Oral history: Retelling baseball stories still resonates

Posted Mar 29, 2010 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Mar 29, 2010 at 05:38 PM

He never received the credit or respect he deserved during his time as baseball’s commissioner, but Fay Vincent continues to be a credit to the game.

Vincent’s love for baseball is genuine, and The Baseball Oral History Project he has championed has given baseball lovers a valuable resource. His third (and latest) installment, transcribed from videotaped interviews, focuses on 10 men who made an impact on the game over the last 40 years.

“It’s What’s Inside the Lines That Counts: Baseball Stars of the 1970s and 1980s Talk About the Game They Loved” (Simon & Schuster, $25) owes plenty to the original concept, memorably taped and then transcribed by Lawrence Ritter in his 1966 work, “The Glory of Their Times.”

And Vincent admits that his inspiration came from Ritter’s style of finding players from the deadball era, turning on his tape recorder and then letting the men speak. Unlike Ritter, though, Vincent did not have to travel 75,000 miles before completing his work.

Still, there are some compelling stories in Vincent’s book. The 10 subjects include two managers (Dick Williams and Earl Weaver), an umpire (Bruce Froemming), six players (including Don Baylor, who also managed but who was a player during the 1970s and ’80s) and Marvin Miller, the first full-time director of the players’ union.

Willie McCovey talks about growing up in Mobile, Ala., and breaking in with the San Francisco Giants. His teammate, pitcher Juan Marichal, reveals a conversation he overheard outside a dugout that helped him become more effective against Roberto Clemente.

Plus, Marichal does not duck his most controversial moment in baseball, when he hit John Roseboro with a bat during a heated game against the Dodgers in August 1965.

Tom Seaver discusses how his businesslike approach to pitching, and thinking several steps ahead of the batter, made him so effective.

Williams and Weaver, two of the more pugnacious managers in major-league history, still pull no punches as they talk about running a team. Weaver has not lost any of his fire, either, when reminiscing about his run-ins with umpires.

Speaking of umpires, Froemming’s chapter is one of the more intriguing interviews. The man who umpired longer in the majors than anyone else (37 years), gives the baseball fan a unique perspective as he talks about controlling baseball games. He also shows the reader how the road to becoming a major-league umpire was tough, long and rocky at times.

Ozzie Smith and Cal Ripken Jr. talk about their heroes and the impact they themselves had on the game.

Fittingly, the book ends with Miller, who more than anyone else dramatically changed the economics of baseball. And this begs the question: How is Marvin Miller not in the Hall of Fame, while his antagonist, former commissioner Bowie Kuhn, was enshrined by the Hall’s veterans committee in 2008?

Go figure.

The memories are warm and the stories are sentimental and funny. Vincent writes the lead-ins to each chapter and then stays out of the way. It’s a very effective and enjoyable combination.