Who's on Worst?

December 10, 2012
New York Daily News sportswriter Bondy offers a compendium of the lore that has elevated baseball to religious status. The title—a play on the Abbott and Costello vaudeville skit, “Who’s on First?”—is an appropriate summary of a sport that is “all about failure.” Bondy mixes humor with fact and a fan’s passion in unearthing those who have contributed their talents. He reaches back to the 19th century for Frederick “Crazy” Schmit (a pitcher who kept notes on hitters and “quite often pulled out his notebook on the mound”), while not shying away from today’s stars. The narrative is divided into chapters like “Too Fat to Bat,” and “What’s an Emery Board?” about pitchers who thought they could use a little help. Deft turns of phrases about players such as Dave DeBusschere, who “wasted his baseball talent winning NBA titles,” lend irony to an already amusing look at players who have “elevated failure, or folly, to fresh, artful levels.” Photos.

December 15, 2012
A collection of anecdotes about some of the worst players, managers and owners in baseball history. Bloopers are an enduring baseball tradition; fans never fail to appreciate watching some of the best athletes in the world stumble, bumble and trip over themselves. In attempting to import such ineptitude from the Jumbotron to the page, however, something gets lost in translation. New York Daily News columnist Bondy (Chasing the Game: America and the Quest for the World Cup, 2010) does his best to craft compelling accounts of horrendous hitters like Mario Mendoza (for whom the infamous "Mendoza Line"--a .200 batting average--is named), poor fielders like Chuck Knoblauch (who inexplicably lost the ability to make a simple throw from second base to first base) and terrible teammates like Ruben Rivera (who once stole one of Derek Jeter's gloves and sold it to a memorabilia dealer for $2,500). Unfortunately, these player sketches quickly become monotonous, as there are only so many ways to describe ineptitude or outright mediocrity. Chapters on the worst cheaters and oddest ballplayers of all time fare better, highlighting some of the game's most eclectic characters (including pitcher Joe Niekro, who was caught using an emery board to doctor balls) and intriguing athletes (including Chuck Connors, who would go on to TV stardom in The Rifleman). The author intends the narrative to be humorous, and he succeeds in places--primarily in the captions of the pictures that appear sporadically throughout the book. Too often, however, the most interesting tidbits aren't related to terrible on-field performance, but rather to the colorful characters themselves, which would have been a far more interesting focus than using advanced sabermetrics to definitively identify players whose weak traditional statistics speak for themselves. The literary equivalent of a mid-July baseball game: a few highlights but largely forgettable.

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February 15, 2013

This fun-filled compendium of baseball's worst hitters, fielders, and pitchers, extends the genre to relate the most overpaid Yankees, the most overpaid non-Yankees, and other dubious distinctions. Bondy (sports columnist, New York Daily News) additionally pinpoints the oddest players, the poorest teammates, the most ineffective steroid users, the luckiest ballplayers, the weakest father-son pairings, the most inept managers, the once-forgettable players turned expert managers, and the worst owners. He examines miserable fielders such as slugging first sacker Dick Stuart, hard-hitting third baseman Bruce Hobson, the Mets' Marvelous Marv Throneberry, and the Yankees' former Gold Glove-winning but yip-infected second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. Most of the bonehead feats are well known, e.g., Bill Buckner's muffing that easy grounder, Ralph Branca's serving up of the pennant-winning homer to Bobby Thompson, and Steve Bartman's interfering with Moises Alou. VERDICT A thoroughly enjoyable light read for all baseball fans.--RCC

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2013
This book has a most unappealing title. And it calls forth many of baseball's usual suspects. The game's greatest goats? Bill Buckner and Ralph Brancaduh. And some inclusions are questionable: Barry Zito and Adam Dunn, the two most overpaid players outside the Bronx, actually had redemptive comebacks in 2012. But who can resist reading that Dickie Noles was traded for himself (he was the player to be named later ) or that starting pitcher Kei Igawa cost the Yankees nearly $10 million per win, or that pitcher Gaylord Perry, in the words of Bondy, was to the spitball what Mozart was to the opera? Hardcore fans will pore over this compendium of futility and folly perpetrated between the lines during the past century or so.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)