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?”