I love (my two days in) L.A.!
Dan Fost and Michael D'Antonio
I survived. I wore a Giants cap and shirt to Los Angeles and lived to tell about it.
I was a panelist on Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and can’t say enough good things about the great time I had in enemy territory. My panel was titled “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and featured Michael D’Antonio, author of “Forever Blue,” about Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers’ move out of Brooklyn, and Mark Frost, author of “Game Six,” about the pivotal game of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. Novelist Bruce Bauman, a knowledgeable and enthusiastic baseball fan, moderated.
I was clearly the novelty act. Bauman was surprised a Giant book was picked for the festival, but there are Giant fans in LA. And I think all five of them came to the panel. We have to stick together. I acknowledged being surprised myself that I was included, but noted my gratitude that festival staff was wearing orange and black t-shirts to make me feel comfortable. (That may not be the reason for the color choice, but I’m sticking with my story.)
The Times also did that one better: They sent a guy named Sandoval to write a post about the panel, and he did a great job capturing the laughter in the room. (Writer Joshua is no relation to Giant Pablo, but no matter to me!)
We had a lot of fun telling stories and talking baseball. D’Antonio told how he spent a year combing through O’Malley’s personal documents – 30,000 of them – that had been stored in musty boxes, and revealed an incredible, never-before-told story that completely upended the modern myth of the Dodgers’ departure from Brooklyn. O’Malley was not the diabolical villain who engineered Brooklyn’s misery, but instead worked tirelessly to build a new ballpark in the borough, only to be thwarted at every turn by Robert Moses, the unelected autocrat who ruled New York City politics for decades.
Frost also offered up great untold stories, including about the alcoholic, inept owner of the Red Sox, Tom Yawkey, and the boozing, drug-addled, nearly forgotten hero of the sixth game, Bernie Carbo. And he told how that Series – featuring a dozen Hall of Famers – marked the end of an era, as six weeks later, free agency began and baseball changed forever. It also remains the single most watched baseball game of all time, with an audience of 76 million people – the “high water mark” for the pastime, Frost said.
We had a lively discussion of steroids and cheating, and I reiterated my belief that Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame when his time comes. When Bauman offered one last chance to pitch our books to the audience, the best I could come with was, “I think Dodger fans will love the stories of Giant heartbreak and frustration that populate my book.”
The festival itself is a marvelous celebration of the written word. I attended two other panels that inspired and encouraged, both featuring my friend, David Ulin, the book editor of the Los Angeles Times, as moderator. The first – featuring Nicholas Carr, David Shields, and Ander Monson – addressed how reading and writing will survive in an age of increasing fragmentation. Some conclusions were inspiring (the written word is constantly evolving, and there is more writing and reading now than ever) and some depressing (people are increasingly incapable of reading at any length). But by the afternoon, when Ulin engaged Dave Eggers in conversation, optimism ruled the day. Eggers was funny, witty, upbeat and inspiring on so many levels: as a writer, as a publishing business visionary, and as a pied piper of the written word, whose “826” centers in San Francisco and elsewhere teach so many young people the joy of writing.
I think it’s rather a sad statement that Eggers is such a publishing visionary, because the simplicity of his vision reveals how broken the industry is. His publishing house, McSweeney’s, looks merely to recoup its costs and make a little bit of money for its writers, and get great stories out to the public in the way that writers like to tell them. He is satisfied with little or no profits and an 8-person operation. He looks at publishing and sees that more people bought books last year than ever before. The sad part to me is that book publishers – like the newspaper publishers I know all too well – want to run a high volume, high profit business, and the disappearance of those big profits is what has the industry wringing its hands and declaring doom.
As if that wasn’t enough, the weekend was full of many other personal highlights:
- A visit to friends at the Los Angeles Times, a magnificent Art Deco building that stands as a monument to great journalism, but which sadly now has vast empty sections as the paper struggles in the new economy.
- My first game at the Big A – Anaheim Stadium – where the Angels beat the Yankees Friday night. (Yes, I wore pinstripes.)
- Two outstanding meals at some of Los Angeles’ legendary Jewish delis: pastrami at Junior’s in Westwood on Saturday night, and matzo brei at Nate n Al in Beverly Hills Sunday morning. (Thank you, David Sax, author of “Save the Deli,” for the inspiration.)
- Post-panel surprise encounters with two friends from my childhood in New Jersey. One of them came to my panel with a friend – the friend was there to see her friend, Mark Frost! The other, Carol Fitzgerald, was my babysitter; her mother, Sylvia Cicetti, had been my third grade teacher. Carol has run the site the Book Reporter for years now, and knows more about the publishing industry and the Internet than anybody I’ve ever met.
Yogi and the Giants
Dan Fost signs a book for his third grade teacher, Sylvia Cicetti, at the Yogi Berra Museum. (Photo by Ron Kaplan)
After a whirlwind week, I can finally take a breath and give a little more detail about the great event I had at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center – my first book event, and a homecoming at that.
About 70 people turned out, and it was great to see so many friends, relatives and former teachers from my formative years in New Jersey. And the Berra museum is the perfect venue for a baseball event. The auditorium is even set up like a baseball stadium, complete with scoreboard. The event received coverage in The Record newspaper, and on Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf.
Highlights for me included re-connecting with my seventh grade English teacher, Jean Anderson, nee Smolinski. She is the teacher who saw my love of writing and my love of sports, and my ability (or potential) at one but not the other, and launched me as a sportswriter for the local town newspaper, Bloomfield’s Independent Press. (A lot of credit also goes to the late Russell Roemmele, a crusading local newspaperman who gave a teenager space to write every week.) Amazingly, Mrs. Anderson’s son Brian accompanied her – he is a newly minted newspaper reporter himself! I look forward to staying in touch and following his career through these perilous times for the newspaper industry.
My third grade teacher Mrs. Sylvia Cicetti was there as well, with her husband, Al, another newspaper veteran. Mrs. Cicetti closed the event by noting that the tables were turned, and she had to listen to me for a change; afterward, she told me, “In Show and Tell in third grade, I’d always say it was time for the next child, and you’d say, ‘But I just have one more thing to say.’ You haven’t changed a bit.” (Her daughter Carol was one of my favorite babysitters – and now she’s Carol Fitzgerald, running The Book Reporter, and we’re going to connect at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend!)
There were friends I have stayed in touch with, friends I hadn’t seen in years, and most amazingly (to me), people who didn’t even know me! One was a guy who still gloats to his Dodger buddy over Bobby Thomson’s home run, taunting him with “Never forget, Howie!” Another was a niece of Eddie Brannick, a longtime Giants executive who unfortunately wound up cut from my book.
Yogi and Harry, 2007
I also got to tell a story about Yogi Berra and the Giants. As luck would have it, I had the privilege of meeting Yogi at his museum three years ago. (That’s him in the photo with my son Harry.) He told how he was present at the greatest moment in Giant history, the Bobby Thomson home run in 1951. He didn’t say it, but he was the reigning American League MVP that year. The Yankees had already wrapped up the AL pennant and were waiting to see who they would play in the World Series, the Giants or the Dodgers. Yogi was rooting for the Giants, because the World Series shares were based on the gate, and the Polo Grounds held more people than Ebbetts Field. But with the Dodgers taking a 4-1 lead in the ninth, the game appeared to be in hand, and Yogi decided to beat the traffic and get home. So he missed possibly the greatest home run in baseball history, the Shot Heard ‘Round the World.
As the museum director Dave Kaplan said when Yogi told that story: “Mr. ‘It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over.’”
Beat L.A.!
This is the weekend we’ve been waiting for. The Giants are in Los Angeles for a three-game series with the Dodgers, the first of 2010. The Dodgers are the defending division champs, but the Giants are the team in ascendancy, and I have to say, I like their chances, especially with Tim Lincecum and Barry Zito pitching games two and three, and no one on the hill for the Dodgers who looks particularly able to stop the Giants’ hot bats.
But anything can happen when these two teams meet, given the history of bad blood. I’ve got a chapter in “Giants Past and Present” devoted to the long and sometimes bloody rivalry, and I talk about it in this new video on my YouTube channel. (Please subscribe!)
I’d love to get your thoughts on some of the greatest moments in the rivalry. I personally savor Dodger-killing homers — Joe Morgan in 1982, Brian Johnson in 1997, and Barry Bonds, pirouetting at home plate the day before Johnson’s blast. How about you?
East Coast swing
Dan Fost signing books at Yogi Berra Museum
It’s old home week for me: I’m back in New Jersey, visiting family, and telling people on the East Coast more than they ever thought they wanted to know about the San Francisco Giants.
Today I’m going to be on Chris “Mad Dog” Russo’s show on Sirius Satellite Radio. Mad Dog is a big-time Giants fan and I’m very excited to be talking baseball with him, especially since the Giants have been on such an awesome roll to start the season. (And let me say here that, no matter what other Giant fans think, I think Barry Zito is for real – and that means trouble in the NL West!)
The coverage keeps rolling in:
* The Record covered my event at the Yogi Berra Museum (see photo above). In reporter Ashley Kindergan’s story, I “out” myself as a born Yankee fan (what else can I do at Yogi’s museum?):
“It’s easier to say here in New Jersey than in San Francisco that I grew up as a Yankees fan — and I’m still a pretty big Yankees fan,” Fost said Sunday. When he moved, he was “determined to root for the Giants, and they were a great team that, at the time, made it really easy to root for them. Now, my son is a huge Giants fan.”
* Ron Kaplan, who keeps tracks of all things baseball and bookish at his site, attended the event and gave it a nice writeup as well. Kaplan is giving away a free copy of “Giants Past and Present,” which I signed for him.
* The King of Cali, a lively Giant blogger, is also giving a copy of the book away, and he also published a nice Q&A with me.
* Dave Tobener at Golden Gate Giants and I also picked a winner of the book from commenters on his blog. A free copy goes to Giant fan Brad Oliver for his memory:
My Favorite Giants moment was game 5 of the NLCS in 1987. I was 23 and just started working for The Sports Fan. I took my father to the game and everything about the day was perfect and surreal. I kept sneaking glances over at my Dad as he was transfixed on the game, and thought about all the sports events he had taken me to. The Giants beat the Cardinals that day, and Jose Uribe had a great game and I remember (can still hear it) the 60,000 fans screaming UUUUU-RIBE!!!! After the game, they announced on the loudspeaker that World Series Tickets would go on sale. It was not meant to be (Thanks Candy Maldonado+Jose Oquendo) for the Giants lost game 6-7 in St. Louis. But sitting out in the parking lot traffic and just talking to my dad about the game and all the sports memories we had was PRICELESS. I still have the two ticket stubs on my desk.
* The great Leah Garchik was at the Giants’ home opener, and also found room in her column for an entertaining account of my appearance on Forum, including some barbs that Prof. Eric Solomon and I good-naturedly tossed at Giants President Larry Baer.
* I had a nice interview with Alan Farley at KALW’s BookTalk, which aired Sunday night and is now online.
* And in one final footnote, I know we Giants fans like to complain about all the lousy trades over the years, but I should note that April 12 marked lefthander Johnny Antonelli’s 80th birthday – and while the trade that sent Bobby Thomson to the Braves was not popular at the time, it gave the Giants an anchor for their last World Series title in 1954. (Antonelli later irritated San Francisco when he complained about the cold and fog at Seals Stadium, but the City and the Giants were still getting to know each other in those days.)
The Media Tour
Just like the Giants themselves – who are tearing things up on the field so far this year, sweeping Houston, pitching great, hitting great, and going 3-0 into the opening homestand – “Giants Past and Present” is getting a great reception in the season’s opening week.
Michael Krasny and Dan Fost
* I was on KQED’s “Forum” with Michael Krasny today, along with Giants President Larry Baer and San Francisco State University Prof. Eric Solomon, and we spent a delightful hour talking baseball. One of my favorite moments: When Baer told how the Giants would sell Tim Lincecum wigs this year, Solomon blurted, “Have you no shame?” I also enjoyed lobbing one of my pet issues in Baer’s lap: I want to see a Barry Bonds statue at AT&T Park. And Baer offered up an amusing story as well, after Solomon defended the Giants’ 1951 sign stealing as part of a long tradition of cheating in baseball; he said Giants’ Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry — a
Dan Fost and Larry Baer
notorious spitball thrower — was not only welcomed at Spring Training this year, but he was embraced by Commissioner Bud Selig, sending a subliminal message to the minor leaguers that it’s OK to doctor the ball. You can listen to the hour at KQED’s site, or if you prefer, right here:
Greg Papa, Dan Fost at Comcast SportsNet
Alex Boone, Dan Fost
Yay Dan! Go Dan! Raiderettes Anna and Cole cheer for author
* I was on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area’s Chronicle Live last night, with host Greg Papa effusively praising the book as “comprehensive.” You can see it below, or on the Comcast site. I was glad I brought my camera: I was able to get photos with Papa and with my green room compadres, the 49ers’ offensive lineman Alex Boone, and a couple of Raiderettes, Cole and Anna. I’ll skip the cheerleader jokes, but will say that the Giants could use someone Boone’s size to bat fifth.
* Ron Kaplan posted a nice review of the book at his Baseball Bookshelf. I look forward to meeting Ron this weekend at the Yogi Berra Museum in New Jersey. From his review:
On the one hand you have long-time fans of the team, both in the East and West Coast incarnations. You also have younger fans, who grew up on the San Francisco version. In addition, there are the history buffs, the photography buffs, the pop culture buffs, you name it. In that regard, Giants has the proverbial something for everyone in one slim package. Fost, a freelance journalist in the Bay Area, shares his love for the team with anyone who wants to listen, or, more appropriately, read.
* The California Media Workers Guild — the union of which I was a proud member when I worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, and which I now belong to the freelancers’ unit — posted a nice write-up about me and the book in its section “We Love Our Work.” Rebecca Rosen Lum’s piece, “Capturing the history of baseball Giants,” gives a good description of some of the work that went into my book:
Fost had long nurtured an idea to write a book chronicling the 125-year history of the Giants – heartbreaks, gaffes and glories. When San Francisco magazine published his story commemorating the ball club’s 50th anniversary in the City, it caught the attention of MVP Books, a publishing company with a series of ball club profiles to its credit. They needed it turned around in two months.
No problem: “I had half the work done already,” Fost said. “I had notebooks full of stuff. My whole dining room became a baseball library.”
The project presented an opportunity “to play in the toy department” for Fost, the former sports editor of his college newspaper. In his life as a metro, features and business reporter, he has covered just about everything but sports. He developed a niche as a technology and business writer at the Marin Independent Journal and later the San Francisco Chronicle.
* I’m also getting some nice reviews on Amazon.com, and the book is consistently in or near the top 10 in the categories of baseball history, baseball writing and New York history.
There’s more to come – but I’m grateful to everyone for all the ink and airtime.
Thank you, John Rothmann
I spent a great hour last night with John Rothmann on KGO Radio, 810 AM in San Francisco.
John is a scholar of presidential history and even worked for Richard Nixon. Off the air, we talked about how Nixon threw out the first ball at Candlestick Park in 1960. John said that the crowd cheered Nixon and booed Pat Brown, the Democrat; two years later, the two men faced off in the California governor’s race, and Nixon was convinced he would win because he was cheered in San Francisco. Of course, Brown won, and the former vice president famously declared, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.”
You can listen to the interview on KGO’s Web site.
I love Opening Day!
Dan Fost
Spring training is over. The games all count now. The real work begins.
That’s as true for me, as the author of “Giants Past and Present,” as it is for the team that I’m writing about. And here at GPP World Headquarters, things have been popping!
First I’m thrilled to announce the launch of my YouTube channel, under the euphonious name of giantsbook. Here’s my first video, produced by Spoken Media’s incredible team of Geralyn Pezanoski and Alley Pezanoski-Browne.
In addition, the book has been getting some more good press.
* Dave Tobener at Golden Gate Giants posted a nice review, calling the book “a fascinating look at the Giants from their inception in New York through the present day, offering a bunch of great stories and little-known anecdotes that even the most devoted fans may have never heard before.” Tobener also published a fun Q&A with me, and he’ll be giving away a signed copy of the book this weekend to the winner of a trivia contest, so be sure to check his site!
Juan Marichal takes a swing at Dodger catcher John Roseboro, 1965.
* My old employer, the San Francisco Chronicle, ran an excerpt of the book — the Giants-Dodgers Rivalry chapter, complete with a photo of the Marichal-Roseboro brawl. The story generated a lot of comments from fans ready for Opening Day – and another season of doing battle with L.A.!
* Ron Kaplan put my YouTube video up on his Baseball Bookshelf – along with a reminder for this Sunday’s event at the Yogi Berra Museum in New Jersey.
* I was at KALW radio studios in San Francisco today for an interview with Alan Farley for his BookTalk show. Stay tuned for the announcement of that show’s air date.
* When MVP Books published “Giants Past and Present,” I knew instantly where I wanted to have a book party: Public House, the new restaurant that’s taking the place of Acme Chophouse at Willie Mays Plaza, right in the ballpark. It’s already getting good buzz (which is not surprising, considering chef Traci Des Jardins’ enormous talents). The restaurant generously agreed to give me the space for the party from 5:30 to 7:30 pm on Tuesday, April 20. Come on out, try the food (and one or more of the 24 beers on tap!), and buy a book – it should be a good time!
Opening Day: Fost on the air!
Let’s talk some baseball!
“Giants Past and Present” author Dan Fost will be on the air with John Rothmann on KGO radio tonight, 810 AM, at 11 p.m. Pacific time. Please call in! The listener call-in number for the show is 415-808-0810.
The back cover
Timmy on the mound
The back cover of “Giants Past and Present” — you can see it on Amazon, but you have to click around — features a photo of Tim Lincecum at the All-Star Game in St. Louis last year. Paired up with another photo, it looks like Timmy is pitching to an old Giants catcher at the Polo Grounds.
Who, asked Jay Roberts, is that old catcher?
Love the two photos side by side that create a battery of Lincecum throwing cheese to a Giants catcher from the Dead Ball Era. You can just imagine the conversations, Timmy saying, you guys were pretty tough and rugged, and those guys saying, kid, with you paired up with Matty, we could have won a few more World Series.
Lew McCarty
I checked with my editor, Josh Leventhal at MVP Books. It turns out the old catcher is none other than – Lew McCarty. He never came up during my research and is not even in the book! I think the photo came from the Library of Congress.
Jay dug a little deeper and found that the Giants acquired McCarty in 1916 from the Dodgers – actually from the Brooklyn Robins, as they were known at the time – in exchange for the immortal Fred Merkle.
McCarty caught steadily for the Giants from 1917 to 1920, when he was traded to St. Louis. By then, the Giants had Frank “Pancho” Snyder behind the plate, and were on their way to four straight pennants.
But McCarty was positioned exactly right for the back cover, and he sure looks good, alongside other Giants like Lincecum, Sandoval, Molina, Hubbell and Ott.