Nine Innings: The Anatomy of Baseball as Seen Through the Playing of a Single Game is something of a classic baseball book, yet remains enough under the radar that I must embarrassingly admit that, until I picked it up earlier this year, I had no idea that it was predominantly about the Milwaukee Brewers. Back in the early 1980s, Daniel Okrent (who you might remember from the Ken Burns Baseball series… he also helped invent fantasy sports) set out to write a different kind of baseball book. Nine Innings tries to get to heart of the American Pasttime through the context of a single game, played on June 10, 1982 between the Orioles and Brewers in Milwaukee . Following the action, sometimes pitch by pitch, Okrent uses the players, personnel, and strategies of the teams to form a broader analysis of the sport. It is a remarkably ambitious book and, I think, Okrent succeeds in getting behind the game. However, its impossible for me to know if the book’s appeal for me is rooted in its focus on the Brewers. Readers not so familiar with the team might find passages on injured Milwaukee outfielder Larry Hisle, for instance, more tedious than enlightening. For any Brewers fan, though, particularly one who recalls the great 1982 team, this book is essential reading.
Pictured Above: Author Okrent with filmmaker Ken Burns.
The Brewers ended up as the focus on the book because Okrent wanted to follow a team on the rise. He first approached Brewers GM Harry Dalton in 1980 with the idea, and was given intimate access to the team and its inner workings. Okrent gets deep into the club’s finances and player development workings, portraying Dalton as a shrewd operator. He paints a less appealing image of team president Bud Selig. The man who saved baseball in Milwaukee comes across as a tireless worker and Brewers booster, yet a somewhat naïve businessman. Case in point is the $10.8 million package Selig put together (very little of it was his own money) to buy the team out of the bankruptcy court in 1970. Okrent points out that, given imflation, that was roughly the same price paid for the New York Mets – a team with an immensely greater earning potential – in 1981. While Selig indeed brought baseball back to him hometown, Okrent writes that until the team started winning the late 1970s, “the original $10.8 million investment looked dreadful.” When the book was released in 1985, Selig refused to comment on it.
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Okrent does similar work with the Brewers players, delving into their background and personalities. The team was full of divergent personalities. There was Paul Molitor, the reversed and devotedly Catholic wunderkind (Molitor’s drug habit was still a secret at the time); Gorman Thomas, “the hero that every 47-year-old brewery worker idolized, whose diet and personal habits were so poor that they worried the team trainer; Ted Simmons, well-read and a political leftist, a true rarity in the game. Okrent’s most interesting portrait might be that of shortstop Robin Yount. Yount is portrayed as someone with an incredible baseball intellect, but an intellect that did not especially carry over into the broader aspects of life. Okrent quotes a Boston Globe reporter who says, “Robin tries hard, but its useless. He’s just plain dumb.” Okrent describes that Yount had the strange habit of staring idly into space on team flights, David Puddy-style, doing absolutely nothing for up to four hours as others read or talked or played cards.
Pictured Left: Catcher Ted Simmons, who as a rookie with the Cardinals sported long hair when it was still a somewhat radical look. “His outspokenness,” Okrent writes, “confirmed the impression his haircut made.”
In covering a team on the rise, Okrent also managed to catch the Brewers in a transitionary period – providing fascinating details about the circumstances that led to the early-season firing of manager Bob Rodgers and the installation of Harvey Kuenn as his replacement. The animosity that several team leaders – Thomas, Simmons, and pitcher Pete Vuckovich in particular – had toward Rodgers had created a near toxic air in the clubhouse. Pitcher Mike Caldwell expressed the depth of the anguish when, after Dalton chided him for speaking of the manager in vulgar terms while aboard a commercial flight back from a west coast road trip, he shot back, “Fuck him! I hope we lose the next ten games so we can get rid of that fucker!” Days later, Rodgers was fired and replaced – temporarily – with batting coach Kuenn. Selig wanted Sal Bando, who had retired the year before, to manage, but Bando was uninterested. This left no better option and, as the Brewers started winning, it became clear that Kuenn was the perfect fit for the club.
Okrent’s book truly is a must-read for Brewers fans and a strong recommendation for baseball fans in general. It presents the team, warts and all, with a depth that no other book can offer.
