Bonds Stirs the Drink

Baseball books make the news (again)

by Dermot McEvoy -- Publishers Weekly, 3/20/2006

Publishing likes to congratulate itself when it breaks news—most recently, Simon & Schuster and the Free Press were hailed for the publication of James Risen's revelations of the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping policy—and understandably. In today's media-immediate culture, it's tough to beat anyone to a scoop if you have to do it in a format and medium that takes many months to bring from author to reader. It's a rare feat. But in the world of American sports, it is the book publishing industry that has made the major play in the last year, with two explosive stories about professional athletes' use of steroids, stories that may have long-lasting effects on the entire world of competitive sport, but certainly so on America's grand pastime.

It was just last year when José Canseco's Juiced(Regan Books) launched with a 60 Minutesinterview and immediately created a firestorm of controversy about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Canseco named names and pointed fingers and swaggered guiltlessly about his own use. Congress stepped in and held circus-like hearings, featuring legendary ball players in various modes of denial, which ultimately led to Major League Baseball and the Players Union agreeing to a new drug-testing policy. Canseco, though originally vilified for tattling on other players, was gradually vindicated, and his book went on to sell more than 250,000 copies in hardcover (a paperback has just been released by Regan). Now, another book, this one by two San Francisco Chroniclejournalists, promises to have an equally incendiary effect on the sport. And thought it is first out of the gate this spring, it is not the only book dealing with the steroids issue, which is not going away.

At the moment, no edition of Sports Centergoes by without some reference to the revelations coming in Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports,written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, and published byGotham Books. Excerpted in Sports Illustrated last week, the book claims that Bonds took a cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs for at least five years, a regimen that has gotten him within six home runs of Babe Ruth and within striking distance of all-time home run champ Henry Aaron's 755. Like Bonds and his steroid use, the publication of Game of Shadowshas been cloaked in mystery. The book was embargoed—as was Canseco's Juiced—and Gotham has been extraordinarily tight-lipped. What gives this book such authority are its authors. Fainaru-Wada and Williams were the first to report on the secret BALCO grand jury testimony of both Bonds and Yankee first-baseman Jason Giambi. They also have intimate knowledge of Victor Conte—Bonds's and Giambi's steroid guru—and have covered his BALCO guilty plea, which led him to being incarcerated for federal drug offenses. The question now about Game of Shadows is what else it may reveal. The cover, showing Bonds and Giambi side-by-side in a 2002 interleague game, may offer a hint. Giambi, who, under threat of perjury, admitted to the BALCO jury that he had indeed used steroids (as revealed, again, by Fainaru-Wada and Williams), is sure to be part of the story. "Jason is an important character in the book," confirms Williams in the first leak of what might be to come from the book. "He'll be treated fairly and accurately in the book." The big question remains: What other major league stars make the Game of Shadows starting lineup? This is a book whose relevance, like Canseco's, will increase over time.

To maximize the publicity, Gotham has moved the pub date for Game of Shadowsup to March 23 (it was originally slated for May). On that morning, the authors will appear on The Today Show. The book is already in its second printing and has 197,000 copies in print. There will be an all-out, coast-to-coast publicity blitz. "We knew the cover of Sports Illustrated would be big, and it's going according to plan," says Lisa Johnson, v-p/executive director of publicity/marketing for Gotham/Dutton, in the understatement of the spring.

With this new Bonds bombshell there are several titles that suddenly find themselves intimately in the orbit of Game of Shadows.When Bonds announced early in spring training that 2006 might be his last year, HarperCollins pushed Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antiheroby Jeff Pearlman from later in the year to a May 9 pub. "Love him or hate him," says David Hirshey, senior v-p/executive editor at HarperCollins, "everybody holds their breath when he steps up to the plate, and the day he passes Ruth he will get a standing ovation. Needless to say, I think all the surrounding publicity will only fuel readers' curiosity about how he got to this historic moment." According to Hirshey, there are more revelations to come about Bonds: "To view Barry Bonds through the prism of steroids is to miss the whole picture. Obviously Love Me, Hate Me will explore the steroid question—and news will be broken in it—but this is not a steroid book, per se. It's a biography of a fascinating and polarizing man who transcends sports." And it appears that Hirshey is conceding nothing to Game of Shadows: "I'd like to think they're the leadoff hitter and we're batting cleanup." HarperCollins plans a first printing of 100,000 copies and a national publicity push.

Lyons Press just happens to have two books that deal with steroids, supplements and the athlete. In fact, the Bonds controversy has prompted the Lyons sales force to go back and resolicit both titles. "I bought Dunks, Doubles, and Doping: How Steroids Are Killing American Athletics," says Tom McCarthy, Lyons's executive editor, "because author Nathan Jendrick takes the unique approach that under the right circumstances and controls, steroids in and of themselves are not bad"—Canseco's position, incidentally. "It is steroid abuse," according to Jendrick, "that has and is destroying American athletics."

To many athletes, supplements are just as natural as eating their Wheaties in the morning. Muscles, Speed, and Lies: What the Sport Supplement Industry Does Not Want Athletes or Consumers to Knowby David Lightsey, according to McCarthy, has the authority of almost 20 years of research behind it, and an author who is willing to take on a multibillion-dollar nutritional supplements industry. "Lightsey has been debunking the supplement myth for years," says McCarthy. "Consumers and athletes alike have been led to believe that they need these various supplements when in fact if they had a balanced diet, they wouldn't."

To mix a metaphor, the ball is now in Bud Selig's court. The commission must now deal with Barry Bonds. What he'll do, no one knows. The reign of Selig—more blunders than achievements—is minutely examined in In the Best Interests of Baseball?: The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Seligby economist Andrew Zimbalist, just out from Wiley. "The decisions that most closely relates to Bonds," says Stephen S. Power, senior editor at Wiley, "are those pertaining to the slow development of baseball's anti-doping policies." Wiley plans a 25,000-copy first printing and major promotion.

Nostalgia Sells

The news is not all bad; some of it is old. If baseball, an organized American sport for well over a century, outflanks all other professional sports in anything, it's nostalgia. Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent's The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk About the Game They Loved, is a case in point."You asked why this kind of old-fashioned baseball book still attracts an audience?" says Bob Bender, senior editor at Simon & Schuster. "I think it's because the book reads like a conversation with some great old ballplayers reminiscing about the game." Vincent told PW that he was inspired by Laurence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, which was published way back in 1966. "I thought it was magnificent," says Vincent of Ritter's book—a undisputed classic among baseball historians—"and I wondered if anyone was doing anything like that 30 or 40 years later. And they weren't, so I started about eight years ago and I did an oral history project for the Hall of Fame. Then Simon & Schuster suggested that Ritter's book had been very successful and maybe a sequel would be equally successful, so I did it." S&S plans a 35,000-copy first printing and Vincent will do national publicity. They also plan cross-promotion with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Baseball Assistance Team (BAT), which assists old timers in need.

Even a youngish editor like Geoff Shandler, editor-in-chief of Little Brown, knows the allure of baseball's past. "Fans miss what baseball once was, or what they imagine it once was. There's a romance to the earlier game, and to those earlier era, even if they were in reality fraught with problems." In April Shandler will be publishing Black and Blue: The Golden Arm, the Robinson Boys, and the 1966 World Series That Stunned Americaby Tom Adelman. It is a story of two teams going in opposite directions: the Baltimore Orioles of Frank and Brooks Robinson, a team about to dominate its league for the next half decade, and the Los Angeles Dodgers of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, a team about to be eclipsed as their old Brooklyn stars finally fade away. Little, Brown plans a 30,000-copy first printing and a national media push, plus local appearances in L.A. and Baltimore.

Since Michael Lewis's bestselling Moneyballthree years ago, the team philosophy/business side of baseball continues to be explored in depth. A book already making headlines is Built to Win: Inside Stories and Leadership Strategies from Baseball's Winningest GM by John Schuerholz with Larry Guest. Schuerholz, the Atlanta Braves' longtime general manager, reveals behind-the-scenes dealings he's had with the likes of Tom Glavine, Barry Bonds and John Rocker that will raise some eyebrows. He also takes on those who worship at the Moneyballaltar. "There's a full chapter about Moneyball," says Rick Wolff, v-p/executive editor at Warner, "in which Schuerholz takes issue with the modern-day trend of evaluating and signing ballplayers simply based on statistics." Warner plans a 60,000-copy first printing and major media with the author starting in spring training.

Moneyball. Built to Win. What's the right baseball philosophy? Well, leave it up to our statistical mavens to try and find an answer, as Winners: How Good Baseball Teams Become Great Ones (And It's Not the Way You Think) by Dayn Perry, tries to do. "This book is meant, in some ways," explains Wiley senior editor Eric Nelson, "to settle the argument between scouts and stat-heads." Wiley has a 20,000-copy initial printing and plans a major broadcast push.

The original stat-head—Bill James—gets his due in a biography of the man and his thinking by Scott Gray. Doubleday's The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball, written with James's cooperation, tells how the one-time night watchman earned the moniker "the Sultan of Stats" and a front-office job with the Red Sox.

Embargo. There's that dreaded word again and this time it applies to Feeding the Monster: The True Story of the Making (and Unmaking) of the World Championship Boston Red Soxby Seth Mnookin. Everyone knows about Red Sox GM's Theo Epstein's soap opera off-season: Fired! Angst in Red Sox Nation. Rehired: Theo Redux! Well, S&S has the story, and they are keeping it close to their vests. "We decided to embargo the book," says editor Bob Bender, "because it contains some revelations about the Red Sox that we want to keep under wraps until books are in the stores." S&S will go out with a first printing of 100,000 copies and plans national publicity, including a radio satellite tour.

The Hit

At 1 pm EST on March 7, Sports Illustrated posted on its Web site news of its Game of Shadows excerpt, which would appear in full the next day on newsstands. In a matter of three hours, the book went from 170,855th bestselling book on Amazon to no. 161; by 10 p.m. it was at no. 3. As of this writing it stands at no. 21. Though Jose Canseco's off-the-cuff and anecdotal Juiced proved to have good legs coming out of the initial publicity blitz, selling more than 250,000 copies to date, it remains to be seen how a thorough, journalistic approach will fare with fans. But in the early going, it appears that Game has game. Date/time and Amazon rankings below:

Date	Time	Total #
3/7	2:06 pm	170,855
3/7	4:50 pm	161
3/7	10:00 pm	3
3/8	9:30 am	8
3/8	1:48 pm	6
3/8	10:00 pm	3

Baseball Reference: A Numbers Game

When questioned about one of his outrageous comments, Casey Stengel would bark, "You can look it up!" Baseball, more than any other sport, draws much of its mystique from the ability of fans to compare ballplayers solely on statistics. Even in this day of the Web, fans' need to get their hands on rock-solid baseball reference books has not subsided.

"The Sporting News," says Michael Garavalia, director/retail sales & marketing, "has been in baseball publishing since 1909, when we published the first edition of our baseball record book." Garavalia, who publishes such titles as The Baseball Register & Fantasy Handbook 2006 Edition, The Complete Baseball Record & Fact Book 2006 Edition, 2006 Baseball Guideand the 2006 Baseball Rules(to the tune of 30,000 copies each), finds reference publishing unique. "The significant demand that separates reference publishers from general trade publishers is the timing for information and the inherent accuracy of the information from year to year that the consumer comes to expect. They also expect consistency in the way that the information is processed and presented to them."

What the Sporting Newswas to baseball fans of yesteryear, Baseball America is to the fan of today. Specializing in in-depth analyses of the farm system of each major league team, BAfinds itself at the end of a season with a lot of statistics. And it has learned to put them to good use with titles like Baseball America Prospect Handbook, Baseball America Directory 2006, Baseball America Super Register 2006, Baseball America Almanac 2006and Baseball America Draft Almanac. "For all the attention that is focused on the Web these days," says Lee Folger, BA's publisher, "a reference book is still a terrific way to access information in a convenient, portable format that requires no wires or technology." BAdepends heavily on spring training promotion by its editors on such venues as ESPN.com and XM Satellite Radio and the retail expertise of Simon & Schuster. "They manage our retail relationship such as Borders, Amazon and B&N. We also distribute direct because of our relationship with the industry," Folger says.

The new kid on the reference block—in marked contrast to the Sporting News—is ACTA Sports out of Chicago. Its v-p/marketing, Andrew Yankech, says ACTA got into the reference business when new partner John Dewan came on board in 2002. "His background was sports statistics publishing. He already had a strong personal and professional relationship with Bill James, thebaseball statistics guru, and we started our sports line with The Bill James Handbook. We are a young sports publishing company, but we see a lot of opportunity for growth in this area." Besides publishing the statistic-heavy Fielding Bible this spring, Yankech will also offer the 2006 edition of The Hardball Times Baseball Annual, which will have a initial printing of 5,000-copies. "It bridges the gap," says Yankech, "between hardcore statistics and normal baseball writing. It appeals to the casual fan as well as the fantasy league fanatic."

It is known simply as "the bible," and is more likely to be found in a saloon than in a house of worship. It is The 2006 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia. After being out of circulation for a while, the Encyclopediamade a comeback in 2005. "Baseball is still the national pastime," says Charles Nurnberg, publisher/ CEO of Sterling, "but until Sterling first published the Baseball Encyclopedia last year, the market for an all-inclusive statistical reference for historians and fantasy baseball fans seemed to have gone the way of the Sunday afternoon double-header." Sterling plans a 40,000-copy printing for the thick paperback volume, still moderately priced at only $24.95.

Workman, known for its eclectic list, is a general trade publisher of nonfiction books. R.D. Rosen joined in 2002 as senior editor, and baseball reference was soon added to the Workman list. "I saw an opportunity," says Rosen lightly, "to do my small part to try and raise the literary and analytical level of baseball books... [and] I think I've managed to do that." Rosen has two reference titles for the spring. Baseball Prospectus 2006—aka "the fantasy baseball bible"—covers over 1,600 players and the 50 top prospects. "The coterie of baseball analysts at Baseball Prospectus are, in the aggregate, the best at asking the most sophisticated questions about the game and then proceeding to answer them," says Rosen. Workman also publishes The Team-by-Team Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, which Rosen dubs "a huge box of chocolates for anyone who loves the game." Both Workman titles will have 50,000-copy initial printings.

The Madness of March

It's probably more American than apple pie. The division is exquisite—the Final 64, the Sweet 16, the Elite 8, the Final Four. What we're talking about is March Madness, that other rite of spring that allows the smallest of college basketball programs to dream David vs. Goliath dreams about just how they would defeat a powerhouse like Duke or North Carolina on the last Monday night of the college basketball season.

"It's a powerful mix of college loyalty, local pride, and the romance of the underdog," opines David Hirshey of HarperCollins.

Perhaps there is no one more qualified to write about college basketball than John Feinstein, who penned the trend-setting mega-seller A Season on the Brink, about the combustible Bobby Knight. "Feinstein probably knows college basketball better than any writer alive," says Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown. "He attended his first Final Four nearly 30 years ago, and knows the people involved intimately. When he proposed writing a book about the most-watched series in sports, we could only say yes." That book turned out to be Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four, which takes both a historic look at the Final Four and also focuses in on the 2005 tournament. Little, Brown now has 102,500 copies in print and Feinstein will be promoting heavily all through the month of March, although some reviews have been harsh on Feinstein's latest effort.

Everyone thinks partisanship was invented in Washington, D.C. They obviously never met Will Blythe or his new book: To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry. That's quite a mouthful, concedes editor David Hirshey. "Most sports books are written from a no-cheering-in-the-press-box point of view. To Hate Like This unabashedly flouts that convention and speaks to the reader not just man-to-man, but fan-to-fan. Remember," adds Hirshey, tongue firmly in cheek, "it's not enough that your team succeeds, others must fail spectacularly." To Hate Like This, which has been compared favorably to Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, has a first printing of 60,000 copies and Blythe will be at the Final Four conducting interviews.

"This book is historic," says Mitch Rogatz about Triumph's How March Became Madness. "It brings together the greatest coaching minds in the game and allows them to tell their stories in their own voice about how the game has changed so much over the last four decades." Rogatz loves the book, but he's crazy about the accompanying DVD of the 1968 game between Houston (Elvin Hayes) and UCLA (Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) at the Astrodome. "This video is so rare that I'll bet sports producers across the country are getting copies of the book just to add that game to their archives." Triumph has a 100,000-copy first printing backed by a 10-city author tour and a book signing at the Final Four.

The area of the Carolinas known as Tobacco Road is where they grow the nicotine leaf—and tall young men who compete regularly in the Final Four. "In the past 25 years," says Rob Kirkpatrick, senior editor at the Lyons Press, " 'Tobacco Road' schools have reached the Final Four 19 times and own seven national championships. North Carolina won it all last year, and both Duke and Wake Forest were Top 5 teams." This all bodes well for Tobacco Road: Duke, Carolina, N.C. State, Wake Forest, and the History of the Most Intense Backyard Rivalries in Sports by Alwyn Featherston. Lyons will do a first printing of 15,000 copies and plans a regional sports talk radio campaign and author tour.