Nobody tells a funny baseball story like Joe Garagiola. He proved that in his first bestseller. Baseball Is A Funny Game. With It's Anybody's Ballgame, baseball's best storyteller is back, continuing to find the light side of the game.
While Joe isn't Yogi Berra's official biographer, he gives readers a personal view of his friend and America's favorite philosopher: "Yogi doesn't say funny things; he says things funny." He also looks at how the game has changed as he has spent the last forty years watching from the broadcast booth: "With artificial turf, you just dry-clean. Groundskeepers are turning in their rakes for vacuum cleaners and spot remover."
But It's Anybody's Ballgame is more than a baseball book. Joe takes you beyond the diamond, detailing everything from what it's like to be bald ("Cure baldness? Hey, it's not contagious!") to the professional banquet circuit to sleeping in the White House.
With stories about names you know, from Reggie Jackson and Mark McGwire to Johnny Carson and Barbara Walters, Joe takes you on a personal and funny ride from the field to the broadcast booth and beyond. With It's Anybody's Ballgame, Joe Garagiola hits a home run.
A pale echo of Garagiola's 1960 bestseller, Baseball Is a Funny Game, this volume begins with a chapter that discusses the differences between the sport in the 1950s and the 1980s, but which offers few unusual insights. The book picks up when he presents anecdotes about his experiences on the banquet circuit and stories of memorable one-liners he has heard from players and managers. But midway through the memoir, Garagiola becomes caught up in his encounters with various U.S. presidents (he was an active campaigner for Gerald Ford in 1976) and his life as a TV personality. Those who care about what Hugh Downs, Barbara Walters and Johnny Carson are like off the tube will find much inside dope here. To make the potpourri complete, there are chapters on Yogi Berra, who survives the encomiums, and on bloopers by TV reporters. The book is a sort of grab-bag, and a mixed grab-bag at that. Photos not seen by PW. (April)
