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I’m a woman of many, as my family calls them, obsessions. If I get interested in something, I submerge myself in it. I don’t just decide I like a particular actor; I have to seek out all of his movies and watch them. Even the really bad ones. (During my Christopher Noth period I actually bought a VHS copy of “Jakarta”. I’m pretty sure this is the film they showed to the inmates at Gitmo during the Bush administration.) I’m that way with whatever catches my attention.
My current obsession seems to be the Joe Torre/Tom Verducci book “The Yankee Years”…and I haven’t even read it yet.
(Side note not related to the book: Rubén Rivera is playing for the Mexican team in the Caribbean World Series. Did you know he is Mariano Rivera’s cousin? Maybe I did, but I didn’t remember it. Google is great, isn’t it? He’s best known for stealing some of Derek Jeter’s equipment and selling it to a sports memorabilia dealer and then getting his butt voted off of Yankee Island. See, it wasn’t related to the book but it was related to the Yankees. All my life’s a circle. Oh, and again a shout-out for the MLB Network’s coverage of the Caribbean World Series. Tom McCarthy and Uri Berenguer are just fabulous. It’s a joy to listen to him.)
But I digress. Back to Joe’s book. Oh, sorry, back to the book Tom Verducci wrote that Joe Torre got his name over Tom’s on the cover but Tom wants everyone to know Joe didn’t write it (unless telling you he DID write it will make you buy more copies).
Unfortunately, I was out and missed Joe’s interview with Bob Costas but I’ll make up for it by cracking open his book and finally deciding if he did, indeed, sell out the team that made him who he is or if his book has been terribly misrepresented in the media. I haven’t even flipped through to look at the photos yet, but let’s take a look at some chapter titles:
Chapter 5: Mystique and Aura. Some of you will be disappointed that this is NOT about any of Slappy’s stripper friends.
Chapter 8: The Issues of Alex. I’m not going to lie. This chapter is the biggest reason I bought this book. Even the chapter title doesn’t disappoint. I just might read this chapter first. I wonder if that will ruin the story for me?
Chapter 10: The End of the Curse. When asked by Regis Philbin the other day what happened to the Yankees over the past 7 years, Joe responded “The Red Sox happened”. That will go down as possibly my favorite Red Sox/Yankee-related quote ever.
Did you all realize that, including the acknowledgements but excluding the index, that this book is 482 pages long? Maybe it was Joe’s hope that the likes of David Wells would lose interest halfway through and not get to the parts where he writes about them?
Chapters 12 and 13 are titled Broken Trust and “We Have a Problem”. So, as you see, I AM going to have to start this book in the middle!
There are 16 chapters in the book. The final chapter fittingly (yet without a thought for originality) is called The End. But the real gem of a title comes in Chapter 15: Attack of the Midges.
Aside from media coverage, I haven’t read one word of this book and already I think it’s my favorite book of the year.
So I’ll either stop mentioning this book until I’ve finished it or you’re going to get random observations as I make my way through it. Either way, this book is taking up a significant part of my life for the next few days.
Could you imagine if Terry Francona wrote a book like this? I’d be torn between being the first one in line to buy it and hitting him over the head with it.
Today is Truck Day. And, yes, it really is as exciting as it sounds. (Hey, I’m going because it’s a great way to mark the beginning of the spring training season, but I don’t pretend that it isn’t close to insane to stand in freezing temperatures to see off a truck carrying the drawers of my favorite team.) At the very least, I can promise some pictures of a truck. So you have that to look forward to.