Word: fireovid
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...fans stayed away--only so many of us remember Butch Metzger, a pitcher who resurfaced 17 years after his last major league appearance. And the baseball was pretty drab, with too many groundouts and too few extra-base hits. "Major leaguers have multiple tools," said Marlin pitcher-stockbroker Steve Fireovid. "Most of us have a tool." Tiger manager Sparky Anderson refused to watch it, and the Baltimore Orioles refused to play it, in part to preserve Cal Ripken's 2,009-game playing streak. But even people like Oakland A's manager Tony LaRussa were impressed with the replacements' efforts...
...players may be self-absorbed, but fans crave an understanding of how it feels to play this child's game for a living. Perhaps the best recent glimpse of baseball's inner life can be found in The 26th Man by Steve Fireovid (Macmillan; $18.95), a poignant journal of the 1990 season by a career minor-league pitcher still dreaming of one more cup of coffee in the big leagues. The story line is simple and honest: Fireovid, then 33, a righthander who gets by more on guile than God-given talent, posts the second best earned- run average...
This year Fireovid is still getting them out for the Pittsburgh Pirates' top minor-league club. But for sheer endurance his story is overshadowed by the resurrection of Warren Cromartie, 37, who returned after six years in Japan to become a backup first baseman for the Kansas City Royals. In Slugging It Out in Japan (Kodansha International; $19.95), Cromartie, once a star outfielder with the Montreal Expos, vividly recounts his frustrations as a gaijin home- run king with the Tokyo Giants. The transformation of baseball to fit Japanese cultural norms is familiar terrain for anyone who has read Robert Whiting...
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