Day 21: 30 baseball books in 30 days of April
The book: "An American Journey: My Life on the Field, in the Air, and on the Air"
The author: Jerry Coleman, with Richard Goldstein (and a forward by George Will)
How to find it: Triumph Books, 224 pages, $24.95.
Where we'd go looking for it: At the publisher's home website, as well as Powell's online bookstore .
The scoop: Jerry Coleman has always been one of our favorite guys in baseball, and if you're only aware of him by his Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster with the San Diego Padres since 1972 (he also did two years prior to that with the Angels), then it's time to catch up.
As the cover indicates, he's proud of his time in Marines during World War II and the Korean Conflict -- the only big-league player to serve in combat during both those wars as a dive-bomber and fighter-attack pilot, which interrupted his career as an All-Star second baseman with the Yankees (1949-57, a career that nearly spanned the entire career of Jackie Robinson's playing days with the rival Brooklyn Dodgers). Trivia: Coleman also wore No. 42.
A former Rookie of the Year (by the Associated Press) and World Series MVP with players such as Mantle, Berra and Ford, Coleman was hardly the one who stood out.
In the first chapter, entitled "A Bittersweet Day," he recalls coming back to the Yankees in Sept., 1953 after serving in Korea, feeling very awkward about having a day in his honor after so many of his friends would never get that opportunity for doing what they felt was right for their country.
"I always hated this idea I was a hero, something that was written very casually about my service as a pilot in two wars. I'm indebted to Red Barber, one baseball's broadcasting pioneers and a magnificent professional who taught me a lot when I became his broadcast partner on Yankees games in 1960s. But I still remember how he always wanted to lean on 'the heroic Coleman.' On a TV program one time, I said, 'Red you ask me a question about the military, I'm going to leave.' My god, he did. I hated that."
The book, with the help of the New York Times' Goldstein (who has written about sports and the military), also gives Coleman a chance to talk about that one crazy year -- 1980 -- when he was asked to come out of the broadcast booth to manage the Padres through a miserable 73-89 season, worst in the NL West. The players wouldn't listen to him, still thought of him as the broadcaster, and it wasn't until later that more teams considered former broadcasters to be their managers.
In an interview earlier this month with the North County Times, the 83-year-old Coleman is as modest about the book as he is about his life. "Only two things are important in life: the people whom you love and who love you, and your country. Where else can you go from nothing to something, and everyone has the same chance?"
How it goes down in the scorebook: Classic Coleman, even better than: "Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall -- and it rolls off! It's rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres."
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