Customer Reviews

Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland

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Anyone who enjoys or follows minor league baseball will find this a fascinating read. Heck, anyone who likes baseball ...and reads...will probably enjoy it immensely. Well-written, chock full of lots of interesting information, the perfect summer read for the baseball, especially minor league, fans.

Many of us with a visceral connect to baseball have always had a sort of ambivalent relationship with MLB. It is certainly a thrill to watch the game played at its highest level by people who are the best of the best. I certainly would not want to have to do without the beloved White Sox and I will routinely watch whoever is playing on Sunday and Monday nights, even when it is the insufferable Yankees or Red Sox. However, there is always a slight feeling of disconnect, on TV or in-person at a major league park. There is always a sense of being a "spectator" in quotes - there, but not really mattering.

I grew up in a minor league (Triple A) city and going to the ballpark was something more there. Maybe it is the smaller, more intimate parks; maybe it is the extra sense of urgency in the players trying to get, or get back, to the majors. Maybe it is the sense that the owners and organization care more about what the fan gets out of it. Or some combination of those. In any case, a minor league game feels more alive, more elemental. It feels like it matters that you are there.

Wild and Outside is a look at the attempt of a bunch of guys who love baseball to create an independent minor league. It follows the ups and downs of the owners, managers and players as they negotiate the 1994 Northern League season. It looks at the teams and the league from financial and logistical perspectives, but it is really a love letter to elemental baseball - baseball that connects to the people who love it without regard to the biggest names, the highest salaries, the longest held records or the biggest TV markets. It is really about the fun of going to the ball park and being part of the game, even from the grandstand. It reminds of the feeling that it matters if you are there or not.

The Northern League is still up and running, though a number of the teams are now in the American Association (and thanks for keeping the AA alive!). In a couple of weeks the AA season opens and I intend to cheer the Gary South Shore Rail Cats in person several times this season, along with my daughters. Wild and Outside reminds me of why.

This is the story of the 1994 season in the minor league independent Northern League. 94 of course was the infamous year of the strike and World Series cancellation. Thus it is hardly surprising that Fatsis' most prominent theme, shared by those involved at all levels -- but particularly ownership/management -- of the Northern League, is that MLB and its minors have become hidebound, soulless businesses. This is absolutely true naturally, but all that is required to confirm it is a couple of examples to hammer that point home, not the drumbeat reiteration that Fatsis provided throughout the book. When he concentrates on the personalities, fans, cities, and -- most particularly -- ballpark atmospherics of the Northern League, Wild and Outside gets much more entertaining. My personal favorite was Ted Cushmore, the put-upon owner of the hapless Duluth franchise. Fatsis had lots of access to many participants in the league and, not surprisingly, those who talked most freely to him tend to get the most sympathetic treatment, a bias which colors the history to an extent the reader can only guess at. As baseball reads go, however, this one ranks in the upper middle of the crowded pack.

Well written and packed with information. Excellent read.