Summer reading: Take a stance

Harkening back to last April and the 30 baseball book reviews in 30 days (linked here), more light to heavyweight reading before the summer gloom burns off:

The book: "Batting Stance Guy: A Love Letter to Baseball"

The pitch:

"Ladies and gentleman, I offer you the least marketable skill in America ... welcome," it says on Ryness' website (linked here).

The 21st century Max Patkin, a performance artist/mime who exaggerates the batting stances of current and former players for the enjoyment of the fans, says he never intended to have a book come out on his abilities to make people laugh.

Instead, as he started writing it, it came necessary to add the subtitle, about it being his "love letter to baseball," something much like Josh Wilker did with his recently successful book, "Cardboad Gods."

"I truly would have never come up with this (book), and I know my high school teachers wouldn't have encouraged it," Ryness told us. "All the backyard videos were just a joke to show buddies back in Boston I could immitate players they liked on the Red Sox. Then (ESPN.com columnist) Bill Simmons wrote something, we got on the front page of YouTube ... A book agent who saw a piece on me in the New York Times (March, 2009) thought there's be something in the marketplace for a book less than $20 that's fun and nostalgic about baseball from a fan. Honestly, we'd have never approached a publisher about this."

Ryness gives the illusion that he can making a living off this hobby, enough to support a wife and two daughters in the Los Feliz area of L.A. (near Dodger Stadium). But really, he just works it in around all the other things he does to put food on the table -- including coaching his daughter's soccer team.

"I have a lot of screenwriter friends in L.A. -- who doesn't? -- and they have such a weight and burden on their heads. They say, 'A rewrite is due on Sunday and I hate the main character ...' So when I got this bok started, I just started to write, but I didn't want to have deadlines stopping me. So I started and I just didn't stop. Every night. Until 3 in the morning. I gained about 25 pounds eating Twix and drinking cherry Coke. But it was a blast.

"The book really isn't about show me doing '50 wacky player stances!' It's really more of my love letter to the game and how emotionally gratifying that process has been. You often kind of bury some of your youth because, otherwise, you can't be functional playing Comodor 64 game every day. But this has been the most absolute fun three years of my life.

"And of everyone in my family, I'm the big baseball fan. My bother has been on Broadway, my sister is a story-board artists for films and my other sister is a singer and talent agent. I have the least marketable skills, and I'm the oldest. But now I'm hanging out with artists in L.A. and people are asking, 'Are you a professional dancer?' because of the videos.

"I mean, this thing was so ghetto backyard, with no thought to it, I figured once it hit the Internet ... never in my wildest drams did I know this would happen."

Or that he'd get letters of thanks from George Will, Supreme Court justices Sotamayor and Alito, a text message from Jenny Finch, and a note of thanks from Mark Simons, the researcher for ESPN's "Baseball Tonight."

Ryness, a Bay Area native, really has produced a book that, to our cynical amazement, made us smile.

He celebrates it with what he does best. Acting it out. Then giving his take on each team's ballpark that he's visited.

On Anaheim's Angel Stadium (after he breaks down Rod Carew's stance): "I don't think Angels fans live in fear the way other fans do. They're just happy to be there. Life is good. It's sunny. It's a beautiful day, and when the game's over, they'll get back in their monster trucks and head back out to the beach for a late-night bonfire with their loved ones. It's not like they don't care. It's just that they're a lot happier than other fans."

On Dodger Stadium (after his imitation of Ron Cey, and recreating the Kirk Gibson-Dennis Eckersley at bat from Game 1 of the '88 World Series): "I currently live in the shadow of Chavez Ravine. If Los Angeles were New York, I'd walk to Dodger games. But L.A. is L.A. and we love our cars so I always drive .. Don't let the empty seats fool you: Dodger fans are hard-core. Go spend a few innings in the cheap seats and you'll see ... If tattoos, especially tattoos on the neck and face, are the measure of loyalty to a team, then the Dodgers have a lock on dedication."

Ryness also adds: "We often brush off what we see in front of us. We sometimes forget to absorb what's going on around us. Think of this book as a magnifying glass. A (hopefully) moderately humorous magnifying glass aimed directly as baseball and its cavalcade of personalities."

How it goes down in the scorebook:

"I'm not a baseball expert or any authority with any kind of credentials other than my unfettered love of the game," Ryness writes in the first chapter. "I hope that this book site somewhere on the shelf between a Bill James abstract and the ramblings of a madman. I hopes it makes you laugh, but more important, I hope it makes you take a deeper look at the game I -- and most likely you -- love."

So that's where it'll go.

And coming Sunday: Ryness participates in a discussion about how Wiffle ball fits into the world order these days.