Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and "the Worst Baseball Team in History", the 1973-75 Texas Rangers FROM THE PUBLISHER
In early 1973 Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, figuring that a major-league beat, including such perks as free travel and an abundant expense account for such basics as "booze and broads," would be the nirvana of his sports-writing career. What Shropshire did not realize, and only began to understand when he arrived at weedy, decrepit Pompano Stadium for spring training, was that the Rangers were arguably the worst baseball team in history. During a season in which every other team in the American League had at least one future Hall of Famer on its roster, the Rangers' major claim to fame was an infielder who bragged that he was born with two spleens and once appeared as a teenager on "I've Got a Secret." Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey's reign in 1973 through Billy Martin's tumultuous tenure the following year. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique baseball personalities, including Billy Martin and Whitey Herzog, and coming at a time when many are producing idealized visions of baseball "as it was meant to be," Seasons in Hell takes us into the dugout to show how it really is, in a no-holds-barred look at a real-life, hell-raising major-league baseball team. To get any closer, as Seasons in Hell suggests, might be dangerous.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Baseball's Texas Rangers were the Washington Senators before they were moved in 1972 by owner and political-insider Bob Short, whom the author describes as "Hubert Humphrey's bagman." In 1973, Shropshire first began covering the Rangers, a group of has-beens and never-weres, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. No one could play ball, but everybody could drink, chase women and use "ability pills"-amphetamines. We see the likes of Rico Carty, so slow "you could time him with a sun dial"; bonus baby David Clyde, who would be finished within a year; and Jim Bibby, known for his fastball and his "apparatus of manhood." Manager Whitey Herzog, who did a fine job retooling the team and would go on to success elsewhere, was replaced by Billy Martin in 1974. Between Martin's almost daily fistfights, the rantings of Jimmy "Fear Strikes Out" Piersall and the riot that ensued at 10-Cent Beer Night in Cleveland, the Rangers overachieved and finished second in the American League West. But these guys played over 20 years ago. Only those few fans who actually read books during rain delays will want to transport themselves to the locker-room shenanigans of a lousy team of the 1970s. Photos. (June)
BookList - Wes Lukowsky
The Texas Rangers baseball team is the only nonexpansion club never to appear in the postseason playoffs. Shropshire covered the team for the "Forth Worth Star Telegram" from 1973 through 1975, particularly notable years because the Ranger managers were Whitey Herzog and Billy Martin, two of the game's best strategists and most memorable characters. The Herzog season (1973) was awful baseball-wise, but along the way, Shropshire learned a great deal about the game at the hotel bar from Herzog, who survived the Rangers to forge a successful managerial career over the next decade. Replacing Herzog on the hotel bar stool was Billy Martin, a master at quickly resuscitating drowning teams and at starting fights with his booze-fueled tongue. He does some of both here. This is a funny, revealing, "Ball Four"like romp through mid-seventies baseball, an era whose off-field excesses are best summed up by this Latin player's account of a good day at the park: "Go two-for-two and score big blonde." Shropshire offers the perfect antidote for those weepy-eyed tributes to baseball's pastoral beauty.
Booknews
Contains 21 essays concerned with the period beginning in the mid-19th to the mid-20th century during which modern poetry flourished. Pratt (English, Miami U., Ohio) combines a historical and a critical approach toward the works of major British, American, French, German, and Russian poets, covering topics including the modernist era as an ironic era, poets as both madmen and geniuses, the modern poet as tragic hero, and the domination of religious or visionary truths over social or political issues. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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