Title/Author:
“Insight Pitch: My Life
as a Major League Closer” by Skip
Lockwood
Tags:
Baseball,
professional, memoir, humor, Brewers, Athletics, Mets
Publish date:
March 6, 2018
Length:
248 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars
(outstanding)
Review:
Claude “Skip” Lockwood
was a major league pitcher who was on six different teams over a 12 year
career. He wasn’t a star player on any of them, never won any awards or
all-star appearances or had an extraordinary game that will be seen forever on
videos. However, what he did collect during his career was many humorous and
interesting stories. He shares them in
this very entertaining and fast paced memoir, “Insight Pitch.”
Lockwood was originally
signed by the Kansas City Athletics as a 17 year old “bonus baby” infielder and
it is this signing where he shares one of his many humorous stories. When the A’s
sent a team executive named Pat Friday to the Lockwood residence to sign Skip,
the negotiations went fine with Skip and his father, but when the moment came
for the final decision to sign, Dad left the room, leaving Skip and Friday alone. Skip took a pen and made two changes to the
contract. One was to correct the name on
the contract to his given name, “Claude Edward Lockwood, Jr.” Then came this gem: “Then I said ‘There’s
just one more thing right here,’ pointing to the space where the number $35,000
had been written. I put an oversized ‘1’ in front of it.”
Then Friday calls owner
Charlie Finley, who asks Skip why he should pay him that kind of money – the answer
was “Because I’ll make you a winner.”
The phone is given back to Friday, Finley agrees to the new amount and
Lockwood becomes a bonus baby. This story was one the best of many great ones
in the book, mainly because of the guts it took for a 17 year old kid to do
that in the days of the reserve clause and no major league draft.
Lockwood shares the same
type of stories through his transformation from an infelider to a pitcher in
the minors, then from a struggling starting pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers
to a more successful relief pitcher for the New York Mets. The best of these was
the prank that Mets clubhouse manager Herbie Norman played on Lockwood on his first
day as a Met.
Immediately upon
arrival at Shea Stadium, Norman hurries Lockwood out to the bullpen, as he keeps
saying how the team needs Skip to be ready to pitch right away. Norman leads
him to the bullpen, where Lockwood greets each man personally and tells them
how he is excited to be on the team. Problem was that this was the VISITING
bullpen and each man he spoke to was a member of the Montreal Expos.
These are just two of
the many examples of the captivating and funny stories that Lockwood shares and
makes the book one that any baseball fan will enjoy, whether or not he or she
has ever heard of Lockwood without having to look up his statistics on Baseball
Reference. This page-turner is one of
the best sports memoirs I have read.
I wish to thank Sports Publishing for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format Read:
Hardcover
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