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Title: Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George by Martin Appel, Yogi Berra, Marty Appel ISBN: 1-930844-18-2 Publisher: Total Sports Pub. Date: 10 May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.9 (30 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: From website "Thecolmunists.com"
Comment: Marty Appel's New Book Proves Irresistible Reading By MAURY ALLEN of TheColumnists.com
MARTY APPEL, former publicity director of the New York Yankees, was sitting around one evening in 1999 with old Yankee pal Yogi Berra as Joe DiMaggio lay dying in Florida.
Appel was listening to Yogi talk about what a great player DiMaggio was and how much he enjoyed playing with him from 1947 through 1951. Appel mentioned Marilyn Monroe.
"I had dinner with him and Marilyn in Florida once, during spring training, " Berra said.
"You did? With Marilyn? Yogi, I have to know every detail about this. Tell me everything about that evening," Appel said.
"Well," Yogi said, "you know how when you order a shrimp cocktail they usually bring out four or five of them? That night we got eight."
Appel lays out dozens and dozens of these hilarious, intimate, warm, wonderful stories in his 16th book, the recently published, "Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy and George" (Total Sports Illustrated) in a most rare intimate look at baseball's most famous team from inside their sanctum.
Appel started his career with the Yankees at age 19, answering Mickey Mantle's fan mail, stayed 10 years, moved through jobs in Bowie Kuhn's office and the Atlanta Olympic Committee, opened his own PR business and stayed loyal and loving to the Yankees forever.
Now he has a chance to look back and flesh out the memories and the moments of Yankee history through the team's ugliest decade into its resurrection. Do you know the Yankees finished tenth in 1966 just before Appel arrived and he wouldn't leave until they became the Yankees again with their first World Series win in 15 years in 1977?
Appel's book is about the best thing ever written by an insider about outside the Yankee lines. It is not about home runs and strikeouts, Hall of Fame hitters and knockdown pitchers.
It is about cocky players like Willie Randolph and Thurman Munson, about cheap executives like Gabe Paul and Lee MacPhail, about goofy pitchers such as Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich and drunken bums like Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin. It is about the megalomania of George Steinbrenner and the paranoia of Billy Martin. If a 50 buck ticket gets you a good seat today behind home plate for a look at Roger Clemens at his meanest and Bernie Williams at his finest, just 25 bucks for this book will get you in the movies with Mantle.
Appel described Mantle crying at the filming of "The Last Picture Show," a Peter Bogdanovich study of life in a small Texas town.
"That reminded you of home?" Appel asked the bawling Bomber.
"Hell, we even had a village idiot like that one," said Mantle, the pride of Commerce, Oklahoma.
At 52, at the top of his writing game, Appel can still roll back the years for wonderful anecdotes about the young and the restless among even current Yankees. Willie Randolph came to the Yankees in 1976. He is the third base coach now under Joe Torre and heir apparent to the managerial job if Torre ever gives it up.
Appel describes how the kid from Brooklyn, after 30 big league games with Pittsburgh where he wore uniform number 30, wanted that number with the Yankees. Clubhouse legend Pete Sheehy, who went back in uniforms to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, offered number 34. Mel Stottlemyre had worn number 30 and had been a World Series star in 1964 and team pitching leader for a decade. It had been unused out of respect to Stottlemyre's Yankee standing.
Randolph insisted he didn't know Stottlemyre's name, that no one had the uniform now and that he wore 30 in Pittsburgh and wanted it in New York.
"Give it to him," advised Appel, as any good PR man would.
Take a look at the Yankees as they line up for their next World Series picture. Pitching coach Stottlemyre wears 34 and Randolph still hangs on to 30. Only an insider like Appel could make that kind of gossip breathe.
There was an old sportswriting legend about Ty Cobb. Jack Mann of New York's Newsday was called to write Cobb's obituary when the game's highest average hitter died in 1961.
Mann told his editor, "The only difference now is he is a dead prick."
The line stayed in my head and rose to the surface like a rescued swimmer in 1979 when Yankee catcher Thurman Munson died at age 32 in a plane crash. You could count Munson's friends among the press on one finger.
Appel was his PR man, his pal and his biographer. He wrote a damn good book about Thurman and portrayed him as a misunderstood guy. Father problems, you know. Anyway, Appel became a carrier of the Munson legend through the book and his activities with a charity started in Munson's name.
Appel moderated a memorial tribute to Munson at Yogi's Museum, August 2, 1999, the 20th anniversary of his death, caused in John Kennedy style by flying a plane he really couldn't handle.
Louder cheers are never heard in the Stadium than when Munson's Yankee time is captured on the ball park's huge screen. Appel made it happen. He made Thurman Munson into a lovable guy.
You know what? A tear usually runs down my cheek when I watch the damn thing and I hated the guy. Get inside Appel's book for a hundred laughs and just enough tears.
© 2001 by Maury Allen.
Rating: 5
Summary: Not Just Another Book on the Yankees
Comment: When I bought this book I thought I was in for just a number of inside stories on the Yankees. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the ups and downs of the career of Marty Appel. True, much of the book covers his years with the Yankees as their PR director during the 1970's. He was there for the years when the Yankees played in Shea Stadium in 1974 and 1975 and during the time big trades were made involving Bobby Bonds, Mickey Rivers, and Willie Randolph in addition to the signing of Catfish Hunter. He enjoyed working with George Steinbrenner but did have one particular low moment with George following the publication of a Yankee yearbook which contained photos of players with hair longer than what suited the Boss. Marty took a chance one day to ask clubhouse attendant Pete Sheehy to tell him all about the Babe and Pete provided a revealing secret in four words. After leaving the Yankees with Joe Garagiola Jr. Marty worked at a number of baseball related jobs, some of which proved to be more rewarding than others. One of those jobs was with Topps Chewing Gum, and I believe I found a mistake on pages 294-295 where Marty states that Topps began issuing trading cards in 1950 with All-American football players before they did baseball cards. The All-American football cards he refers to were issued in 1955. Topps first issue of baseball cards came in 1951 with the Topps Red Backs and Topps Blue Backs which were cards designed to be used as a baseball game. The low point was his move to Atlanta to work with the Olympic games that were going to be held there. This move proved to be a mistake, but it was a risk that he took. Interesting advice is given to young readers to never take anything for granted, be a good listener, read everything you can, and respect those you deal with. Marty Appel hit a grand slam home run with this book just as he did with an earlier effort on Michael Kelly entitled Slide, Kelly, Slide and in working with Bowie Kuhn on his book entitled Hardball. His latest effort, Now Pitching for the Yankees,is another first rate job.
Rating: 5
Summary: A smart, sensitive memoir
Comment: Marty Appel served in the Bronx Bombers' public-relations office for nearly nine years, and was the PR director during the tumultuous early George Steinbrenner years (from 1974 to 1977). Appel's "Now Pitching For the Yankees" recalls the turmoil of that period -- and Appel's ability to function under pressure --with wit, a keen eye for detail and sensitivity.
None of the long hours Appel spent at the ballpark, the turmoil he witnessed, or the high-pressure tactics of owner Steinbrenner have dimmed his appreciation for his colleagues and bosses. It comes through in the pages of this warm, often touching memoir.
The boldface names are there -- including Steinbrenner, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson -- along with less-famous but pivotal Yankee characters like clubhouse man Pete Sheehy, team execs Michael Burke and Gabe Paul, and Appel's mentor in public relations, Bob Fishel. (It even mentions the writers: Appel's anecdote about one scribe's losing battle with bladder control in Boston is priceless.)
Appel also reflects on his vibrant post-Yankees career, including a bittersweet period with the Atlanta Olympics and a still-thriving stint as a baseball author (subjects include early baseball star King Kelly, former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and former Yankee captain Thurman Munson).
"Now Pitching for the Yankees" is a good find for anyone who loves baseball, cherishes its history and appreciates the people behind the scenes who make it happen.
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Title: October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish in 1978 by Roger Kahn ISBN: 0151006288 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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