Baseball Week 2: City On Fire

As I was advised, Jonathan Mahler's LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BRONX IS BURNING, isn't really a book about baseball. Balancing the 1977 New York Yankees' season against everything else that happened in New York City that year -- a mayoral election year, to begin with -- baseball sometimes gets lost in the mix. Who can worry about whether slugger Reggie Jackson gets along with manager Billy Martin when ConEd spectacularly loses power on one of the hottest nights of the year?

I didn't know much about the Blackout of '77, except as it was unfavorably compared with the Blackout of '03. I didn't know much about a fair amount of the material covered in this book, including the result of that season of Yankees ball (so I'll leave it out in case you also are unaware). Even in limiting himself to one city and one season, Mahler faced a substantial stack of material, and once I approached each few chapters as an invitation to discover more, as a survey course, I got along with this book much better. A chapter on fisticuffs during a Yankees-Sox series in Boston made me want to learn more about that fabled rivalry; a book mentioned by name in a section on the colonization, then commercialization of SoHo will probably join my library queue one day. I'd probably read a book about the blackout if I could find one.

Would I read another book about the '77 Yankees? ...Maybe not. Somehow Jackson's company-provided apartment and car and $7000 fur coat still seem opulent against the bountiful free-agent packages of the 21st century. (His ego, also bountiful on the painting-of-himself-as-a-centaur level. Some things never change!) I was more interested in Billy Martin, who had a better claim to being -- as Jackson called himself -- the "straw that stirs the drink," but didn't draw as much media coverage for Mahler to quote. I was busy rooting for the city; the team was secondary. Go into it with those expectations and '70sphiles and New York history nerds will have a really great time.

(In case you're planning a friendly neighborhood blackout, remember these things! First, being able to call up off-duty cops means nothing if they don't actually get to the affected sites; second, any error in urban emergency plans will be magnified a thousandfold in case of actual emergency. And third, don't allow one dude picking up an extra shift to be in control of the ENTIRE GRID, in case that dude decides to, oops, just SIT THERE till the lines are completely fried. Okay, off to buttonhole strangers on the street about this Amazing New Story.)

Tomorrow: Jim Bouton's BALL FOUR, a rollicking tale of one man's mortality.