Major League Baseball

Neighborhood Play: The Colonel & Big Stein

Updated Aug. 1, 2022 4:22 p.m. ET

foxsports

Multnomah Village, Portland (Or.) – Even in Portlandia, there aren’t many full-service, independent bookstores left. Especially once you’ve stopped counting the world-famous Powell’s City of Books and its various satellites.

There are a few left, though, and perhaps the best is Multnomah Village’s Annie Bloom’s Books. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Annie’s, which hosted an event in the summer of 2003 for my Big Book of Baseball Lineups. I recall a nice crowd that included bubble-gum magnate Rob Nelson, and we’ve been pals ever since (to the everlasting joy of trick-or-treaters who come to my house).

I hadn’t been in Annie Bloom’s in a while; Multnomah Village is about eight neighborhoods away from my own, which does have its own (granted, less well-stocked) bookstore. Recently, though, I visited Annie Bloom’s – and yes, the old-fashioned candy store next door – on the occasion of another book talk.

Specifically, a dual book talk featuring my friends Mark Armour and Steve Steinberg.

Mark led things off with a précis of his new book (co-authored with Dan Levitt), In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball. I’d read the book already, so there wasn’t a lot for me to learn. But Mark’s take on the "Horace Clarke Era" Yankees – my words, not his – was once again refreshing. Management during those years actually did a solid rebuilding job, which included stockpiling young talent and getting a new, lucrative Yankee Stadium. Shockingly, most of the obituaries of George Steinbrenner omitted the fact that the Yankees were on perfectly solid footing when he purchased the franchise in 1973. The New York Times, to cite just one misleading example, described the Yankees at the time as "declining" ... when exactly the opposite was true.

Batting second: Steve Steinberg, co-author (with Lyle Spatz) of The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership That Transformed the New York Yankees. Hug was Miller Huggins, who managed the Yankees from 1918 until his sudden death in 1929. The Colonel was Jacob Ruppert, who also plays a large role in Armour’s book.

Just a couple of things one might have gleaned from Steve’s talk: Huggins, a Hall of Famer, might well have stood just five feet and one inch tall rather than his listed 5’6"; and Ruppert, also a Hall of Famer, might well have been gay.

The audience might have been small, but was bolstered after a few minutes by the resident cat (Molly) and later by a passionate fan (Anonymous) who just happened to stroll into the store, pleasantly surprised by all this baseball talk. I didn’t speak with the latter, but I did convince the former to purr. Which felt, as it always does, like a significant personal victory. The entire experience was bettered by the ability to ask the two absolute experts in their subjects just about anything.

Afterward, I managed to spend $91.37 on a copy of Steinberg’s book, a volume of William Stafford’s poetry, something for the baby, a few greeting cards, and Brandi Carlisle’s new CD.

You do what you can, when you can.