by Paul Semendinger
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Today I share my interview with author Phil Coffin.
Please tell our readers a little about yourself and your brand new book.
I’m a longtime editor at The New York Times, but I have been a baseball fan a lot longer – since I was 6 years old and kept my warring older brothers apart while we watched games on TV. I have been reading about baseball (beyond the backs of baseball cards!) since I was 8, but I never intended to write a book.
In the late 2010s I began writing baseball essays to amuse myself and buddies, and after I started a frivolous project on the 1959 Topps cards, that turned into my first book, When Baseball Was Still Topps. It includes essays on all 572 cards in that set, telling an unconventional history of the game, the players and the times in the 1950s and 1960s.
My latest book, A Baseball Book of Days, is just out from McFarland & Company (mcfarlandbooks.com). It is an Advent calendar-like approach to baseball history; here’s a date and some compelling moment, here’s another date and another compelling moment. You get 31 of them – serious, lighthearted, historical.
What do you most enjoy about writing?
The research for my books has been the most gratifying aspect of the projects. I have an embarrassingly large number of baseball books at home – more than 200 – but the research has showed me how much more there is to learn about baseball. A love those rabbit holes!
Are there any projects you are working on?
A third book, about baseball innovations and innovators, is in the research stage. (For example, the long path to batting helmets and padded outfield walls. The history of the baseball’s cover and stitching. Who developed spikes?) I am also contemplating a book of lasts (the last outs of perfect games; the last hit for 3,000-hit players or the last homer for 500-homer hitters; the last games of the Seattle Pilots, the Montreal Expos and the various Athletics teams; the last barnstorming tour).
Why are people so drawn to baseball and its stories, legends, and people?
The pace of the game makes for contemplation, both during the game and afterward. That nourishes compelling writing … and compelling reading. Plus the baseball terrain is so expansive and there are so many colorful characters, there is an unending supply of interesting subjects.
What is your favorite baseball book? (You can list as many as you wish.)
My favorite baseball book is Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, a great inside look at the game and also of the game. I had previously read Jim Brosnan’s The Long Season, which was a decade earlier and a good primer for Ball Four. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, in all its permutations, is a fascinating read. (It is also fascinating to see how the book changed over the various editions.) And Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100 is a delight. A formative book for me, however, was Only the Baseball Was White, by Robert Peterson; it opened my eyes to the history and great players of the Negro leagues, and I have been building my library of blackball books ever since.
There's a lot of talk about baseball needing to be "fixed." Is baseball broken? If you were the Commissioner of Baseball what change(s) (if any) would you make to the current game?
One theme about baseball since I was a teenager has been that the game is dying. It isn’t dying, but it has had troubled spots, and baseball has a long history of not addressing its problems or not having a clue how to fix them. I don’t know how to fix what I see as the biggest current problem – the lack of action in the game as Three True Outcomes (especially strikeouts) become overwhelmingly prevalent. If the game remains this static on the field (or gets even more so), then its appeal will diminish. I would hate for baseball to become the horse racing or boxing of the 21st century, a once highly popular sport that fades to a niche activity.
What is the greatest baseball movie of all time? (Yes, you can list a few!)
The best baseball movies? I do like Field of Dreams, in part because I had loved its source material, Shoeless Joe, by W.P. (Bill) Kinsella. The novel is a delight and faithfully executed on film. And James Earl Jones and Burt Lancaster are wonderful in it. Other likes: Bull Durham, Major League, Sandlot, each for different reasons.
What is your favorite baseball memory?
Actual baseball memories (not counting those seen on TV; Hank Aaron’s 715th was thrilling) come in many ways, some unexpected. Going to my first professional games – at a minor league stadium in Indianapolis – are indelible. The sights, sounds, colors, vibrancy, they all still resonate. The finest in-person fielding play I recall was made by a Reds shortstop, Darrell Chaney, in the summer of 1973 – a diving catch of a foul pop in which he knocked out a field-level panel at Riverfront Stadium with his shoulder. A throw by Dave Parker. Watching Mike Piazza (at Riverfront) and Cecil Fielder (at Tiger Stadium) take batting practice. Hearing my best friend, Rick, a long-suffering White Sox fan, sing “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” after the Sox won a game in front of a sellout crowd that we talked our way into without tickets. That was a stolen baseball moment, and priceless.
THANK YOU PHIL!!!