I know that many of you check out BCB first thing in the morning waiting for my posts, and were probably wondering where today's was. Here's what happened. First, I have the flu, and a particularly nasty strain of it. You don't want the grimy details; suffice to say I have been home sick from work for the last two days, the first time I have ever done that.

Second, my computer is sick. I've somehow contracted some malware called, cheekily enough, "MalwareAlarm". I've spent the last two hours trying to remove this stuff, with no success -- if anyone out there has any ideas on how to get rid of this, please let me know. (I really don't want to have to call the Geek Squad!)

All of that is off-topic.

On to Roger Clemens. There's a new headline this morning in the Tribune reporting that Congress may ask the Justice Department to investigate Clemens for making false statements in his testimony a couple of weeks ago.

I'm sure Jonathan Mayo had no idea that Clemens would have taken such a fall from grace when he was researching and writing "Facing Clemens", a compilation of thoughts from a number of hitters, good and great, who faced Roger Clemens over the course of his 24-year career. (I'm assuming that Clemens' playing career is over, even though he is going to be in the Astros' spring camp today, throwing batting practice to Houston minor leaguers, including his son, Koby.)

Anyway, the book goes over in great detail the personal reports by many hitters, from Dave Magadan (included because he faced Clemens in the 1983 College World Series, and of course then often during their respective major league careers), four reports from players facing him in the World Series (Chipper Jones, 1999; Darryl Hamilton, 2000; Luis Gonzalez, 2001; and Juan Pierre, 2003 -- incidentally, the light-hitting Pierre was 8-for-23 lifetime vs. Clemens, .348, with a double and two triples giving him .565 SLG vs. Roger), and from John Drennen, an Indians minor leaguer who faced Clemens in a rehab start that he made in A ball in 2006, and a final chapter from Roger's son Koby, who is in the Astros organization.

It's impossible to read a book like this without thinking of what's happened to Roger Clemens over the last couple of months, his amazing fall from grace. There are a couple of clues in the book, coming in quotes from Cal Ripken Jr. (who hit .257 lifetime vs. Clemens in 109 AB) and Torii Hunter (who never got a hit off him in 28 AB).

From Ripken:

From Torii Hunter, after Clemens got him again in the 2002 playoffs:

I don't think either of those statements were intended as accusations, and I'm sure Jonathan Mayo didn't put them in the book to cause them to be so -- but to me, they stood out. If one solid major league regular and one Hall of Famer were questioning how Roger Clemens could throw harder as he got older, how many others might have been asking themselves but not been quoted anywhere?

It's too bad, really, that a book like this can't be viewed on its own merits, and it has many -- there's detailed analysis by several of these hitters of game situations, how they approached Clemens as the intimidating presence he often had on the mound, etc. Unfortunately, with the cloud surrounding Clemens at this time, everything in his later career years has to be viewed with something of a taint. The book, in any case, is well worth reading, both for those merits and to get more perspective on the current situation.

I have invited Jonathan Mayo, once this review is posted, to post a diary responding to some of these concerns. When he does I'll move that diary to the front page.

If you are younger than 35 or so, then most likely all you know of Steve Goodman is his anthemic "Go Cubs Go", which was originally written for WGN radio (more on this later), and is now played over the PA system at Wrigley Field every time the Cubs win.

Every single one of you (no matter what your age) should read this book, and then go out and buy some Steve Goodman music, because this man was so much more -- although his Cub fandom was a very big part of what made him the man he was.

Where do I begin to review a 729-page biography? Clay Eals, a writer from Seattle (who comes by his Chicago chops honestly; his daughter lives in Chicago), has lovingly and comprehensively written the story of a man who many of us who came of age in the 70's and 80's loved for his music and his frenetic performing style and his love of the Cubs and the fact that he just seemed, well, so "Chicago".

The book takes him, in great detail, from his childhood in Albany Park to the move made by his family, as so many did in the early 1960's, to the suburbs. There his life intersected with a blonde-haired female classmate at Maine East High School who went on to become fairly well-known herself -- Hillary Rodham. We also find out about his first tentative moves to become a musician (to the horror of his parents, who wanted him to be a doctor at first -- how common a story is that? -- but later they became his biggest fans, and one of Goodman's most hauntingly beautiful songs, "My Old Man", is written in tribute to his dad), to his becoming well-known through Arlo Guthrie's iconic recording of Steve's "City of New Orleans" (and also, how John Denver nearly became famous for this song and why it's good that he didn't), to his 15-year battle with leukemia that finally took him, sadly, four days before the Cubs clinched the NL East in 1984.

I was also reminded, often, how those of us who grew up in the Chicago area in the 60's and 70's had so many shared common experiences, and how my life nearly intersected with Steve's on a number of occasions -- his first Chicago apartment was two blocks from where I now live; his father, after a divorce, married a woman whose son I attended high school with; and Steve worked on several occasions with people in the TV business with whom I worked years ago, and at least one who works with me now. The places he played at most -- the Earl of Old Town and Somebody Else's Troubles (named after another one of Steve's songs) -- were places I frequented in the 70's and early 80's.

Steve moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to try to revive a recording career that had flagged (during his life, none of his albums ever sold more than 50,000 copies; his popularity soared after his death, when his family cheerfully accepted three Grammys given for his songs), but even then, kept his Chicago connection. It was then that he wrote "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request", a song that got him briefly banned from Wrigley Field by Dallas Green, who felt that the song glorified the "lovable loser" image that Green was trying to shed. Green was right about that, but wrong about the song: it didn't glorify lovable losing, but lamented it. Goodman got back into the good graces of Green and the Cubs thanks to WGN program director Dan Fabian, who in early 1984 was looking for an intro song to replace the then-dated "It's A Beautiful Day For A Ballgame". After hearing Steve interviewed by Roy Leonard (one of Goodman's longtime champions on local radio), he asked him to write a song... and "Go Cubs Go" (which Lou Piniella charmingly called "Go Cubs Win" last year) was the result. Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote this blog entry last September that tells more of this part of the story. From the book, here's a quote from John McDonough that shows how he knew Steve's "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" spoke to the soul of the Cubs fan:

I could go on and on and on -- this book took the better part of a week to finish, and I enjoyed every single minute of it. Clay Eals posted five diaries here at BCB asking for help in finding certain information and photographs to use in the book, and at least one regular poster here is given credit (among the more than 1,000 people who Eals gives recognition for assisting; Sen. Clinton, in fact, is noted as going "above and beyond the call" in helping out). Eals even acknowledges that in a book of this scope, there would likely be some minor errors (I found a couple of nitpicks, including the misidentification of WBBM-Channel 2 as Chicago's "ABC" affiliate) -- and on Eals' website he helpfully posts corrections and asks readers to send him more, for the second edition of the book that will come out sometime this year. All of that is what makes this book what it is -- a celebration of a life truly lived. Steve Goodman lived only thirty-six years, but crammed what seemed to be several lifetimes into those years. I saw him play only once -- at one of those Park West shows in the late '70s -- but man, what a performer. He knew exactly how to work a crowd, and in addition to his Chicago-themed songs ("Lincoln Park Pirates", "Daley's Gone"), his songs spoke -- and still do -- to the human condition. More than thirty years later, they stand up well, and the best tribute to Steve is that after all this time, people are still recording his music. The book also includes a CD that has songs written in honor of Steve by other artists and also some audio clips from radio interviews he did in the '70s.

This passage -- not even from the main body of the book; it was a sidenote (Eals helpfully puts footnotes on the margins of each page), I think sums up who and what Steve Goodman was (and you'll pardon the profanity, but that, too, was part of him):

That's who Steve Goodman was -- a man of great talent who loved life, and lived it to the fullest in the short time he was granted on Earth. Get this book and celebrate along with him and his many friends and family who contributed to this tour de force.

While we all wait for a move, any move, by the Cubs, I have spent some time reading the large pile of unread books that I never had time for during the season.

A couple of you already have Glenn Stout's "The Cubs", winning it as a prize in a BCB contest. One more BCB reader will win one in our "Free Agent Frenzy" contest. Incidentally, I haven't yet decided what to do with the numbers you have all assigned to Barry Bonds in that contest. It seems likely that Bonds' career is over, but you never know.

Anyway, about "The Cubs": Glenn Stout is an avowed Red Sox fan. For that, he can certainly be forgiven; his first work of this type was a history of his own favorite team, and as you can see in the link above, he has also authored histories of the Yankees and Dodgers.

"The Cubs" is a big, thick book. It's 480 pages in hardcover, but the paperback edition that the publisher sent me to use as prizes in BCB contests is even longer. It's a definitive history of the franchise, dating back even before the National League began in 1876. We all know that the Cubs are the only major league franchise to stay in the same city since the NL began that year; but Stout shows that there's an unbroken chain that goes back to the beginning of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871.

Every bit of club history is covered in great detail -- from the great clubs of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, to the failures of the College of Coaches (Stout pulls no punches in reminding us how utterly inept that was). Both great and not-so-great players are profiled, so that you get a real flavor of how the history of the Cubs has been made. There are photos you have seen -- Three-Finger Brown's hand, and the "Homer in the Gloamin'" photo -- and many you likely haven't, as there were many photos in this book that I had never seen before.

A lot of you are in your 20's and 30's and grew up with the Ryne Sandberg era Cubs as your first Cub memories. If you're in that group, this book is a great introduction to many eras in Cubs history that you may not have been aware of; beyond that, for a Cub fan of any age, it covers everything, and is painstakingly researched and well written. The stereotypical thing to say here is that it's a "great Hanukkah or Christmas gift", but that really is true. If you don't get it, buy it for yourself.

"First Class Citizenship" is a collection of letters written both by and to Jackie Robinson from 1947 until his untimely death in 1972. But that statement barely scratches the surface of how astonishing this collection is. Edited by Michael B. Long, assistant professor of religious studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, it's subtitled "The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson", and Long, in a preface, tells how he stumbled upon these letters:

Long continues: Long wrote to Robinson's widow, Rachel, to ask permission to compile the letters into a book, which she graciously granted. They include: Without making any comment about the political positions taken (Robinson himself stated in many of these letters that he considered himself neither a Democrat nor a Republican, voted for the individual, and for example, supported Nixon enthusiastically for president in 1960 but by 1968 was a staunch opponent of his) -- this book is a treasure trove of the history of the civil rights movement seen through the eyes of someone who played a pivotal role in it. The letters show him as a complicated man, far different than the way I had perceived him from simply knowing of his performance on the baseball diamond. "First Class Citizenship" is also well worth your time. Don't miss it.

When I was at the Michael Barrett event last weekend, I overheard someone say something that was both incredibly optimistic and an incredibly sad truth about us as Cubs fans:

"In the entire history of baseball, the Cubs always have won in '07 and '08."

Well, let's hope that bears out to be true this century, as well as it was the last.

Which brings me to this post, a review of Cait Murphy's "Crazy '08", the chronicle of the 1908 season, as we all know, the last one in which a Cubs team won the World Series, and the year that Murphy rightfully and correctly calls the greatest season in baseball history.

It was, really and truly, exactly that. And 99 years later, it still is. The pennant races in both leagues came down to the final day of the season -- with three teams in each league having a shot at the title, the Cubs, Giants and Pirates in the NL, the White Sox, Tigers and Indians in the AL. And, of course, the Cubs only got there because of the famous "Merkle Game", arguably the most significant regular season game in the history of baseball (you can read more at the above link and also in the BCB top 100 profile of Johnny Evers), which Murphy describes in vivid detail. Had the Giants been given the victory in that game -- and there was ample precedent in baseball history that says they should have been, though rules and customs all changed afterwards -- we'd now be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the last Cubs title this year, in 2007.

While there's far more to "Crazy '08" than the Cubs, our favorite team is given extensive portions of this book, naturally so as they were not only the champions of that year, but in a run where they won four out of five pennants from 1906-1910 (and set a record that still stands in 1909, when they won 104 games and finished second to the Pirates, who won 110). Murphy describes those Cubs this way:

A lesson that could, perhaps, be learned by the Cubs of our own day.

The book is more, though, than just a chronicle of the 1908 season. We are introduced to the biggest stars, the biggest names, of the era: John McGraw, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Tinker & Evers & Chance, Christy Mathewson, Rube Marquard, Ed Walsh, Napoleon Lajoie (nearly forgotten today, but so loved by the fans in Cleveland that the team became, for a time, nicknamed the "Naps" -- and just as we might today, when the Indians performed a late season fold, the fans -- also called "bugs" or "cranks" in those days -- began calling them the "Napkins") and others.

That's the sort of color that makes "Crazy '08" so fascinating and readable. Murphy intersperses descriptions of the unfolding of the season, with stories of other events that went on in that era, the stories that help us to understand why and how baseball absolutely captured the country in those days -- at one point, the replay of the "Merkle Game" brought the business of the Democratic National Committee, busily running a presidential campaign, to a complete halt -- with mini-chapters entitled "Time-Out", describing what the city of Chicago was like in those days outside of the baseball arena, stories of serial killers and anarchists, giving the reader of 100 years on a real flavor of what life in 1908 was like.

I enjoyed this book immensely and learned quite a few things I hadn't known before, including an entire list of superstitions of the era. Example: the Cubs, for good luck, wore their gray road uniforms for the first home game of the 1907 World Series. Why? Because they had lost three home games in 1906, and thought this would change their luck. Luck or not, it worked: the '07 Cubs didn't lose a World Series game, winning 4-0 with one tie. "Crazy '08" is not only fun, but brings to life an era in baseball and American history that is nearly forgotten today. Highly recommended.

This breezy little book was released just before the season started by the editors of The Heckler.

If you don't know what The Heckler is, you'll see it in and around the Wrigleyville area and the ballpark; it's a free newspaper containing humorous articles like this one titled "Cubs Cut Bullpen", in which Jim Hendry releases everyone in the pen because the starters have done so well, and:

The book is a fleshed-out version of how the paper's twenty- and thirty-something writers view the Cubs and Cubs fans, with chapters entitled "If Not Soriano, Beer Will Make It Better", "It's Not Over until You're Mathematically Eliminated", and "The Power of Low Expectations". You'll find spot-on caricatures of the "Wrigley Kid" (looks eerily like Mark with cotton candy in his hand), the "Bleacher Bum" (looks absolutely nothing like me), the famous (or infamous) "Lincoln Park Trixie", and the "Skybox Guest"; and two appendices, "15 Habits of Highly Happy Cubs Fans", and "A Century of Losing: 100 Years, 100 Frustrations", which combined are longer than the official chapters. The latter appendix includes just about everything that we'd all remember as lowlights in Cub history, everything from losing the 1906 World Series to the White Sox, to Leon Durham's error in the 1984 NLCS, to the acquisition of Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock in 1964, and fan-centric things like Jeff Gordon ("Wrigley Stadium") and Ozzy Osbourne singing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game", and even the dreaded Virtual Waiting Room.

And I was most surprised when I turned to page 77 and found a photo of my friends Holly and Linda, taken at the game in New York in 1997 when the Cubs finally broke their 0-14 start that year. But guys -- you didn't know this, but neither of them "traveled all the way to New York's Shea Stadium" to go to the doubleheader that day, unless you count a trip on the NYC subways as "traveling", because both of them lived in the NYC area then.

This book's just fun. Unlike the Heckler, which is free -- and they have to print "FREE -- DO NOT BUY FROM STREET FOLKS" on the front page, because a lot of those street folks were taking stacks of them out of the street boxes and trying to sell them for $1 each -- you will have to shell out $12.95 for "The Cubs Fan's Guide To Happiness". Worth it, I think, for the laughs we all need as Cubs fans.

So.

It's Tuesday. Anything interesting happen yesterday?

While you're all stewing and mulling and pondering and hyperventilating over the impending sale of Tribune Company, and what it means to the Cubs and whether Wrigley Field will be included in the Cubs sale (and I cannot imagine any prospective owner NOT wanting the ballpark, too), I wanted to tell you about a book I've recently read, which I highly recommend and which will give you, or ought to, a new perspective on your life.

"In An Instant" is the story of Bob Woodruff, the ABC News reporter and anchor who was seriously wounded while reporting in Iraq.

I feel an affinity toward him and his wife, Lee, who co-wrote the book, not just because I also work at ABC, but because both of them attended my school, Colgate University, though after I had graduated. The book is written in "segments", almost like a diary written by both of them as a conversation or journal, describing not only how he was wounded and recovered, but also how they got to that point in both their lives.

The recovery itself was nothing short of miraculous -- half of Woodruff's skull was destroyed by the bomb blast and had to be reconstructed, and he is lucky to be alive. Lee Woodruff tells of how she had to tell her kids, and the rest of her family, and how they all pulled together. While it is true that, because he is a journalist and thus has access to resources that others perhaps wouldn't, the story is still one of survival, of doubts, of highs and lows, that anyone in such a situation would go through. It's a story of love too, not just Lee and Bob, but their entire family and how their faith in each other and in their doctors helped bring him back to where he could return to work at nearly full capacity, though his rehab continues even today.

One very good thing that came out of this event, was that Bob Woodruff was able, through his position as a reporter, to help bring attention to the plight of soldiers who don't have the resources he had, and also the current troubles in VA hospitals around the country. His family has also started the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury, which will help to assist members of the military who have suffered brain injuries.

I'm not sure I've really managed to capture how much I was touched by reading his story, an amazing tale of survival and renewal. It's a story of love and family and hope, and well worth reading. In the summer of 2008, I'll be attending my 30-year college reunion (gulp! how could it have been that long?), which I have learned will be Bob Woodruff's 25th. I hope to meet him then and shake his hand -- I admire him and his wife greatly.

Read this book. Well worth your time.

Baseball statheads of the world, rejoice. Here is a book just for you.

"Behind-the-Scenes Baseball" is written by Doug Decatur, who has been a stat consultant for several teams, including the Cubs, over the last fifteen years.

As most of you know, statistical analysis isn't my thing. That's not to say I don't know what OPS, the Pythagorean Formula, the Law of Competitive Balance, etc. are, because I have read all of Bill James' books. One of the things that people forget, since James has been out of the business of writing baseball annuals for more than a decade, is that James is a wonderful writer in addition to being a wonderful statistician, and is able to thus explain his statistical formulas so well. That, to me, is the primary reason that sabermetrics found such a wide audience -- not strictly because they make sense, which they do, but because James was able to explain WHY they make sense.

The book is divided into three sections. The first contains some anecdotes about Decatur's attempts to get into baseball, and then his life within the game, which at times resulted in his statistical methods having goofy effects on ballclubs. Consider, for example, this story he tells about the woeful 1994 Cubs, and in particular, pitching coach Moe Drabowsky:

There are other funny stories -- including another one about Bautista that you should get the book to read, and the final section of the book is a look at the 36-10 run that the Astros made in 2004, leading them to the playoffs over the Cubs. I'm sure I don't need to remind you how that happened, but Decatur makes a point of mentioning how the Steve Stone incidents began, as Stone kept saying each time the Cubs lost one of those late-August games at Wrigley Field to the Astros, "all the Cubs needed was to win one of those games", and they might have put the Astros away, which led to all the Dusty Baker-inspired comments about how "negative" Stone had been. This is a good reminder of where and by whom the germination of the seed of Stone's departure was planted, and perhaps with the sea changes going on in the Cubs' front office and on the field now, perhaps the way is also being paved for Stone's return.

The middle section of the book is titled "The GM IQ Test", and it contains multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and essay-style questions that, in theory, will tell you how "in tune" with the way modern-day GM's think. Decatur says that he gave this test to Astros manager Phil Garner, and Garner scored 97%. Many of the questions are answered by studies done in various Bill James books, or by Baseball Prospectus.

I took it -- and didn't cheat -- and scored 72%, which I thought was pretty good, considering, as I've said, that stat stuff really isn't my thing. According to the scoring scale, 70-80% makes you a "Major League Coach" (Over 90 is a GM, 80-90 a major league manager, 60-70 a minor league manager. Read the book to find out what you are if you score less than 60%!). I'd love to put this test to Jim Hendry.

This is an entertaining read, and reminds us that while statistical analysis is key to putting together a winning team in modern baseball, that baseball is still a game and a business played and managed by human beings who also have to get along with each other -- as shown in the Bautista anecdote above. Fun and enjoyable, a good off-season book.

Albert G. Spalding, the founder of this company more than 100 years ago, was also a major league baseball player, an executive, and a self-titled impresario who, 117 winters ago, arranged a grand "World Tour" of baseball players, which was supposed to bring what was rapidly becoming the USA's national game around the world, to introduce it to Asia, Australia and Europe.

Most of you probably know the name "Spalding" only from the sporting goods company that manufactures all kinds of balls and other sporting equipment. Incidentally, the company website incorrectly identifies Spalding as a "Boston Red Stockings pitcher" when the company was founded in 1876. Spalding did pitch for Boston in the old National Association from 1871-1875, but in 1876 he joined the new NL with the Chicago franchise, the one we now follow as the Cubs, and remained there for decades. Spalding was a native of Byron, near Rockford, and the book begins with a narrative of his life growing up there.

You have to understand the context of the times to understand how incredible this tour was. Today, we think nothing of hopping on a plane and traveling to Europe or Asia; hordes of Japanese tourists descend on the USA at all times of the year, and the world really has become a small place.

In the winter of 1888, tourism as we now know it was a very new thing. Most people did not have the means nor the desire to see foreign places; those who immigrated from, say, Europe to America, did so because they wanted to LEAVE those places and never return. In fact, my dad once told me this story... in the early 1950's, when he and a friend wanted to travel to Europe, his grandfather (my great-grandfather) worried about him, wondered why he wanted to go there, thought it was a dangerous place... because that was his experience.

But Spalding saw an opportunity, and so he took his own team -- then called the Chicago White Stockings, but that is the same franchise we now know as our own Cubs, and an All-Star team of players from other National League teams (called the All-Americas), and set out to tour the world in October 1888.

Now, the Chicago National League Ball Club (as the team is still known corporately) was then a powerhouse in baseball. It had won five NL pennants from 1880-1886, was headed by Hall of Famer Adrian "Cap" Anson, and with Spalding (who had pitched for and managed the club in the 1870's), were seen as the premier franchise in the game (as you no doubt know, it is the only MLB franchise to operate continuously in the same city since 1876).

They set out to tour the US, heading west to San Francisco, playing games along the way, then sailed to Hawaii, Australia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, Italy, France, England and Ireland, before returning to New York six months later, to a heroes' welcome:

The book is both a fun read (you'll be amused at some of the pranks that the players pulled along the way -- some things never change!) and an important one, talking about the brewing player-owner labor war that eventually resulted in the short-lived 1890 Players' League, headed by John Montgomery Ward, who was sort of the Tony LaRussa of his day, a player, manager, executive and attorney.

I'd highly recommend this book if only because sometimes we forget that professional baseball has indeed been around for 130 years, and it was a big deal even back then, and some stories, like this one, deserve to be remembered. The fact that it's well-researched and written is a bonus.

With a Cub World Series appearance seemingly farther away than ever these days, I thought it might be fun to read, and share with you, "When Chicago Ruled Baseball", a book about the 1906 Cubs/White Sox World Series, still the only one played entirely within the city limits.

It's written by Bernard Weisberger, a local historian of note. I first found out about this book when Weisberger appeared to talk about it on our ABC-7 Sunday morning show a few weeks ago, and joked that he was probably the oldest guest to ever appear on the show.

It is a sobering thought to realize that, too. Bernard Weisberger is 82 years old. And that means he was born seventeen years after that all-Chicago series, and fifteen years after the Cubs' last World Championship.

<sigh>

The book does a nice job of painting the scene for a fan of 100 years later -- Weisberger gives descriptions of what the city, state and country were like, what it was like to live everyday life in Chicago during that era, and what it was like being a baseball fan. Neither team, of course, played in the parks they inhabit now. The Cubs weren't even the "North Siders" -- they played at West Side Grounds, located in the area where Stroger Hospital currently stands. (Incidentally, in the current Cubs magazine "Vine Line", there is an article about a man who wants to have a historic marker placed on the site of West Side Grounds. Disclaimer: no one from Tribune Co. or the Cubs has asked me to make this plug, nor have I received any compensation for it.)

And, the White Sox, though they played on the South Side, were located in a ramshackle wooden park at 39th & Princeton. They were four years away from moving to the original Comiskey Park. The book details, in fact, the reason that the White Sox are the "South Siders". When the upstart Western League became the American League in 1900, trying to encroach on existing major league markets, an agreement was reached that no legal action would be taken as long as the new franchise would locate itself no further north than 35th Street -- where they reside to this day.

The book goes through each game of the 1906 World Series, detailing the play as well as how the fans approached it. Attendance seems low (the largest crowd was 23,257, small by today's standards, and some of them were as low as 12,000), until you realize the poor conditions of the ballpark, hear about the absolutely miserable weather they had in October 1906, and finally, the fact that counting attendance was a much more casual operation than it is today. At one point, an outer wooden wall at the White Sox' park was completely knocked down by fans trying to get into the park -- and some of them likely did, too, without paying.

And you think crowds today are tough.

One of the things that bothers me most about books about a specific historic event like this is that they rarely tell you about the aftermath. Weisberger, to his credit, does a really good job at this, devoting an entire chapter of the book to the Cubs and White Sox players and where they wound up after the 1906 Series -- many of them to disease and early death, most of them working very ordinary jobs where their baseball fame had long faded, and some (catcher Johnny Kling the prime example) who became quite wealthy.

This is an easy read, an enjoyable slice of baseball history, and yes, it makes you long for a repeat performance. It's not likely going to happen this year, the 100th anniversary of the Cubs/White Sox' only World Series.

But we can dream, can't we?

copyright 1973, universal press syndicate

That's what Barry Bonds is. Guilty! Guilty, guilty, guilty!!

It's so clear (and not "The Clear", one of the "designer steroids" Bonds took as described in the book) that I cannot imagine anyone who's read this book -- and I highly recommend this to all of you, because Bonds is, for better or worse, going to be very much in the news in 2006, having hit his 711th HR yesterday, and also since he is now under investigation for possible perjury charges, in that he is thought to have possibly lied to the original grand jury investigating the BALCO steroid scandal.

There are a lot of subplots in this exhaustively-investigated book. First, we learn a bit about Barry Bonds and how he grew up, the pampered son of a major league player, the only black kid in his neighborhood, and how that shaped him as he was growing up -- as the most talented athlete in his high school, and also at Arizona State. There is a telling passage about his time there that foretells some of the ways in which Bonds has acted since he became a major league player:

I think you can see here the germ of some of Dusty Baker's managerial techniques -- remember, his first year as a manager was Bonds' first year as a Giant, and the ego (of Bonds, that is) couldn't have gotten smaller by then.

Bonds apparently got the idea to begin taking steroids during the 1998 HR chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire; he felt he -- not they -- was the best all-around player in baseball and couldn't stand it that they were getting all the adulation. He told his then-girlfriend that "the powers that be wouldn't let Sosa win it, that they wanted the white guy to have the record."

I'm not making this stuff up, so please don't think I am being a racist here, since I am not. All of this is well-documented in the book.

There's a lot more, and the book goes into great detail about how BALCO was formed by Victor Conte. You may have seen Conte's self-serving interview on 20/20 after this all broke into the open; what I did not know is that Conte was a self-made man, a street-hustler type who was once a member of the Bay Area funk band Tower of Power. Fascinating character study.

The book names quite a few baseball names, most of which are now public, and also goes into detail on how BALCO provided steroids to various Olympic athletes, including Kelli White and Marion Jones, and how there was a race against time to "clean up" some 2004 Olympians so that the entire USA track team wouldn't be disqualified, since Olympic testing standards are much more stringent than those in baseball.

Barry Bonds is a very sad, sad case. He IS a tremendously talented baseball player -- or at least has been; you can tell that his knees are just about shot and he may be trying to hang on just long enough to hit HR #715, so he can have the most for any left-handed hitter -- and was a Hall of Fame player even BEFORE his fateful 1998 decision to do steroids. He is NOT a very nice human being, which is too bad; had be been so, he'd surely have been the most admired athlete of his generation.

Instead, he is mostly reviled, except, apparently, by Giants fans, who don't seem to care about any of this if he helps their team win. I cannot say how I'd feel if he were a Cub; I can only say I'm glad he's not, so I don't have to make that decision. It is instructive to note that when this book was released and excerpts published in Sports Illustrated, Bonds' public statements didn't deny any of the allegations in the book -- all he did was criticize the reporters for supposedly leaking sealed grand jury transcripts.

The current investigation should worry Barry Bonds. The book details a similar investigation into NBA star Chris Webber, and notes that Webber only avoided jail time

There's also the possibility the feds will come after Bonds for tax evasion. The book details how he bought a house for his girlfriend in Arizona, paid for with cash he got for signing autographs at card shows (and further, he got her around the federal cash-reporting requirements by asking her to deposit the money in her accounts in amounts less than the $10,000 that would trigger those reports)... and didn't report this money to the IRS. Tax evasion is the reason Pete Rose spent time in federal prison.

This is an important book, and the story told within is not over. All of you should read it.

And my personal opinion is -- I absolutely hate the adulation that ESPN is currently giving to Barry Bonds; he's probably hit about 100 more HR than he would have with a "normal" career progression, and it is my hope that he never, ever hits another one.