The Baseball Hall of Shame - Softcover

Nash, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671524852 ISBN 13: 9780671524852

Publisher: Pocket, 1985

Synopsis

sports

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One: Leading Off

It's time to give discredit where discredit is due.

For over a century, baseball has immortalized the home run slugger, the clean-cut All-American, the golden glover, the big-hearted lug, the unstoppable dynasty. But the truth is winners and nice guys and heroes are boring.

Who really makes the grand old game so entertaining, rousing, and exciting? The losers, the cheaters, the flakes, the buffoons, the boneheads, the inept, the outrageous, the obnoxious. They have given real demeaning to the word baseball. They have brought color to the game -- a black eye. They are the true foul balls whose contributions have withstood the detest of time.

Yet where is their niche in the Hall of Fame? Nowhere. To correct this travesty of sports injustice, we founded The Baseball Hall of SHAME. Cooperstown can have baseball's shining stars. The Hall of SHAME wants baseball's shiners.

The history of our national pastime boasts a rich heritage of shameful moments both on and off the field by teams, players, managers, coaches, owners, general managers, umpires, groundskeepers, and even the fans themselves.

To help us choose the most deserving candidates for Baseball Hall of SHAME dishonors, we made a nationwide appeal in the spring of 1984 to fans, sportswriters, broadcasters, and players for nominations. We spread the word on radio from coast to coast and throughout Canada. We went on TV and were interviewed in scores of newspapers and magazines. We visited spring training camps where we received nominations in the bleachers, clubhouses, dugouts, and press boxes. Then we spent weeks sifting through record books, archival material, and faded newspaper accounts. We considered all shameful moments and tossed out those which involved drugs or murder since there's nothing funny about either. However, most everything else shameful had a chance of being selected for dishonors.

Not everyone who blundered on or off the field belongs in The Baseball Hall of SHAME. In our judgment, only a small select number of the thousands of boners and disgraces that have tainted the game met our unique standards for inclusion in the Hall's first induction.

However, we don't intend to stop here. Periodically, we will be considering prospective Hall of Shamers from the past and present for enshrinement. If you feel some baseball personality or moment is deserving of such dishonors, we want to know about it. Please send us your nominations of hilarious happenings and ignoble incidents. To learn how to submit your picks, turn to page 187.

We want The Baseball Hall of SHAME to be the fans' shrine. We're not out to make fun of baseball. Instead, we want to have fun with the game we all love. This book is more than just the official record of charter membership in The Baseball Hall of SHAME. It's also a way for fans across the country to pay a light-hearted tribute to the national pastime. We have found that superstars and bozos have one thing in common -- they all screw up. (It's just that some screw up more than others.)

As you read through this book, we hope you come to the same conclusion we did. We can all identify with -- and laugh about -- each inductee's shameful moment because each one of us has at one time or another pulled a "rock."

Copyright © 1985 by Nash and Zullo Productions, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

Following the Baseball Hall of Shame 1 by a year, this collection of anecdotes includes such embarrassments as Johnny Bench taking a third strike in the 1972 World Series when he had been expecting an intentional walk and Ron LeFlore being picked off second while reading the electronic scoreboard. Other chapters focus on forgotten players (Bill Pettit, the $100,000 bonus baby who won one game for the Pirates), Hall of Famers (Stan Musial losing a ball in the sun and getting hit in the head by it); owners, umpires and even fans (the Kessler brothers forcing the Philadelphia Athletics to trade Jimmy Dykes, who was taunted from the stands so constantly he couldn't play). This book makes the hard-core baseball fan ever more eager for spring.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0671524852
• ISBN 13: 9780671524852
• Binding: Paperback