.com

(Athomeplate.com )

“Schulian left sportswriting 20 years ago and came to Hollywood to write TV scripts. The time away from sports made him realize what really mattered about the game, and these columns definitely illustrate that.”—Tom Hoffarth, Daily News

(Tom Hoffarth Daily News )

“An absolute joy. . . . We might be witnessing the twilight of a few exponentially more famous long-ball gods at this very moment. Let me be the first to thank John Shulian for putting together a collection of 30-plus reasons why we shouldn’t notice.”—Justin Hamm, Mudville Magazine

(Justin Hamm Mudville Magazine )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 185 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803293275
• ISBN-13: 978-0803293274
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,380,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Schulian, who has had two careers as a writer, one in newspapers, the other in Hollywood, was born in Los Angeles in 1945 and reared there and in Salt Lake City. Before establishing himself as a nationally-syndicated sports columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, he was a copy editor at the Salt Lake Tribune, a cityside reporter and pop music columnist at the Baltimore Evening Sun, and a sports writer at the Washington Post. He moved to Chicago in 1977 as a sports columnist at that city's Daily News. When the paper folded 13 months later, he shifted to the Sun-Times, where he won a National Headliner Award in 1979, was regularly in included in E.P. Dutton's annual "Best Sports Stories" anthology, and published a highly-regarded collection of his boxing writing, "Writers' Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists." Rupert Murdoch purchased the Sun-Times in 1984 and Schulian left less than six months later after a dust-up with one of Murdoch's editors. He landed at the Philadelphia Daily News long enough to win the 1985 Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism, and then took off for Hollywood at the invitation of Steven Bochco, creator of "Hill Street Blues." Schulian broke into TV with an "L.A. Law" script and moved on to work on the writing staffs of "Miami Vice," "The 'Slap' Maxwell Story," and "Wiseguy." He was a writer-producer on "Midnight Caller," "Reasonable Doubts," and "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" before he struck gold as a co-creator of "Xena: Warrior Princess," which became, for a while, the world's foremost syndicated TV series. Schulian later wrote and produced such series as "JAG," "Outer Limits," and "Tremors" while keeping his hand in the printed word. A collection of his baseball writing, "Twilight of the Long-ball Gods," was published in 2005, and he has written for Sports Illustrated, GQ, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Oxford American, Inside Sports, Sport, Playboy, and msnbc.com. His journalism has been anthologized in "The Best American Sports Writing," "Reading the Fights," "Sports Illustrated's 50 Years of Great Writing," and "Sports Illustrated's Great Football Writing." He has also had short stories published in the Prague Revue and on thuglit.com. Schulian is the editor of "The John Lardner Reader" and co-editor, with George Kimball, of two anthologies, "The Fighter Still Remains: A Celebration of Boxing in Poetry and Song from Ali to Zevon" and "At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing," the latter due from Library of America in Spring 2011. A general collection of Schulian's sportswriting, "Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand," is tentatively scheduled for publication in Fall 2011.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you love baseball..., August 1, 2005

By 

Joseph R. Knowles "RedEye" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball (Paperback)

... then go ahead and dive in to this collection of columns and articles from Schulian, a gifted writer with a heartfelt passion for the game. The title selection is a reprint from the late-great sports mag Inside Sports, in which Schulian recounts the exploits of the Crash Davises of the world -- players who tore up the minor leagues and put up Sosa-esque numbers but never could duplicate them in "The Show." Schulian, who has since gone on to write successfully for several hit TV shows, is at his best when he's wistfully recalling the Pacific Coast League in the days before MLB went West. A nice, quick summer read best for fans in L.A., Chicago or Baltimore (places where Schulian lived and/or worked).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great nostalgia, March 16, 2006

By 

Ed Marston (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball (Paperback)

John Schulian captures the nostalgia that is unique to the game of baseball and its fandom. The characters in this collection of short essays are memorable, and in fact this book is really more about the people of baseball than the game itself. Schulian's style is languid and reflective--he does not capture the tension or thrills of the game on the field, nor does he try to. Instead, the focus of these essays is on the grip that baseball has on its players, front office people (check out the touching profile on my faviorite owner Bill Veeck), and fans. Minor league ball gets its due here, but there is also some coverage of the majors and even a nice closing essay on the place of high school ball in a blue-collar mining town. "Twilight" is not so much a critique of today's game and its excesses, as it is a warm appreciation of its "disappearing heart." Reading this book was kind of like Spring Training for me; a great way to get warmed up for the coming season.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Run!, August 3, 2005

By 

Paul Levine "Paul" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball (Paperback)

What a welcome respite from the "juiced" headlines of today's game. John Schulian takes us back to the infield grass and the bleacher seats of a sweeter time. Okay, it wasn't always peaches and cream in the bush leagues, a place of "wind-cursed diamonds and cold-water clubhouses," in Schulian's phrase. But there was a love of the game, and Schulian captures the joy and angst of those who played it. This is a winner from the pre-eminent baseball writer of our time.