Starred review in Publisher's Weekly

"Alternating between a season on the road with his 12-year-old son's travelling baseball team and the improvised pick-up games of his own Florida childhood, first-time author Jacobs distills the experience of youth baseball into a handful of slim chapters as supple and expansive as good short stories. A long-time journalist, Jacobs deploys a reporter's efficiency and eye for detail in the service of a wide range of ideas--baseball as home and healer, punishment and addiction, mistress and terrorist cell--but resists the temptation to follow any one metaphor down the rabbit hole. Instead, he sticks to the action, following the 2004 Decatur Hills Bulls through the PONY league tournament, parsing the nuances of joint pain, and negotiating outside obligations (his son's and his own); intriguing vignettes from the author's childhood give the proceedings heft and purpose: 'How did youth baseball evolve from sandlot games to weekend tournaments that require the logistics of a Special Forces operation?' A chronicle sure to resonate with any parent involved in youth sports, and illuminate its joys and frustrations for any parent who isn't, Jacobs's narrative takes hold in the mind much like the game itself." (Aug.)

http://publishersweekly.com/pw/reviews/web-exclusive/index.html?page=2

Boys of Summer Reading

Creative Loafing blogger Marc Schultz wrote about the book and the Georgia Center for the Book event tomorrow (Tuesday, 7:15pm, Decatur Library). Marc was a nonstarting rightfielder in youth baseball who liked to talk about the game more than play it. Probably more writers, poets and junior officers in the diplomatic corps were nonstarting rightfielders than any other position. Oh yeah... Did I mention that I'm buying a round at the Corner Pub afterwards?

http://clatl.com/culturesurfing/archives/2010/08/09/the-boys-of-summer-reading

from Bill's Book Blog

From Bill's blog at the Georgia Center for the Books.

Hitting a home run

Way back when, Atlanta Braves’ fans like me entertained ourselves mostly by listening to a pair of announcers named Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren talk over and around an often-pitiful major league baseball team. The team stumbled, but the announcers were classy. They knew baseball, they shared their insights, and they were just plain fun to hear, a lot more fun than the frequent mishaps on the field.

We’ve lost Skip, sadly, but we have now a reminiscence by Pete about the 33 years he spent behind the microphone, cleverly titled Of Mikes and Men, written with a terrific veteran Atlanta journalist, Jack Wilkinson. Pete and Jack will join us at the Georgia Center for the book on Tuesday evening, August 10, to talk about the book. You’ll love the stories, the behind-the-scenes peeks –including even more reasons to admire Dale Murphy — and the opportunity to hear Pete’s wonderful voice behind a mike once again.

Pete’s not alone that evening, either; we’re also bringing in Dave Cohen, another popular broadcaster (the voice of the Georgia State Panthers) and Hal Jacobs, a Decaturite whom many may recall from his fine writings for the AJC. Dave’s book has another clever title, Matzoh Balls and Baseballs, and yes, it’s about Jewish players in the big leagues.

Hal’s book, Ball Crazy, looks at baseball in a very personal way: it’s about the pressures and passion of baseball played by 12-year-olds and how their parent-coaches cope with it. It will touch some nerves with a lot of folks, I think.

In a way, it recalls for me the several years I spent coaching my then-8-year-old son’s soccer team, steamy hot afternoons watching kids digging holes in the dirt, dodging soccer balls kicked at them, waving at admiring parents and, most regrettably, parents who took everything personally especially the need to win, win, win. Hal knows all about that.

We invite you to come share the fun of this evening. If you’re a baseball fan — and given the Braves’ rise in the National League East pennant race this season, there seem to be a lot more of us — we know you’ll enjoy the chatter. We’ll have a few surprises for you, too, so bring your gloves, wear your jerseys and don’t be shy about stepping up to the batter’s box. You just might hit a home run.

Free online read

You can now read a free online version of Ball Crazy at HarperCollins Authonomy.

"Ball Crazy" part of a literary triple play

The Georgia Center for the Book is hosting an evening of baseball books ("A Baseball Triple Play") by 3 Atlanta writers, including myself. Here's the write-up...

If you love baseball, you’ll hit a home run with our program this evening! We welcome three authors of exciting new books about the sport including long-time Braves announcer Pete Van Wieren; the radio voice of Georgia State University, Dave Cohen; and wonderful Decatur author and dad-coach Hal Jacobs. Van Wieren’s book, written with veteran journalist Jack Wilkinson (who will also join us) is ”Of Mikes and Men,” a wonderful reminiscence of three decades of calling Braves’ games over the air. Cohen’s book is the delightfully informative ”Matzoh Balls and Baseballs: Conversations with 17 Former Jewish Major League Baseball Players;” and Jacobs has written ”Ball Crazy: Confessions of a Dad-Coach,” a thoughtful reflection on his and his 12-year-old son’s experiences on the diamond. Please don’t miss this memorable evening of baseball chat!

For more information, see http://www.georgiacenterforthebook.org/Events/show.php?id=297

Over-used, Over-specialized, Over-coached

An article in today's New York Times ("For Children in Sports, a Breaking Point," by Jane E. Brody, May 24, 2010) goes into the dark side of youth sports -- the over-use and over-specialization and over-coaching -- that tempts children and parents. Brody cites statistics used by Mark Hyman in his book Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids: “Every year more than 3.5 million children under 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse.” Brody continues:

The problem was put into focus three years ago by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness [see 2007 report]. In a report in the academy’s journal, Pediatrics, Dr. Joel S. Brenner wrote, “Overuse injuries, overtraining and burnout among child and adolescent athletes are a growing problem in the United States.”

The goal of youth participation in sports, the council said, “should be to promote lifelong physical activity, recreation and skills of healthy competition.”

“Unfortunately,” it went on, “too often the goal is skewed toward adult (parent/coach) goals either implicitly or explicitly. As more young athletes are becoming professionals at a younger age, there is more pressure to grab a piece of the ‘professional pie,’ to obtain a college scholarship or to make the Olympic team.”

(If you doubt the role of adults, I suggest you take in a Little League game between teams striving for a championship. But instead of watching the players, watch — and listen to — the parents and coaches screaming at them, and not just words of encouragement.)

But most young athletes and their parents fail to realize that depending on the sport, only a tiny few — 2 to 5 out of 1,000 high school athletes — ever achieve professional status.

Clearly we’ve gone too far when the emphasis on athletic participation and performance becomes all-consuming and causes injuries that can sometimes compromise a child’s future.

The sports surgeon Dr. James R. Andrews said that he now sees four times as many overuse injuries in youth sports as he did just five years ago and that more children today are having to undergo surgery for chronic sports injuries.

Excerpt featured in Emory Magazine

In the spring 2010 issue of Emory Magazine, which focuses on sports and competition, an excerpt from Ball Crazy is featured on the last page ("Coda"). The excerpt draws from the opening scene in Chapter 1 of the book, with the following added:

Five years ago, when my wife and I first signed up our two sons in a neighborhood youth baseball league, I never thought I would wind up as a dad with a baseball problem. I didn’t see the value of over-organized youth sports. I grew up playing sandlot baseball in a park where the longleaf pine trees outnumbered the players. I never played catch with my father. He died when I was eight, and a year later I discovered baseball on my own terms.

My version of baseball bears no resemblance to the game my sons play. Our games lurched along, disrupted by frequent breakdowns of talks and negotiations, arbitrary pummeling of younger brothers by older brothers, cars driving through the outfield, and equipment issues, such as when the only ball would be lost forever to a rogue palm tree. There were also moments so perfect that they took our breath away.

Over the years, as a baseball dad-coach, I have learned to appreciate the youth baseball experience. Now I understand that baseball is a game best passed down from one generation to the next. I have seen my sons work with adults—and trust them—in a way I never learned while playing sandlot. I’ve seen them grow confident in their skills, and I’ve shared moments with them that have allowed me to see them in a new light, as if seeing the men they would one day become.

Talking about overuse injuries...

According to a PRNewswire-USNewswire story (May 10, 2010), nearly 200,000 children aged 14 and younger were treated in hospitals, doctor's offices and emergency rooms for baseball-related injuries in 2008 (source: US Consumer Product Safety Commission).

The article also has a handy link to the STOP organization mentioned below (http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/baseball-injury-prevention.aspx)

Kids on overdrive, overuse & overspecialization

A recent Wall Street Journal article (Red Flag on Kids, Sports and Injuries, April 1, 2010) describes efforts by surgeons and professional athletes to combat injuries in youth sports caused by overuse and over-specialization. The article talks about pushing against the prevailing winds to specialize.

"From baseball to volleyball, kids are increasingly trying to attain mastery of a sport by specializing. That has made certain sports increasingly competitive, further encouraging kids—backed by parents—to train harder and longer, parents and sports trainers say.

"'There's more emphasis on playing one sport. Because it's so competitive you almost have to focus on one sport,' says Mr. Hall. Dr. Andrews says orthopedic surgeons are partially to blame for overuse injuries, having focused largely on developing new surgical techniques but not on promoting prevention. 'We've worked on better ways to fix people—that was our job—but our job is more extensive than that,' he says. 'Finally we realized that.'"

Baseball is "right sport for a democracy"

In an interview with George F. Will by Robert Costa (Wall Street Journal, April 10-11, 2010), Will talks about why baseball has always been one of his life's passions ("more than any other sport, a fan's enjoyment of baseball is a function of how much he understands the nuances"). He also talks about the roles of fathers:

Mr. Will also worries that baseball is fast becoming an extinct tradition in this country. The game, he says, is losing talent not because other sports are better but because so few are still teaching the craft to Little Leaguers and high-school stars. With baseball, "you don't just need a hoop and some black top," he says. "You need a field that takes some grooming. But the teaching and the grooming require fathers, and they're gone. That's one of the problems in baseball right now. No one wants to talk about it, and it is related to the problem of the vanishing African-American baseball player."

Reader feedback

Over the years, I've handled the publications of a professional organization of business professors (Decision Sciences Institute) at Georgia State University. At a recent board meeting, copies of my book were given out by Executive Director Carol Latta. Here's one of the notes I received a few days later from one of the board members:

I read Ball Crazy on my flight back to Salt Lake City and enjoyed it thoroughly! In my own case, it was basketball that involved me heavily with my son and my daughter who both were varsity BB players for their high school. But I found myself looking back on those times fondly once again as I read the book. My children and I were not involved much with baseball, but I do feel that there is something special about baseball that is not replicated in other sports. Something about the ambience of the ballpark and the pace and strategy of the game. You surely captured that special feeling in the book as well as the close relationship you have with Henry. (Richard L. Jenson, ATK Thiokol Professor of Accounting, Utah State University)

East Cobb baseball showcased in SI article

In a 4-19-10 Sports Illustrated article ("Legend before his time"), Tom Verducci profiles Jason Heyward, 20, "the most intimidating slugging prospect in years." Verducci also showcases East Cobb baseball, which figures into one of the chapters in Ball Crazy. As he point out so well, East Cobb has changed the youth baseball landscape in metro Atlanta and is upping the ante for programs across the country. 

In 2004, when Jason was 14, Eugene [Heyward's father] decided it was time to bring him to East Cobb Baseball. What Silicon Valley is to computer chips, East Cobb is to youth baseball: the heart of the sport's research and development. East Cobb began in 1985 when Guerry Baldwin, a Pony League coach in Marietta, thought the traditional youth league structure, in which kids of varying abilities get thrown together based simply on age and/or home address, was broken. He decided kids should play at the level of their ability—better players should play with and against other better players. He took a core of kids, most of whom had won the 1983 Little League World Series with a team from Marietta, and won four straight Pony League and Babe Ruth League national titles. "Eight of the players were the same," Baldwin says. "That's sort of what made East Cobb East Cobb."

The father of one of those players happened to be fabulously wealthy. To show Baldwin his appreciation, he gave the coach a state-of-the-art, 30-acre baseball complex: eight perfectly manicured ballfields carved among the stately pines of suburban Cobb County. The East Cobb program became a magnet for not only the best players in Georgia but also others from the Southeast (and occasionally farther) who would stay with local host families or in the host house on the grounds of the complex.

Since 1985 East Cobb has won 146 national titles and produced 150 pro players, including 21 drafted and signedlast year alone. It has grown to 85 teams for ages eight through 18. You might see as many as 600 scouts and college coaches at the complex at a time; they're engaged in the baseball equivalent of catching fish in a barrel. Among the major league stars who have played at East Cobb are McCann, Jeff Francoeur, Jeremy Hermida, Nick Markakis, Micah Owings, Matt Capps, Stephen Drew, Dexter Fowler and Gordon Beckham—and that doesn't include the 14 first-round picks in just the past three years. "It definitely changed the way baseball is looked at in Georgia," Baldwin says. "It used to be an afterthought to football. It's not that way anymore. A lot of the better athletes play baseball now, where 20 years ago they didn't."

The article goes on to say, "At ages 14, 15 and 16, Heyward, by his own estimation, was playing about 200 games a year: 30 high school games, 90 to 100 summer games with East Cobb and another 60 to 80 fall games with East Cobb." 

"At ages 15 and 16, his teams at East Cobb were 86-8 and 90-6, respectively, while traveling the country, usually playing against 18-year-olds and sometimes using wood bats. Baldwin says the fee to play on his team is $1,400, but a Braves official familiar with the program said costs can escalate to $10,000 per year. "Not true," says Baldwin. "I guess [it's possible] if you had two kids and the whole family went everywhere they went—I think that's what some people do—but not for one kid."

Reader feedback

Here's a note from a friend and one of the most dedicated baseball dads I know:

"I wanted to tell you that I really, really enjoyed the book and as the father of three ballplayers I could relate to all of what you talked about. I really think that there is a whole army of baseball dads out there that would really enjoy this book. And I can tell you that even though your focus was on Henry's 12 year old season, some of those same perspective and emotions have stayed mostly bottled up within me even as the kids go through high school and college. Henry's 12 year old season was a great age to focus on. Many things do begin to change after that, at least for me. Thanks so much for writing all of it down and sharing it with us. I enjoyed it immensely."(Bill Coble)

"Florida Times-Union" article about "Ball Crazy"

Here's the opening of Charlie Patton's article about the book for "The Florida Times-Union." See the link below for the full article.

Want to make a grown man cry?

Show him the scene from "Field of Dreams" where Kevin Costner's Ray Kinsella asks the youthful ghost of his father, "Hey, Dad, wanna have a catch?"

"Baseball is fathers and sons playing catch, lazy and murderous, wild and controlled, the profound archaic song of birth, growth, age and death," poet Donald Hall wrote in his book of essays, "Fathers Playing Catch with Sons."

Hal Jacobs uses that quote as the epigraph for his new baseball book, "Ball Crazy: Confessions of a Dad-Coach."

It's the story of Jacobs' intense involvement as a coach of the Druid Hills Bulls, a Pony League travel team of 12-year-olds from an Atlanta suburb. One of the 12-year-olds was Jacobs' son, Henry.

Travel teams are all-star teams assembled from lower-pressure recreational leagues. Jacobs quotes a New York Times story that estimated there were 30,000 travel teams nationwide in 2006.

Jacobs alternates the story of a few intense weeks during which the Bulls tried to qualify for the Pony World Series in Washington, Pa., with memories of his own childhood involvement with baseball.

http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/literature/2010-04-09/story/benefits-baseball-author-hal-jacobs-puts-game-perspective

Decatur Online News posts Q&A about the book

Check out this Q&A about the book from a relatively new online newspaper, Decatur Online News. Here's the introduction:

Like a pitcher bouncing around the minor leagues, local writer Hal Jacobs has had an up-and-down experience with the game of baseball. As a fan, he grew up listening to the Braves on the radio, switched his allegiance to the Baltimore Orioles in the late 1960's, then became, what he calls "a baseball agnostic" from 1970 until the magical 1991 Braves came along.

As a player, he grew up on the baseball sandlots of Jacksonville with his friends, but did not play beyond his teenage years. Baseball, however, became his passion when his sons took the ball fields in and around Decatur, Georgia. The sport took hold of him from the inside out and got all wrapped up with his love for his two boys.

Eventually his passion for his sons and for baseball collided with his craft of writing. In 2004 the freelance writer and editor at Emory University began a project that led to this year's publishing of his new book, Ball Crazy : Confessions of a Dad-Coach, published by Everthemore Books, an imprint of A Cappella Books in Little Five Points.

Giamatti on baseball

This came in the form of an e-mail from a friend who just finished reading "Ball Crazy." The book he mentions is by A. Bartlett Giamatti (former president of Yale and Major League Baseball) and is a classic -- packing quite a bit of eloquence, insight and philosophy into its 100-something pages.

Ever read Bart Giamatti’s Take Time for Paradise? It’s about “Americans and their games” according to the subtitle, but as you might expect it’s most often about baseball. Especially the 20-pg final section, “Baseball as Narrative.” Even touches on your other trade, first quoting Marianne Moore:

Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do.

“Serendipity is the essence of both games, the writing one and baseball. But is not baseball more than like writing? Is not baseball a form of writing? Is that why not why so many writers love baseball?”

This is from an e-mail blast by A Cappella Books (3/22/10). A Cappella is the little indy bookstore in Little Five Points with the mighty heart.

The Boys of Summer

We started our publishing imprint, everthemore books, to re-issue such titles as Rodger Brown's Party Out of Bounds and Paul Hemphill's The Nashville Sound. With Peter Case's As Far As You Can Get Without a Passport, we ventured into publishing original works. And, now, just in time for baseball season, we have published another entirely new title, Ball Crazy by Atlanta writer Hal Jacobs.

Hal is a former contributor to the book pages of The Atlanta Journal Constitution (remember those?) who has helped others write books, but this is his first. Though unlike our other titles, the new book doesn't deal with the world of music, we think it fits into our catalogue nicely. Ball Crazy is a personal, thoughtful, finely-written account of a topic that could be easily dismissed as mere hobby or entertainment, but in Hal's hands, it is more of a consideration of conflicting and irrational passion, the kind of stuff that often makes us crazy.

Ball Crazy is available now in the store and online. Saturday, April 17 will be the book's official launch, around the corner from the scene of the story, Medlock Park, at Eagle Eye Books in Decatur.

Talking about baseball

A few years ago I heard that Emory University professors Dana White, Urban Studies, and Peter Dowell, American Culture, were teaching a popular undergraduate class on baseball. Although my book wasn't about professional baseball or really its history or impact on American society, I asked if I could sit in. They were happy to oblige. It was quite a treat. Each class they would enter the room like two dignified umpires and regale the students with stories of Ted, Joe, and Hank. Students would talk about seeing games with their fathers and grandfathers. I began to see what a difference it makes to have the game passed down from one generation to the next. The game becomes fuller, more magical, steeped in others' memories and imagination. In 2009, I interviewed Profs. White and Dowell, and produced this video ("Take Me out to the Ballgame") for iTunesU (you'll need the free iTunes application to view it).

That father-son connection in baseball books

An article in Publisher's Weekly ("Baseball Gets Healthy: Back to heroes, sluggers, and family," by Michael Coffey, 3/8/2010) gives an overview of upcoming baseball books, saying "the sport and its fandom are returning to what has marked the game since its inception in the 19th century: hero worship and an appreciation of the game itself and its role in the American family."
In the comment section at the end of the article, I added a few thoughts of my own.

I enjoyed your round-up of great baseball books and am already looking forward to picking out a few on the list. I would also add another category of baseball nonfiction to the list: books about the father-son connection in youth baseball. While surveying the landscape in preparation for writing my own recently published book (Ball Crazy: Confessions of a Dad-Coach), I came across several accounts that stand out. One of the best known is CBS News correspondent Bill Geist’s bestselling Little League Confidential: One Coach’s Completely Unauthorized Tale of Survival (1995). Geist offers a humorous look at the ups-and-downs of a Little League season based on his nine years of coaching experiences. In Joy in Mudville: A Little League Memoir (2000), former Crawdaddy editor and political writer Greg Mitchell chronicles a season of Little League in Nyack, New York, providing rich play-by-plays of games and the emotions behind them. In The Way Home (2001), literary agent Henry Dunow writes about coaching his seven-year-old son’s team on Manhattan’s Upper West side, reflecting on his experiences of growing up in a postwar Jewish household with a literary father who had little patience with baseball. Most recently, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy in Senior Year (2007) focuses on the older player who is trying to keep it together before playing college ball. My book takes a different perspective than these -- it follows a brief summer season of my 12-year-old son's all star team in the new era of travel ball tournaments and from my perspective as someone who grew up playing sandlot baseball in a vacant field (and never dreamed of enrolling his sons in an "over-organized" youth baseball association). My experience teaches me the value -- and joy -- of passing down the game from one generation to the next. [Hal Jacobs - 2010-10-3 10:56:26 EST]

Official book launch - April 17th

Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur will host the "official" book launch on April 17th. From 3-5pm, we'll serve ballpark hotdogs outside the store & sign books inside. And from 5-6:30pm, we'll have wine & cheese. Your choice... hotdogs or wine.

Books shipping out today

For those of you who pre-ordered (I believe my little sister in Las Vegas gets the honor for being the first), the books are shipping out today. Curtis Montgomery at Darby Printing helped make the production process a breeze. And when he's not handling sales at Darby, he's a dad-coach and an umpire in Paulding County. His verdict on the book? "It's about as big as a rule book, and probably more people will read it."

Thanks for the link and artwork

Thanks to Rick Brozek who updates the website at Druid Hills Youth Sports, I'm going to have a fancy announcement for the book. For more information on Rick (design services and youth sports photography), see http://www.brozekdesign.com

Also... I've got to acknowledge the work of two professionals (both friends) on the cover photo and design. Joe Boris (http://www.borisphotography.com) was at one of our state tournament games in 2004 and took the photo of Henry outside our dugout. Something about it captures the whole spirit of the book in one image. Greg Brough, a designer at Southface (http://www.southface.org/), created the look for the book jacket.

Ball Crazy coming soon...

Ball Crazy goes on sale at the end of February 2010.