When the Cheering Stops: Ex-Major Leaguers Talk About Their Game and Their Lives

First-person accounts of baseball stars reveal the hard times that many professional players went through when they could no longer play the game they adored

The 22 baseball players whose autobiographical sketches make up this unimpressive volume played in the big leagues before the era of the superstars. Names such as Clem Labine, Dale Long, Elroy Face will be recognizable to fans of the game from the late '40s through the '60s. The title's implication that the players concentrate here on their post-baseball adjustments to life is misleading: most discuss their playing careers at length and append only a few paragraphs abut what they did after the cheering stopped. The majority had made few plans about what they would do and found the transition difficult, but managed to survive and, in some cases, to achieve success in other fields, ranging from college coaching to carpentry. These firsthand reports of baseball as played when the rules of the game were the same but the "structure of the sport" was very different are likely to generate interest but little enthusiasm. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Baseball's preseason should welcome two books of diamond memories. Along with fellow fans Dave Weiner and Bill Gutman, Heiman offers reflections by nearly two dozen former players on their playing and later lives. Such stars as Bobby Thomson and Mel Parnell join less famed J.W. Porter and Bob Hazle and others in stories of mingled achievement and disappointment--particularly at careers' end. More detailed than John Devaney's Where Are They Today ? (LJ 5/1/85), this is an appealing, often poignant view of post-career adjustment. Mead's close appraisal vividly contrasts 1930 with 1968, when the ball was deadened. Collective hitting highs led by Babe Ruth and Hack Wilson mounted an assault on pitching, while 1968 saw the reversal as Denny McLain and Bob Gibson set pitching landmarks and hitting drooped. Mead weaves nostalgic tales of the seasons to rival David Halberstam's Summer of '49 ( LJ 5/1/89) and Maury Allen's After the Miracle ( LJ 4/1/89).
- Morey Berger, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.