Title/Author:
”Davey Johnson:
My Wild Ride in Baseball and Beyond” by Davey Johnson with Erik Sherman
Tags:
Baseball,
professional, memoir, Orioles, Mets, Phillies Reds, Nationals
Publish
date:
May 15, 2018
Length:
384 pages
Rating:
4 of 5
stars (very good)
Review:
Having found success as both a player and a manager,
it is no surprise that Davey Johnson wanted to share his baseball experiences
in a memoir. What was surprising about
this book written with Erik Sherman is that Johnson was using sabermetrics long
before computers were used widely, before Bill James published his books and
well before the current use of advanced statistics done by every team today.
That is only one of the several surprises in store
for the reader of this book. Johnson states in the book that when he was playing
second base for the Baltimore Orioles, he created a report of all possible lineups
for the Orioles in 1969, writing punch cards and inputting data from the 1968
season. Johnson did this for a computer
class he was taking at Johns Hopkins university. This would certainly aid him
later on when he became a manager.
Here’s another surprise in the book, at least for
me. While Johnson isn’t unique in his belief that the best managers are those
who “handle the bullpen and the bench because that’s the deal”, this statement
took me by surprise because every team he managed, from the Mets during their championship
season in 1986 to the Reds and Orioles in the mid 1990’s and later the Washington
Nationals, his teams usually had stronger starting pitching and were loaded
with offensive stars. Knowing that he
felt that managing the bench and bullpen made the difference took me by
surprise, even though it makes sense.
One other surprise, again at least to this reader
although some others may already know this, was Johnson’s viewpoint that some
of the rule changes or proposals such as instant reply challenges, robots calling
balls and strikes, or the new rules for sliding into second base, are bad for
the game. He believes that these make
the sport “not even the game of baseball anymore. It’s terrible.” Johnson is far from the only baseball person
who believes this, but it was information I learned from this book.
There are many other tidbits of information
throughout the book that may be new to readers. Some are serious, some are
humorous, but all of them contribute to the overall picture Johnson wants to
paint of his time in baseball. One of them
that I have never heard before was that Hall of Fame Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer
had the nickname “Cakes” given to him by Orioles teammates because he always
ate pancakes on the days he pitched. Of course, Johnson added that “Cakes” also
got under the skin of teammates as well, something that wasn’t as obscure as the
nickname.
The part of his career that gets the most pages in
the book is his time managing the New York Mets and their 1986 championship
season. This part was another viewpoint of that team and some of the incidents
and highlights of that team and that year. I found his reflections on the
seasons AFTER 1986 and the actions of the Mets front office more interesting,
especially when a popular topic that is still talked about today is why that
team didn’t win more titles.
This isn’t to say that the rest of Johnson’s career,
both as a player and as a manger, isn’t discussed thoroughly – in fact, I
enjoyed his discussion about his playing days with the Orioles and the Atlanta Braves
as it was very interesting to me. It is often
forgotten that he set the record for most home runs by a second baseman when he
was playing with the Braves in 1973. He also talks about the night Hank Aaron
broke Babe Ruth’s record, as he was the hitter in the hole when Aaron hit the historic
blast.
While this baseball memoir does read like many
others, it was a good read for me as it was full of information about Johnson
that I did not know, especially when the topics were when he was managing teams
other than the Mets. I would recommend this book for most baseball fans as
there is a lot of ground covered and it is sprinkled with humor
throughout.
Book
Format Read:
E-book (Kindle)
Buying Links:
