The Last Innocents – The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers by Michael Leahy

After recently reading Roger Kahn’s book titled, “The Era 1947 – 1957”, I was ready for another baseball experience. This book seems to pick up where the previous one left off, as the author follows the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and deals mostly with the decade of the 1960s. It is interesting to me that I also enjoyed this book immensely, even though I had stopped closely following baseball during this period since not only were the Dodgers no longer in Brooklyn, but I personally was totally absorbed in college, medical school and psychiatric training.

Perhaps the appeal of the book is that it is “inside baseball”. The author describes the trials and tribulations of the personalities involved, but he also recounts the details of important games and even the individual at bats. He not only reports the various key baseball moments as they happened, but he subsequently has chatted with many of the key players 40 or 50 years later about various at bats or important plays in the field. Even if I were not following baseball closely during this decade, I was very familiar with certain heroes of the time and of prior years such as Sandy Koufax, who was one of my heroes as he started off and had a great career with the Brooklyn Dodgers before moving to Los Angeles.

The personalities of many players emerged in this book along with the indelible impression which they left on the game. For example, the author gets into the head of Maury Wills, the Dodgers’ shortstop and fantastic base runner, as he traces his life and career in wonderful detail. As a psychiatrist, I could not help but enjoy learning about the personal life and baseball career of Wes Parker, who played first base for the Dodgers for eight years. The author told about Parker’s family history coming from a rich family, his relationship with his parents, his insecurity despite his wonderful baseball career and the meaning that being a success in baseball had for him. He weaved Parker’s history in and out of various chapters. He probably could have presented the full story of this man’s life at a psychiatric meeting and received great acclaim.

The book not only told great baseball stories and let the reader relive key baseball moments mostly about the Dodgers, but it also brought memorable news events that were occurring in our country during this time period. This included the assassination of President John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the civil rights movement and the impact of the Vietnam War. I could not put this book down and it was a great reading experience.

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The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH by Shawn Green with Gordon McAlpine – About 10 days ago this book arrived in the mail from Amazon addressed to me but without any information who sent to me. Perhaps my benefactor thought I would enjoy it because it is written by an outstanding baseball player who happened to be Jewish (and at one point compared himself to Sandy Koufax) or because the author has written about his own psychology of baseball and living. In any case I read the book and thought it was somewhat interesting although quite repetitive. It is a relatively small book about 5×8 inches  a little more than 200 pages. I did learn something from the author’s experience and philosophy but it might been more efficiently packaged in magazine article or a ½ hour interview of the author  by Charlie Rose or maybe even better by Bob Costas. When Green hit the big leagues as a young man and ran into a batting slump, he figured out the secret to being a successful hitter and according to him this approach was also the secret to living life. He found out how to “ bring stillness into the flow of life” He mastered the ability to focus on the moment and allow all other thoughts especially those involved with his “ ego “, competitiveness, narcissism etc to fade into the background and ultimately disappear. Any one who has dabbled in or has mastered meditation or the  art of Zen will know very well what this is about. Green started with just hitting balls on a batting tee over and over again with no concern about his usual opponent – that major league pitcher who would be  facing him down. He often would do this exercise to near exhaustion with hitting the ball off the tee or what he would call just “chopping wood. ” He then would take this mind set to the real game and deemphasize the dual of out guessing this opponent on the mound but only concentrate on hitting the ball. Obviously, he had great skill and coordination to start with but he claimed that when he was able to put himself in this zone, he was clearly at his best. Conversely when he allowed himself to be caught up with what was expected of him because of his mulit million dollar contract, how many homeruns he hit that day or week, whether his batting average was trending up or down,  how badly he was hitting that month, what the press said or didn’t say about him,  his chances of making the All Star team etc. etc, he never was at his best and at times he would be at his worst. The ability to concentrate on the moment whether you are working out or enjoying your children’s or grandchildren’s school play may be a skill that has to be cultivated.  That certainly is the lesson of this book. As a bonus in addition to his advice about how to approach baseball and life, Green also shares a few of his inside baseball stories such as when he met Ted Williams, memorable things that his coaches said to him, life traveling on the plane with the team etc. There was nothing very revealing as this was certainly not a “ tell all book “ but rather it told us how to find stillness when facing speeding baseballs coming at you or just about anything else that life might throw at you.