Graig Nettles

As baseball fans will know that 1) Graig Nettles was a star third baseman for the New York Yankees from 1973 through 1983, and 2) these years coincide with the period that George Steinbrenner owned the team. Steinbrenner was an egotistical blowhard who made his fortune via his shipbuilding company and knew a lot less about building and running a baseball team than he thought he did. Balls is Nettles’ memoir of the 1983 season, which turned out to be his final year as a Yankee. Nettles and show more co-writer Peter Golenbock intersperse chapters which follow the ’83 season chronologically with chapters that provide an overview of Nettles’ career up to that point.

This is not a standard baseball memoir, though. For one thing, such books normally chronicle seasons of players on teams that at least make the post-season, but in 1983, the Yankees finished third, though they did win a respectable 91 games and were in the pennant race until late in the season. For another, Nettles’ book is more about what it is like to be a player on the Yankees during the Steinbrenner era than it is a real narrative of the ups and downs of a pennant race. There’s relatively little discussion of individual games. The famous Yankees comeback of the 1978 season, where they overcame a 12-game deficit to beat the Red Sox for the pennant in a winner-take-all playoff game is handled in about two paragraphs. There are, however, some good descriptions of Nettles' teammates, including what it was like to be teammates with Reggie Jackson.

Nettles depicts Steinbrenner as an self-centered jerk who wanted to make the story all about himself rather than about his players. He regularly criticized the ballplayers in the press and took credit when things went well. Although he had a general manager, he insisted on decided upon trades himself. Nettles praises Steinbrenner for being willing to pay to bring in high-priced stars, but criticizes what he saw as the haphazard way this was done. In 1977, reliever Sparky Lyle won the Cy Young Award, a rarity for a relief pitcher. Nevertheless, the next season Steinbrenner brought in high-priced closer Goose Gossage. Irritated at having to share the closer role, Lyle fumed all season, was ineffective on the mound, and was traded the next year, an event causing Nettles to offer his famous quip to Lyle, “You went from Cy Young to sayonara.”

Another Steinbrenner would sign too many stars. The Yankees during a given year would have, say, five all-star caliber outfielders when only three of them could play regularly. This would lead to the team never having a set lineup, which Nettles claimed damaged the team’s cohesiveness and spirit. Steinbrenner’s ongoing feuds with manager Billy Martin are also chronicled here.

The bottom line for Nettles, though, and that factor that bothered him the most, was that although the Yankees were usually good, Steinbrenner’s methods and personality took the fun out of baseball for the players. “Baseball should be a game, not a business,” he says in the book. “Nobody ever says that the Yankees and Red Sox held a business meeting on Friday night. They say that the Yankees and Red Sox played a game.”

As the book ends, Nettles, at age 39, had just signed a new 2-year contract with the Yankees. But the book’s appearance during the 1984 spring training led immediately to Nettles getting traded to the San Diego Padres, which at least was Nettles’ hometown team. Balls is breezy and a relatively quick read, and it will be fun for baseball fans, and particularly for folks who remember those days. Yankee fans will enjoy reading about those players again. Yankee haters will enjoy the disfunction. show less