The Wrongs of Spring

There is a new sports season neatly tucked in between the Super Bowl and spring training. It should be called the Steroid Season, in which revelations about performance-enhancing drug use dominate the sports pages, and talk of HGH and Primobolan drowns out talk of RBIs and “potential.” In recent seasons, much of the steroid news has been driven by books, which, as in politics, have proven to be central to the national conversation. Jose Canseco's Juiced was the story in '05 and prompted a congressional inquiry; Game of Shadows, an exposé by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, was 2006's talk of the spring and prompted the George Mitchell investigation, coverage of which dominated 2007's steroid talk. Last spring, there was little book action, but events began to unfold—namely, Roger Clemens filing suit against a former trainer who claimed he had injected the Rocket with HGH—that promise to lead to this spring's fireworks, or so we think. Getting publishers to talk about what's in store is like trying to get the straight dope from a bulked-up player in suit and tie facing a forest of microphones.

Did I mention A-Rod? With Super Bowl XLIII only a week past, Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez was unmasked as a user by Selena Roberts in an article in Sports Illustrated. The New York tabloids went wild: A-Rod was now “A-Fraud” and “A-Roid.” Rodriguez offered himself up at a news conference in Tampa, which only added to his problems. His mea culpa turned into “mea cousin did it to me,” and he introduced scenarios whose veracity has been questioned.

Rodriguez remains a moving target in a developing story, which suggests that there is more to the story. And Selena Roberts just happens to be working on a Rodriguez book, A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez, due in April from HarperCollins. One can only imagine that she is still writing.

PW contacted Roberts's editor at HarperCollins, senior v-p/executive editor David Hirshey. Hirshey, who in the past has waxed poetic about his baseball books (he published Jane Leavy's much admired biography of Sandy Koufax), was more reticent about what might be in Roberts's book. “Alex Rodriguez is universally regarded as the best player in baseball and his life off the field is often as interesting as his day job,” says Hirshey. “Having followed Selena's work at the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, I pursued her to write the first definitive biography of a complicated superstar. Even though all the media focus has been on her extraordinary steroid reporting in SI, this is a book about the full nine innings of A-Rod's life, not just one major strike against him.” Okay, the book won't only be about steroids and Madonna and women on the road; nonetheless, HarperCollins has embargoed the book. And Hirshey might have let his guard down a little in a recent talk with John Koblin of the New York Observer. “Not everything that Selena has on A-Rod's steroid participation has come out yet.” HarperCollins will back A-Rod with a 200,000-copy first printing and a national tour.

Hirshey may have back-to-back home runs, publishingwise, as he also has on his list Jeff Pearlman's The Rocket That Fell to Earth: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality, due in late March. Clemens is presently stuck between his former trainer, Brian McNamee, and a hard place, the Department of Justice, where he is being investigated for possible perjury. Although he has denied any steroid use in the past, Clemens, usually full of bring-it-on hubris, has been keeping a low profile of late. Hirshey says Rocket is not embargoed, but he was only willing to show PW one rather innocuous chapter. Originally scheduled for a mid-June pub date, Rocket has been pushed into March, according to Hirshey, “because of a competing book, if there really is one.” Hirshey has referred to this mysterious other “competing book” more than once, but as of this date, no book, author or publisher has surfaced, though two reporters at the New York Daily News have been extraordinarily active on the Clemens story. Pearlman's Rocket will have a 150,000-copy first printing and national publicity; time will tell if it has the Clemens story to itself.

The high priests of baseball—writers and scholars and teary-eyed sports magnates—often refer to baseball as something timeless and pure. “I need to think something lasts forever,” wrote former commissioner Bart Giamatti, “and it might as well be that state of being that is a game.” But the truth of the matter is that baseball has a long history of cheating that now, perhaps, will find more public acknowledgment, thanks to the encouragement of Messrs. Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, McGwire et al. From spitballing hurlers and gambling to the allegedly stolen pitch that Bobby Thomson hit out to win the 1951 pennant for the New York Giants and the rampant use of “greenies”—amphetamines—that Jim Bouton detailed in his historic Ball Four, baseball has long been corrupted by men seeking an edge. And now, thanks to Crooked: A History of Cheating in Sports by Fran Zimniuch (Taylor, Apr.), you can look it up.

“Cheating is the rule, rather than the exception, in sports,” says Rick Rinehart, publisher of Taylor Trade Publishing. “To quote from the cycling movie, Breaking Away, 'everybody does it.' ” With chapters on BALCO and the Mitchell Report, baseball's sins are fully explored. Taylor plans a 10,000-copy first printing and national TV/radio exposure.

Another book that deals specifically with the sin du jour —steroid use—is Gladiator: A True Story of 'Roids, Rage, and Redemption by Dan Clark, aka Nitro of the American Gladiators TV show. Clark is a former professional football player (NFL Europe) who “fell into” steroid use. Says Brant Rumble, senior editor at Scribner, “We may never know the whole truth about the countless baseball players whose names have been connected to steroids. However, Clark's unique brand of notoriety—along with his courage and his desire to get a message out to young athletes—allows him to lay bare every detail of his addiction, and it's in those details where readers can hope to make some sense of the steroids scandals that have become all too common.” Scribner plans national publicity for Gladiator.

Yet another marquee ball player is ready to talk about drug use in the clubhouse (and in the nightclub), former Met, Yankee and Dodger Darryl Strawberry. According to Straw: Finding My Way (Ecco, May), about the only controlled substance that Strawberry didn't take was steroids: on Strawberry's self-described menu of mood enhancers were alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, crack and marijuana. “I know that probably nine out of 10 players were taking greenies when I was playing,” says Strawberry in “and I bet nine out of 10 have been taking steroids in recent years.”

“I know writing the book was a painful journey for Darryl,” says Dan Halpern, president/publisher of Ecco. “Straw is a book written by a man capable of writing from the heart—who lived the fool's gold of the American dream before finding the motherlode.” Ecco's first printing will be 125,000 copies, and it plans a media blitz centering on New York, Los Angeles and St. Louis.

The key source in the Mitchell Report, baseball's official investigation of its drug culture, was a former Mets clubhouse employee named Kirk Radomski. In Bases Loaded: The Inside Story of the Steroid Era in Baseball by the Central Figure in the Mitchell Report, out since January and in Amazon's top 40 in both memoirs and baseball, Radomski continues to tell what he knows about steroid use in major league clubhouses. “Kirk gives a lot of detail about how major league baseball, as an industry, looked the other way during the steroids era,” says Meghan Stevenson, associate editor at Hudson Street Press, “because more home runs and better performances were very good for business. In addition to sharing stories about the players Radomski dealt to, Bases Loaded provides a terrific overview of why the steroids era started and how it ended.” Hudson Street Press continues its coast-to-coast publicity efforts throughout spring training.

Regardless of the steroid mess baseball finds itself in today, the idealism expressed by the late Giamatti has an enduring appeal for every true fan, for the game does have a glorious history, punctuated with personalities that have become part of an American pantheon, stretching from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. Publishers, as they do most every spring, bring forth, in biography and autobiography, stories that attempt to convey that excitement and glory of this quintessential American pastime.

Marty Appel has spent his life around baseball, first as PR man for the Yankees, then the head of his own public relations agency and as the author of 17 books. “Biography/autobiography works well for baseball,” says Appel, “because the lives of the subjects touch teammates, teams, eras, controversies—it's not a narrow focus.” This year Appel finds himself not flacking for the sport as much as for his own book, a biography of the late Thurman Munson, in Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, coming from Doubleday in July. Thirty years ago, Appel helped the Yankee captain write his autobiography shortly before Munson died in a plane crash. “I was closer than the sportswriters were,” Appel says of his relationship with the prickly Munson, “which is why he consented to work with me on the autobiography. It was a shame that he had such a contentious relationship with the press, but it played to my advantage in allowing me to be the one to do that first book.” Doubleday will support Munson with a 40,000-copy first printing and major publicity.

The last time Peter Golenbock was featured in PW's pages was when his salacious novel about Mickey Mantle, 7, was in the news. It was scheduled to be published by Judith Regan and, along with the O.J. Simpson book fiasco, ended up costing Regan her job. Now Golenbock is back with a biography of George Steinbrenner, the legendary owner of the Yankees. George: The Poor Little Rich Boy Who Built the Yankee Empire, will be published by Wiley in May. “What makes it unique,” says Hana Lane, senior editor at Wiley, “is that since the early 1970s Golenbock has been interviewing those associated with Steinbrenner, including those who knew him as a child, in college, as a young businessman and team owner in Cleveland. The material from those interviews has never been published and provides insight into the evolution of Steinbrenner into the public figure we all know.” Expect massive national publicity to go along with the 40,000-copy first printing.

Ron Darling is well known in New York. He was a starting pitcher on the World Champion 1986 Mets and now serves as an analyst for Mets games on TV, winning an Emmy for his work. He is also a graduate of Yale, and it shines through in his book, The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound, which will be published by Knopf in April. Although the book is about the art of pitching, Darling also weaves in many autobiographical details from his own career. “One of the things I like best about the book is his voice,” says Andrew Miller, senior editor at Knopf. ”That was there from the beginning, and then it was just a question of asking him to develop things more and really bring them to life for people who haven't lived and breathed the game the way he has.” Knopf plans a 35,000-copy printing, and Darling will be making appearances as he travels around the country with the Mets.

One of the great injustices about baseball's long apartheid before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 is that Americans were denied seeing Satchel Paige in his prime. Paige was probably in his 40s when he finally made it out of the Negro Leagues and into the major leagues with the Cleveland Indians. Now there is a definitive biography, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye, which will be published by Random House in June. “I was drawn to the book because it's a great American story, largely forgotten, that encompasses not only the life of perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever pitched, but so much more,” says Will Murphy, executive editor at Random. Publicity will involve national media and tying in with the Baseball Hall of Fame.

As baseball's present remains mired in controversy, its past remains fascinating and, thus far, an endless source of good American story.