{"id":354,"date":"2014-03-21T14:37:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T18:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=354"},"modified":"2016-08-29T01:47:05","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T05:47:05","slug":"scd-jim-brosnan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/?page_id=354","title":{"rendered":"Sports Collectors Digest: Jim Brosnan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been 60 years since he signed his first pro contract (at age 16!), and 46 years since the publication of \u201cThe Long Season\u201d, but Jim Brosnan\u2019s place in the hearts of admirers of baseball literature remains secure.<\/p>\n

The journeyman relief pitcher of the \u201850s and early \u201860s, without a ghost writer, produced two baseball books that remain classics, and remain in print after all these years. \u201cThe Long Season\u201d was only the third baseball book to make the New York Times best seller list (following \u201cThe Babe Ruth Story\u201d and \u201cFear Strikes Out\u201d), and two years later, \u201cPennant Race\u201d, equally literate and fascinating, traced the fortunes of the National League champion Cincinnati Reds of 1961.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read baseball books when I was 12, 13, 14, and I didn\u2019t believe any of them!\u201d says Brosnan, now 76, speaking from his home in suburban Chicago. \u201cThey just didn\u2019t sound authentic to me. And sure enough, when I got to the big leagues myself, I said, \u201cthere\u2019s so much more here to write about!\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1958, Brosnan wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated on his feelings about being traded by the Cubs to the Cardinals. Feeling good about the way it turned out, he wrote a letter to Buzz Wyatt, an editor at Harper & Row, during spring training of 1959, pitching a diary of his season. Wyatt asked him to send some samples early in the season, and a deal was made.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t get any advance,\u201d says Brosnan. \u201cZero. Only royalties. I think I got about a $7,000 for \u201cPennant Race\u201d, but the good news is that both books have remained in print to this day, so checks still arrive regularly, and I\u2019m glad people still enjoy them. I have no idea how many have been sold over the years, but it\u2019s wonderful when someone comes up and compliments me on them. And most people seem have read both, not just one. They\u2019re a set!\u201d (The current publisher is Ivan R. Dee).<\/p>\n

More than just an enjoyable read, the books are seen as the first \u201creal look\u201d inside a ballplayer\u2019s life ever written by a player. And they are written in such a pleasant, easy style, that young readers could connect to the game through them as well as adult readers.<\/p>\n

Sometimes people will suggest that Jim Bouton\u2019s \u201cBall Four,\u201d a decade after \u201cThe Long Season\u201d was a descendant of Brosnan\u2019s work, but Brosnan discounts that. \u201cVery different,\u201d he says. \u201cOnly the fact that both were diaries. I didn\u2019t write anything that got people upset. I made no enemies with my book, just spent the rest of my career taking a lot of ribbing from players wondering if they were going to be in my next book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brosnan would take notes in the bullpen, and go home to type out new entries every few days. They would be stories or events of interest. He had a keen eye for the wonders of big league baseball, and for what would be interesting to readers<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Long Season\u201d dealt with teams headed nowhere \u2013 the \u201959 Cards, and then the \u201959 Reds, to whom he was traded. Since most teams are not contending for a pennant, this was a fascinating look at an average player on an average team.<\/p>\n

\u201cPennant Race\u201d finds Brosnan on the \u201961 Reds, a pennant winning team, where the excitement of the race is a perfect balance to the \u201959 season. (He was 10-4 with 16 saves for the team). Although the Reds met the fabled Yankees in that World Series, the book ends with the pennant celebration and doesn\u2019t take us into the five-game loss the Reds suffered to the Mantle-Maris Yanks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote about that World Series for Sports Illustrated, and the headline was \u2018Embarrassing, Wasn\u2019t It?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I knew Fred Hutchinson {his manager} was very embarrassed by our performance in the Series. So I left it out of the book, since I\u2019d already covered it in Sports Illustrated. Why end on a bad note?\u201d<\/p>\n

Brosnan would go on to write nearly 200 magazine pieces over the years, book reviews, and children\u2019s books, including biographies of Ron Santo and Ted Simmons. He never did another adult baseball book, but made a good living as a free lance writer following his 1963 retirement. There was some talk recently about putting his magazine pieces into an anthology, but \u201cI found the originals, all on yellow legal paper, and a lot of them had turned brown, were hard to read, and too much of a task to retype. So, no anthology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although not college educated, Brosnan became a student of language, adding to his literary skills. \u201cThere was a Boston announcer who was an admirer of \u201cThe Long Season,\u201d and who read the dictionary, A to Z,\u201d he says. \u201cHe encouraged me to do that, and I did! And thank you, because in this interview, I get to use the word septuagenarian for the first time, because that\u2019s my age, I\u2019m in my seventies!\u201d<\/p>\n

Another \u201cfirst\u201d was Brosnan was a meeting with P.K. Wrigley at the Wrigley Building in Chicago when he was with the Cubs. He was working in the off season for the ad agency doing Wrigley\u2019s gum ads, and his boss asked if he\u2019d like to meet the Cubs owner. \u201cI think I was the first ballplayer he ever met in his Wrigley Building office,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe the only one ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brosnan was also a witness on Curt Flood\u2019s behalf during Flood\u2019s trial challenging the reserve clause. \u201cI shared a cab with his lawyer, Arthur Goldberg, and we went to dinner with other witnesses \u2013 Red Smith, and Jackie Robinson. It was the first time I ever met Jackie. I\u2019d thrown at him, but I\u2019d never met him!<\/p>\n

\u201cGoldberg urged me to use caution in my testimony, not to show people up. \u2018But Mr. Goldberg, I\u2019m a writer, that\u2019s what I do!\u2019 I laughed, but he didn\u2019t. He realized I was serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brosnan goes to one or two games a year at Wrigley Field these days where he is seldom recognized. He and his wife have been married for 52 years; they have two daughters and four grandchildren. One of the grandchildren is a 6\u20198\u201d lefthander in college, \u201cbut he isn\u2019t interested in playing baseball. He could throw a wiffle ball past me as a little kid, but he was just never interested in playing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marty Appel It\u2019s been 60 years since he signed his first pro contract (at age 16!), and 46 years since the publication of \u201cThe Long Season\u201d, but Jim Brosnan\u2019s place in the hearts of admirers of baseball literature remains… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":2277,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-template-full.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-354","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4s5bl-5I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2934,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/354\/revisions\/2934"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.appelpr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}