Skip, Ernie and Pete: circa 1977 (courtesy of Ernie Johnson website)

So tonight I was enjoying the tribute to legendary Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox as they retired his number (covered here by AJC beat reporter David O’Brien). I was holding out hope that the Braves would hit a season high six home runs (though five was fine with me) in honor of old #6, when my mood changed. TV announcers Chip Carey and Joe Simpson announced the passing of Atlanta Braves broadcast icon, Ernie Johnson Sr. And with that, my mood changed from happiness to near tears.

By the time I rolled into the O’Shea family (with my birth) back in the late 1960s, the family had seen some hard times–including (a mere 10 days before my arrival) the death of one of the teenage sons (after a long illness). My parents’ job was to raise a family through tough times–and it’s a job they did well. But the demands of family life and a professional career as a electrical engineer/salesman left my father with minimal desire for seemingly needless chit-chat at the end of a long day. Where my father was a man of few words, he was blessed (ahem) with a son who loved to talk.

One way a chatty kid and a stoic father could connect at the end of the day was Braves baseball. My father educated me in the ways of multitasking sports at an early age. In the days before Internet, satellite radio and cable TV, my father built a media situation room with one TV and one radio. If there was a basketball game on the TV, you can bet there might be a baseball game on the radio–or vice versa.

As I noted when Skip Carey died back in August 2008, the Braves announcing crew of the 1970s and 1980s unwittingly provided a lasting connection to my father. Whenever I heard Ernie, Skip or Pete Van Wieren, I was instantly with my dad again in the car or in the living room taking in one of those underperforming 1970s Braves teams. When I learned Ernie died tonight, part of me was emotionally 17 again standing in the rain outside a hospital where my father had just died.

I really hope the Braves broadcast team do more of a tribute to Johnson in the coming days. Chip did not mince words tonight in explaining how he learned far more from Ernie than he ever did from his own father, Skip.

The Braves management quickly announced tonight that for the remainder of the season they would wear a patch in honor of Ernie. I hope that patch gets to go to the World Series.

The Braves

Watch and enjoy.

As detailed in the pitch, “In Early Innings we’ll experience the ride of a minor league baseball season with the people whose lives are inextricably bound by America’s Pastime … In year one we’ll follow the Burlington Bees at the lowest level of the minor leagues – Lo-A … Early Innings will ‘follow’ the Bees for an entire season, as 50 or so players chase the ultimate American Dream.”

Early Innings

I do not know if this was a pitch for ESPN or MLB, but the insight I gained in this 10-minute pitch made me want to see more. I would love to embed the video here for you to watch it, but Vimeo prevents me from doing that in this case. That’s fine, however, as I think you gain a great deal more insight when you visit Blackhurst‘s website.

A Slice From My Childhood

So tonight I was at my mother’s house, looking for something that required me to dive into the folder of stuff my parents keep in a file for me (honor roll notices from grade school, summer reading program certificates from the 1970s…amazing stuff).

And then, in the file, I found a few of these. Tickets sent to me, due to my good grades (I’m fairly certain I was not a straight A student). As a kid, I did not appreciate the printed signature on the certificate (yep, that’s Ted Turner). The logo was WTBS on the eve of Turner Time (remember when TBS shows started at 5 minutes after the hour or half hour)–before the days of TBS Superstation.

Holding these tickets took me back to my childhood. Back in the days when the Braves were managed by Bobby Cox on his first round with the team (his second to last year as manager on this round)-but far from first place. It’s funny, as a kid I remembered them as always being a last place team, but as documented by Wikipedia, there were two teams (San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres) worse off than the Braves.

[Apologies for the fuzzy quality of the image, O'Shea mansion does not have a readily available scanner, so I shot this with my wife's Blackberry...]

Tim O’Shea: Given how much you know about the history of baseball, what long dormant rules that used to exist do you think could be re-introduced in the modern era to help revitalize the game?

Peter Morris: What today’s baseball fans rarely realize is that baseball was originally a sport with fast-paced, non-stop action. Catchers snapped the ball back to the pitcher and if the batter stepped out of the box or even looked like he wasn’t paying attention, the pitcher would try to sneak a pitch past him. While every sport has timeouts, only baseball has unlimited timeouts and I think some limit should be put on them. There’s no good reason that a batter should be allowed to step out and take as long as he wants after every pitch. Then you could put and enforce similar restrictions on the pitcher, as well as limiting the number of pickoff throws per at bat.

O’Shea: Can you point to an era in baseball history that counts as your favorite?

Morris: I’m most fond of the early years of the game, because from the 1860s to the 1880s the game’s rules and customs were in constant flux. That meant that every baseball enthusiast felt like they were shaping the game and would try proposing their ideas for how to make the game better. Instead of new ideas coming exclusively from the game’s “owners” – as happens today – everyone looked at themselves as stakeholders.

O’Shea: Your 2008 book, But Didn’t We Have Fun?, features many rare photographs and drawings–how did you gain access to them for use in the book?

Morris: Most of them are from the private collection of Tom Shieber, who is a senior curator at the Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as a close friend and an extraordinary researcher and historian.

O’Shea: In April, you released Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero. How long were you at work on the book?

Morris: There was about a year and a half of steady work on the book, but I also made extensive use of the research I’ve been doing on baseball for the past fifteen years.

O’Shea: How are your books edited and reviewed, given that your area of knowledge is rather unique. Do you fact-check yourself or does your publisher have another pair of eyes vet it for you?

Morris: I’ve been blessed to have great editors – Ivan R. Dee at Ivan R. Dee, Inc., Kelly Sippell at the University of Michigan Press, and Rob Taylor at the University of Nebraska Press. I’ve also had several friends who have generously read drafts and offered valuable suggestions and/or pointed out errors. But you are right – the responsibility for fact-checking books on such arcane subjects is ultimately the author’s.

O’Shea: Speaking of Catcher, it captures a time in the 1870s when “it began to seem that a good catcher could single-handedly make the difference between winning and losing.” From your perspective, what were some of the fortune-changing catchers of that era–the good and the bad?

Morris: The good catchers of the 1870s were few: Deacon White was far and away the best, because he alone was a standout in the field and at the bat. John Clapp was second best, and was so valuable that he literally auctioned his services off one year. By the end of the decade, new stars like Silver Flint and Charlie Bennett were emerging. By contrast, the bad catchers were many, and they never lasted long. In fact, they couldn’t because any catcher with poor technique before the use of equipment was sure to be injured almost immediately. Nonetheless, even catchers like “Alamazoo” Jennings and Fred Gunkle whose careers lasted only one game were remembered long afterward because of the magnitude of their incompetence.

O’Shea: Was there anything that surprised you while doing the research for Catcher?

Morris: It was a constant learning experience, but I think the most surprising thing to me was the extent to which most of the major rule changes were designed with the catcher in mind. And, in particular, that in many other instances, there was resentment that the catcher’s role was so much more important than that of other players and that an effort was being made to change that.

O’Shea: At your website, you have a page devoted to unsung heroes in baseball history. Do you ever intend to do future books on any of these subjects?

Morris: Most of those figures don’t warrant a book in my opinion, though I think their stories are important enough that I’d like to collect some of them into a book at some point. One forgotten figure who I do think warrants a book is a man named William Buckner – an African-American who served as trainer of the White Sox for about two decades when the game still had no African-American players. He was a forgotten trailblazer and I’d like to restore his contributions to prominence.

O’Shea: Currently the MLB Network is showing Ken Burns’ baseball work on Sunday nights. If the opportunity presented itself, would you ever consider doing a documentary version of one of your books to run on MLB or elsewhere?

Morris: I would love to do that, as long as the other people involved shared my vision of the project.

O’Shea: Do you think the average modern day baseball fan has the proper appreciation of the game’s history?

Morris: Baseball fans typically have a great love of the history of the game, but it tends to focus on a few aspects of the game at the expense of others. One of the things I strive to do in my books is to expand that range.

Tim O’Shea: Do you think your affinity for pop culture began where you grew up–in Westchester County, New York–an area where you note: “certain notable people became attracted to the area. Jackie Gleason, for one. Other actors. Writers. Thinkers. Even Peter Frampton (on the heels of the blockbuster album “Frampton Comes Alive”)”

Chris Epting: It definitely started at that point in my life, but I think it was more a process of the times than the geography. That said, our close proximity to New York City was valuable in terms of what were exposed to, but in general I think growing up in the thick of the 1970s is what really did it for me. It was an interesting time in that you had some great directors breaking out (Scorcese, Coppola, etc.) some cutting edge TV (All in the Family, MASH, etc), great radio (both am/fm), decent theater—a lot of culture was in flux, and the churn produced, I think, a wonderful storm of pop culture fury that still influences a lot of things today.

O’Shea: I love your lists of favorites–now in terms of movies, what would you add to your list from recent films (or older films you have since discovered since making that list)? As a pop culture expert–do you enjoy films like High Fidelity or films that somehow utilize one’s love of pop culture as a plot characteristic or element?

Epting: I liked High Fidelity a lot – and when done right, yeah, movies that zone in on a love of pop culture can be really compelling. Now let me check that list—not sure how much modern stuff I’d add–but movies I’ve kept going back to would include Dazed and Confused, Slacker, The Rutles, Schindler’s List, Quiz Show, Patton, Heaven Can Wait and a few others—on a TV note, the Larry Sanders Show is for me, one of the best examples of a production that examines pop culture beautifully by peeling back layer after ugly layer of reality—in one of the funniest formulas I’ve ever enjoyed. Same goes for the series, Freaks and Geeks, which I can watch any time of any day.

O’Shea: In terms of doing pop culture research or otherwise maintaining your base of knowledge–are there certain news sites or other resources you’ve grown to rely upon for good information?

Epting: Nothing too specifically. I still read lots of newspapers for source material, and I enjoy a lot of news sites, including the NY Times, LA Times, NY Post, Wall Street Journal, London Times and of course the Huntington Beach Independent, for which I write a weekly column. I also like Gawker.com/Defamer.com because they’re not afraid to attack celebrity culture and I think in age of too many publicists, handlers and entourages, we need more of that—celebrity culture has become so pervasive and influential and so it need some checks and balances—it needs to be challenged.

O’Shea: What was the first baseball game you ever saw–and I wonder, do you get more enjoyment for major league or minor leagues baseball?

Epting: My first game was the Mets versus the Cardinals at Shea Stadium in 1970—I was 8 years old and I remember it quite well. I enjoy going to watch the Anaheim Angels play (we have season tickets) and I’ve taken my son to games since he was about 3 (he’s 15 now) and so it’s always been part of our lives together (my wife and daughter go too, but not as much). For me the majors vs. minor experience is sort of like two different products, and I enjoy them both—sort of like Broadway vs. Off-Broadway—one’s big and bright and the other is funkier and more intimate—both good experiences depending on what you’re in the mood for.

O’Shea: What is your favorite baseball memoir or fictional novel?
Epting: My favorite baseball memoir hands down in A Day in the Bleachers by Arnold Hano (1954). He wrote it in the bleachers at the Polo Grounds the day Willie Mays made his famous catch in the 1954 World Series. I’ve gotten to know Mr. Hano the last few years and when he agreed to write a foreword for my new Polo Grounds book, I was thrilled—and the piece he wrote is beautiful-I’m still pinching myself. (Epting wrote a piece about Hano in 2006 for the L.A. Times)

O’Shea: In terms of your essays at your website, I’d love to see more essays about Cheever.

Epting: (Me too! )

O’Shea: Have you ever considered doing a book about him?

Epting: Not a full book, per se, but I have just started writing a book that’s a collection of narrative, non-fiction essays about life. I’ve been fortunate in terms of being at the right place and right time in many instances. Recently Eclectica asked me to contribute some short pieces as their featured author of the month. I did, and the process of writing a few of these stories was a powerful experience for me. The feedback I got within days of the publishing was so strong and refreshing that it gave me the idea to pitch the idea of a collection and so here we are. Within this book will be a series of Cheever stories, building off of the first meeting, along with many other strange run-ins and experiences that hopefully will be able to either relate to or simply have fun reading about.

O’Shea: If the situation presented itself (maybe it has already), if a teenage aspiring writer contacted you for advice about writing, would you take him or her under your guidance–as Cheever once did for you?

Epting: Absolutely. I hear from writers from time to time and make myself as available as I can be. I also speak at schools regularly and am always happy to review work if someone wants an opinion. I’ve had such great experiences learning from so many experts over the years that often I feel like I’m simply passing their advice along; a conduit as much as anything else. Knowledge is to be shared, and I’m always flattered to be asked for any sort of help (knowing full well that I’ll learn from them, too—that’s the beauty of the process, being reminded by youth just how precious the motivation is to want to create and why it must always be tended to).

O’Shea: In a few months, the second edition of your book, Roadside Baseball, will be released “updated and revised to include about 100 more baseball history sites” Can you mention what some of those sites may be?

Epting: Sure, some of the more interesting ones (to me) is the secret river site where they dredge up the mysterious mud that umps coat the balls with before each game to remove the sheen, the first baseball factory in the country (now condos, but in the original structure), a field where Babe Ruth shot a silent movie in 1921, and a bunch of newly place historical markers commemorating both players and long-gone stadiums.

O’Shea: What’s the biggest challenge to researching a book like Roadside Baseball?

Epting: Never giving up! As with my other pop culture/travel books, there’s an obsessive amount of curiosity that drives the content and so the goal is to always dig farther and deeper for those wonderfully obscure places that help define the topic—and then once you feel you’ve exhausted it, dig two or three times deeper. Challenges also include the slow death of newspapers, diminished library resources and other systemic research-material ebbing due to budget cuts, the economy, etc. As well, traveling to lots of small towns, it can be hard running down tips to locate/track down precise pieces of information. But it’s so much fun and you meet so many interesting people that it’s okay, it eases the frustration because the journey is so rewarding in and of itself.

O’Shea: How hard is it to find a unique thing to say about New York baseball, given the number of books written about the city and its relationship to the sport.

Epting: Well, in my case, with the Early Polo Grounds book, it’s a very specific niche that hasn’t been beaten to death as of yet—that leaves me room to mine my own fascination with it and hopefully present it in a fresh, interesting way based on my own passion for the place—which is intense.

O’Shea: Also, what attracted you to writing about the Polo Grounds?
Epting: I never went there, it was torn down when I was three, but since I was a kid, it’s always intrigued me—the name, the shape, the quirkiness, the mystique—it’s hard to explain but I’ve attached to the idea of that stadium for a long time. I’ve studied thousands of pictures of it, explored the former site—it’s weird, but I feel a magnet-like pull to the Polo Grounds and so a book like this is sort of like a Valentine; a physical way of paying tribute to this wonderful ghost of a ballpark that’s always enchanted me.

O’Shea: What’s been the response been like to your book, Vanishing Orange County?
Epting: So far so good—Orange County is big (about 33 cities and three million people) so you have many generations of families who enjoy the whimsy and emotion of sort of “time-traveling” across 128 pages. For me, history books should emotional and gripping, not just a dry reading of facts.

O’Shea: Would you ever consider doing another book along those lines for another area of a certain town or state?
Perhaps, but I’d have to be very familiar with the area (NY, Boston) because that series of books requires that the writer have a real intimacy with the city-subject. I just started another in that series called “Los Angeles’s Historic Ballparks.”

O’Shea: Would you say you use YouTube as both a marketing tool, as well as a means to test out potential book ideas with audiences?
Epting: Definitely. It’s a terrific, direct way to go straight to your audience with your concept. For me, YouTube is the single most impactful site on the internet and for me it has been (I think) an effective tool to help let the world know what I’m up to.

O’Shea: How often in doing a book like Led Zeppelin Crashed Here do you try to contact the musicians–to gain their perspective?
Epting: I’ve tried a few times, but learned that in many cases, musician’s memories are highly unreliable.

O’Shea: Do you think your understanding and appreciation of pop culture is part of what makes you successful in advertising–understanding what appeals to audiences through your scholarly knowledge of pop culture?
I think that understanding an audience’s attitude is a key to advertising—that and always keeping a message simple and truthful. Popular Culture does play a part in terms of defining or predicting the taste patterns of an audience, but more than anything for me, it’s common sense and instinct. When you write a commercial, you have to climb inside your audience’s head and track where they are in life-their moods, desires, passions—their attitude.

O’Shea: Led Zeppelin Crashed Here mentions your top 25 concerts of all time–have any recent concerts you’ve attended forced someone out of one of the top 25 slots?

Epting: Well, last month my son and I saw AC/DC from the front row at the Forum in Los Angeles—first two seats against he stage and I will say, that could bump a few of the shows on the list. I was never a big AC/DC fan, but my son is, and I am now a convert. It was a big, loud, honest rock and roll show that delivered as much as any show I’ve seen in years. Right before that, on a quieter note, we saw Lindsey Buckingham play, and he was amazing as well. He’s one of my favorite guitar players and his solo show is very artful and atmospheric.

It’s an interesting tale, which I was able to watch thank to an AJFF screener, both from a baseball and family sense. It’s got a comical tinge to the project, for example, as the baseball tryouts were being shown the Talking Heads’ song, Road to Nowhere, was played. Throughout the film, you feel like the effort to form theIBL is doomed, whether it was or not. But that aspect of the tale was secondary to me. For me, it’s a story about loss and the importance of family, and in particular father and son dynamics.

I don’t think that the filmmakers intended to take a critical eye at the IBL’s formation. Periodically they film planning meetings and it seems that some concerns dismissed by senior leadership are briefly revealed. My favorite scene that show the blunt honesty behind the scenes is at the first tryout. Dan Duquette, (Former Boston Red Sox executive) director of baseball operations for IBL, pulled the tryout organizers aside and advised them to get the amateur tryout entrants far away from the real prospects before someone valuable got hurt. Duquette said in a more colorful, profanity-laced manner.

Having found out what happened to the IBL after the documentary was finished, I wish the filmmakers had spelled out the outcome more, but I think that’s more my own journalistic/closure curiousity. As the tale of a journey towards achieving several people’s dreams, it makes for a fine film honestly.

“Working at the Ballpark is an inside look at what people in major league baseball do for a living and how they feel about their jobs by taking readers into dugouts, clubhouses, bullpens, press boxes and executive offices where fans dream of going. In the rich oral history tradition of Studs Terkel, this is an entertaining collection of 50 candid, engaging interviews with players, managers, coaches, peanut vendors, ushers, groundskeepers, clubhouse guys, executives, broadcasters, mascots, and others who work at a major league ballpark: From John Guilfoy, who sells sausages behind the Green Monster at Fenway Park, to Chris Hanson, who plays ‘Bernie Brewer’ in Milwaukee, Johnny ‘from Connecticut,’ who is a street ticket hustler, to Glove Glove shortstop Omar Vizquel, who anchors the infield at AT&T Park.

Working at the Ballpark provides fascinating and gritty details about the working lives of men and women who are passionate about baseball. These are their personal, poignant stories. In their own words.

Tom retired in 2005 after 30 years with the State of California where he worked as a legislative director in the administrations of the last five California governors. He lives in Sacramento.”

With the recent passing of Studs Terkel, it really struck a chord with me to see Jones reference Turkel. It’s nice to know there’s at least one writer out there trying to carry on Terkel’s passion for oral history.

Tim O’Shea: How long had you been thinking about writing the book?

Tom Jones: I began thinking about writing an oral history book in 2004, the year before I retired from State government. Initially, I intended to compile an updated version of Studs Terkel’s Working, to be called Working: Revisited. I corresponded for a while with a guy who taught oral history and also was a close friend of Terkel. But one evening I was browsing books at a Borders and came upon Gig—a book exactly written as I wanted to do. That ended my first book project.

Two years later while running along the American River bike trail in Sacramento while training for the 2006 Boston marathon, I thought about putting something I enjoy—baseball—into the same kind of oral history format as Terkel’s work (the marathon was four weeks away). After returning home from running, I quickly showered, and then checked the schedule for the Boston Red Sox and the Houston Astros (my flight made a stop in Houston). Both teams were playing at home during my travels.

I made a list of every baseball occupation I could think off, and sent letters describing the book proposal to the owners of the Red Sox and the Astros, and to the Boston Globe (looking for a sports columnist). The Red Sox didn’t respond to my first request (months later they did; Red Sox employees—including Johnny Pesky–are included in the book). Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe invited me to his house for an interview, and the evening of the marathon I received an e-mail invitation from the Astros to interview their people enroute back to Sacramento.

O’Shea: How did you get Nolan Ryan to write the foreword to the book?

Jones: I approached Nolan through the Triple-A team he owns: the Round Rock Express. I earlier had interviewed Ron “Papa Jack” Jackson for the book when Jackson was the hitting coach for the Red Sox. At the end of the 2006 season, Jackson’s contract was not renewed so Nolan hired him as the hitting coach for the Express (Nolan and Papa Jack are longtime friends, having played together with the Angels). In the book, I include a follow-up interview with Jackson about having worked in the big leagues and then being back in the minors. Staff at the Express knew I was having a second interview with Jackson so I asked them to put me in contact with Nolan, who didn’t hesitate to do the foreword.

O’Shea: The core of the interviews, as you write in the intro, was asking three questions (What do you do for a living?; How did you get in this line of work?; and What does the job mean to you?) Understandably every person took these questions in vastly different directions, but can you recollect one or two where you were surprised by the directions the interviews took ?

Jones: I didn’t know any of the people beforehand, and was surprised and pleased almost every time how easy it was for them to open up about their job and feelings.

One surprise I had was interviewing Todd Hutcheson, the head trainer for the San Diego Padres. His detailed description of helping pitchers Jake Peavy and Trevor Hoffman prepare for games is fascinating. Todd almost helps them to disassemble, and then reassemble, their arms between games.

O’Shea: In the interview with Pat Gillick, he expresses the opinion “the pool of players here in the United States is shrinking”. Is that a belief you heard voiced by others in your interviews?

Jones: Peter Magowan (San Francisco Giants managing general partner), Bob Boone (Washington Nationals senior director of player personnel), and Jim Fregosi (Atlanta Braves player scout) generally share the same opinion by talking about how long it takes a baseball player to make it to the major leagues after often toiling for years in the minor leagues. They say fewer than 5 percent of players drafted will ever receive a major league paycheck. Some of their comments didn’t make it into the book, but they talked about American kids playing in other sports than occurred when they were young. So, to stay competitive, major league teams increasingly look outside the United States for players.

O’Shea: After talking to someone like the Phillies’ Gillick did you walk away thinking: “I could see this fellow’s team winning the World Series in the near term?”

Jones: I interviewed Pat Gillick a few days before the 2006 trading deadline. I sensed he knew he was very good at his job, and wasn’t afraid to change the makeup of team. He believed the Phillies were good, but that some players were too comfortable in their roles and not pushing themselves enough. He traded several players within hours after we talked.

As I traveled from team to team I gained considerable appreciation for how competitive each organization wanted to be. Each game loss hurt–from the front office to the coaches and players, and from the clubhouse manager to the beer vendors and ushers. I didn’t foresee Gillick’s team winning the World Series in the near term anymore than the Red Sox, Giants, or Indians doing it. I certainly didn’t see the Tampa Bay Rays getting to the Series!

O’Shea: How upset were you when you realized you had accidentally erased your Don Zimmer interview?

Jones: Yeah. I was ticked at myself. My heart sunk.

I interviewed Don in the dugout at Tropicana Field before a game. He graciously spent as much time with me as I wanted. Afterwards, while I was hurrying to another interview I changed the batteries in my voice recorder, saw that the recorder had only a few spare minutes of unspent recording time, and then erased what I thought was a previously transcribed interviewee with someone else. Turned out I inadvertently erased the Zimmer interview. So stupid of me.

O’Shea: What larger lessons or appreciation of baseball did you take away from this project?

Jones: I’m now more impressed with how hard people in baseball work. It’s a sport, but it’s also a job. The days can be long for the players, managers, coaches, and umpires especially given their heavy travel schedules. The support crew—groundskeepers, clubhouse managers, media staff—likewise work long hours, often several hours late into the night after a game.

Similarly, the vendors, ushers, mascots, public address announcers, scoreboard operators, and other part-time employees often have long days because so many of them work two jobs—maybe as a teacher by day and a beer vendor at night. These part-time employees usually started working at a ballpark because they needed extra cash, but the book shows they usually end up as entertainers in their own way. For example, Pete Quibell, an usher with the San Francisco Giants, and Arnie Murphy, a peanut vendor with the Houston Astros, share wonderful stories about how their jobs have become personally rewarding.

O’Shea: Which team was the most helpful in granting you access and which was the most challenging?

Jones: Each team I worked with was generous with access, especially the San Francisco Giants, Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Seattle Mariners. They opened up their clubs and personnel to me.

The New York Yankees and my hometown Detroit Tigers were disappointing by not giving much access until after the season, which wasn’t helpful because my approach was to interview people at their place of work (e.g., with a catcher in a clubhouse before a game; in the stands with a beer vendor; in the press box with a broadcaster). Thus, no Yankees or Tigers are in the book.

O’Shea: Did any of the subjects (particularly the folks in the media) make the subject about you and start asking about your experiences as a legislative director?

Jones: I told each interviewee briefly about my background, but I really tried to focus on them. I don’t use any notes during the interviews (only a small voice recorder) so it’s generally easy to keep a conversation flowing and focused on the interviewee.

The media guys did say they felt a little awkward at first in being interviewed because they’re the ones usually asking questions. I felt they got a kick out of being interviewed, though, because it gave them a few minutes of being a person of interest.

Only a couple of people asked about my previous work as a legislative director in the administrations of the last five California governors. They were more interested about what it was like to work for Governor Schwarzenegger than about my job.

O’Shea: Would you like to do another book on baseball or a sequel to this one, if the opportunity presented itself?

Jones: Baseball is my favorite sport, but for now I’m not planning another book on baseball. My next book is tentatively called Risky Living: People with Tough Jobs Who Won’t Back Down. It’s a fascinating collection of candid and intimate conversations with 40 men and women who describe in gripping detail how physical risk is a familiar companion in their working lives, and how they deal with it. Included will be an astronaut, bull fighter, mixed martial arts fighter, crab fisherman, forest firefighter, drag racer, high-rise window washer, Coast Guard rescue swimmer, storm chaser, professional hockey player, stuntwoman, a federal marshal who guarded Saddam Hussein during Hussein’s final hours, and others who tackle tough jobs.

O’Shea: How did the book land at Skyhorse?

Jones: My agent, Bob Diforio, told me at the beginning of our conversation on Working at the Ballpark that Skyhorse was a new, aggressive publisher looking for sports books. Skyhorse looked at my proposal and quickly made a good offer. I almost went with another publisher but I liked that Mark Weinstein, Skyhorse’s senior editor, was eager to market the book so I went with them.

O’Shea: How long was the revision/editing process? Did you end up having to trim down some of the interviews for space considerations?

Jones: I understand three people at Skyhorse took a hack at it. They shot two edited versions back to me. We worked the final edits out in 60 days. Since the format is oral history in the tradition of Studs Terkel, we worked carefully to preserve the actual words and speaking styles of each person interviewed. This limited what Skyhorse could dump, however, for a couple of interviews the editor slashed what he felt were extraneous sentences. I agreed with most of his changes.

The original manuscript contained 51 interviews; the book contains 50. Skyhorse dropped what I thought was an interesting interview with a cleanup guy who scrapes nachos and smeared hot dogs off the floor after games at the Texas Rangers’ ballpark.

O’Shea: What was the best part about doing research for the book? Were there any funny or poignant incidents along the way that have stuck with you?

Jones: There were three “best parts.”

I loved arriving at a baseball park hours before a game started, picking up media credentials, and then moseying alone around the silent park. Whether it was in Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, San Diego, or the 12 other parks I visited during the 2006-07 major league seasons, I always enjoyed looking at the empty stands and well-groomed playing field, knowing that in a few hours those places would be filled with the sounds of baseball.

I loved that the people I interviewed trusted I would share their stories as they intended; in their words, not mine.

I loved learning inside details of the game, from what goes on in a major league clubhouse to hearing professional athletes and coaches talk about hitting and pitching techniques, to simply hearing about the frustrations and joys of common people talking about their working lives.

I think there are numerous interesting parts of the interviews that stick out for me. For example, I appreciated how sincerely major league umpire Fieldin Culbreth talked about the stress of his job. In his slow, southern South Carolina voice he said, “I am absolutely amazed at just how tough it is. I think people think, ‘Well, hell, it’s just a strike or a ball, what can be so tough about that? You’re talking about the best players in the world. [Randy] Johnson isn’t just throwing that thing over the plate just to be throwing it over the plate. He’s trying to make it do different things and doing it at 95 to 100 miles per hour, and I’m supposed to tell you if it’s a ball or a strike in this imaginary box out in space with this thing that’s lying on the ground. And there’s somebody in front of me and somebody to the side of me. It’s a whole lot more complex than it seems.”

I also interviewed Colleen Reilly, a public affairs assistant with the Boston Red Sox. I hadn’t planned to interview her, but she was ushered into an office to talk with me when a front office employee I had been interviewing was called away to meet with the team’s president. She was nervous about being interviewed and I hadn’t given any thought to her kind of job. To gather a few minutes to think about how to approach this interview, I suggested we move outside her office setting to find a couple of empty seats along the third baseline at Fenway Park. Feeling that afternoon’s gentle breeze passing though the stands reminded Colleen of a young boy named Jesse who was losing his sight and hearing, and was the biggest Red Sox fan in his class. On page 319 of the book, you can almost hear Colleen speak loving about Jesse. Listen: “…Jesse is this young fella from New Hampshire that I met a few years ago. Fourteen. He loved the Red Sox. He had this very quiet, humble, refreshing passion. There’s a lot of ways that people express their passion, and sometimes in someone’s quiet presence it’s even more powerful than it is in someone’s hollering, ranting, sign waving. I’m not judging that, but there is something about Jesse that inspired me. It renewed my passion for the job.

Jesse was losing his sight and his hearing and did not let that deter him from playing ball, or any other pursuits in his life. Something I loved about his company was his genuine delight in the now. He came to visit the park a couple of weeks ago with his fellow classmates, his beautiful mom and grandmother, and his terrific teacher.

So we went out to home plate, and we felt grass, dirt, and took a tour of the ballpark. We were filming it because I wanted Jesse to be on “Red Sox Stories” for two reasons: One, I wanted to honor how special he was, simply; and two, I believed in the inspiration that he would be to other people. It was glowing. It was morning—a gorgeous June summer morning. June has a feeling like no other month. The way the grass smells after it’s watered, or the guys run their laps. The thing about my presence that day was I wanted to let go of my vision—like the wind that’s moving through the park right now. It sort of kisses your skin.”

It was these kinds of honest moments with Fieldin and Colleen that make this book special to me, the same kind of power I felt when I read Studs Terkel’s books.

O’Shea: Why was it important to you to interview people with the non high profile baseball jobs, like the peanut and sausage vendors?

Jones: I remember taking my oldest daughter, Sarah, to Giants games at Candlestick. Except for Opening Day and when the Dodgers were in town, it was possible to buy cheap tickets, get into the game, and then after the first few innings find better seats closer to the playing field. We befriended a Giants usher name John (his primary job was to ring a cable car bell over the stadium speaker system each time a Giants player scored) who recognized us and always would keep his eye out for empty choice seats in the home plate area for us.

It takes about 800 people—like John–plus the 25 players on each baseball team, to produce a game for 40,000 fans. I wanted to know why people, regardless of their position in a team’s hierarchy, chose a major league baseball stadium as their place of work. That’s their job site, whether their making millions or barely getting by.

I found the people with “less glamorous” jobs to be some of more entertaining inteviews. For example, Johnny “from Connecticut” (he didn’t want to give his last name) is a ticket hustler working the streets around Fenway Park, in Boston. Johnny was a kick to listen to as he described getting into his profession and how competitive his job can be. There’s also Chris Hanson, aka “Bernie Brewer,” talking about how hot and stinky it gets inside his mascot uniform while having to deal with intoxicated fans in the late innings of a game.

These kinds of workers rarely are interviewed so they were excited to share fascinating and gritty details about their day at work.

O’Shea: Was the book well received by those that you interviewed? Anyone tough to get things out of?

Jones: Generally, the ushers, vendors, groundskeepers—those who rarely speak with the media—spoke freely and easily. The coaches usually were quickly entertaining, informative, and chatty. Front office staff tended to be guarded initially, seemingly concerned how their words might reflect on their teams; while players commonly were at first sensitive about how an interview might reflect on them personally.

I explained to each person that I wasn’t seeking controversy; rather I wanted to talk about baseball and their jobs. I wasn’t looking for a story; I was looking for their story. We talked primarily about three questions: What do you do for a living? How did you get into this line of work? What does the job mean to you? From there, we simply talked.

Since the book was released in April 2008, it has been well received by the people interviewed. They’ve told me they appreciate how honestly their words are reflected in the book.

O’Shea: Anyone that you really wanted for the book that you just couldn’t get on the same page with?

Jones: At first, I wasn’t sure how I would carry out the interviews with managers, coaches, and players because I knew they generally only give the media a few minutes of conversation—for a quick quote to a newspaper beat writer or a sound bite to a radio interviewer. I needed at least 30 minutes for my work. Most interviews lasted 60 to 90 minutes.

These interviews all were conducted either in a team’s clubhouse or dugout before a game, while they were preparing for that day’s game so sometimes it was difficult engaging a player or a manager in this kind of book. They already were on the job working, whether it was going over scouting reports, getting ready for batting practice, or maybe finishing stretching. I had to build trust immediately, or an interview wouldn’t happen.

It was difficult only a couple of times to get a lengthy interview. For example, I was told by Boston Red Sox staff that Alex Cora agreed to be interviewed. A few hours before a night game, I approached Alex as was getting dressed for batting practice. About three minutes into the interview he said, “This isn’t working for me.” I understood and appreciated his honesty because he realized that the oral history format of the book would take longer than the brief quote he might typically give to a newspaper beat reporter.

There also was third baseman Jeff Cirillo who asked teasingly what I was doing in the Milwaukee Brewers’ clubhouse, and later stopped me on his way to the field to volunteer an impromptu interview about the reason he wears a tattered T-shirt that reads “No More Stinking Tacos,” under his uniform top (it has to do with a time when he joined a team in Mexico under the assumed name of Jake Taylor—a fictional player in the movie Major League—so he could rid himself of a toe-tap habit that nearly ruined his hitting career. Cirillo and I tried to meet again—this time after he signed with the Minnesota Twins—but he was too rushed to complete the interview because he preparing for that day’s game, being interrupted by a reporter and other players, eating a sandwich, and at the same time, trying to focus on our conversation.

O’Shea: How did you do a lot of the interviews? Phone, email, in-person?

Jones: All but two interviews were held face to face, usually in clubhouses and dugouts for the managers, coaches, and players. For example, the first half of the two-part interview with Ron Jackson occurred in the summer of 2006 when he was the hitting coach for the Boston Red Sox. We sat in the stands, on the first base side, at Fenway Park. After his contract was not renewed by the Sox at the end of the season, I caught up with him the next year to talk about his new job with the Triple-A Round Rock Express. This time, we sat on metal folding chairs in a parking lot, at a minor league stadium. Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy invited me to his house where he gave the first interview for the book. When ticket hustler Johnny “from Connecticut” heard someone wanted to talk about his trade, he unexpectedly appeared on Brookline Avenue in Boston during the early innings of a Mets-Red Sox interleague game. While he was on the road, umpire Fieldin Culbreth agreed to meet in his hotel room to talk about calling balls and strikes. Padres’ CEO Sandy Alderson spoke on the field during batting practice at PETCO Park before a game against the Mariners. Bob Watson talked while we sat in the commissioner’s office in New York on a late Friday afternoon. And Philadelphia sports talk show host Howard Eskin took time before his afternoon show, and during commercial breaks while on the air, to describe what he does for a living.

I interviewed Bob Boone of the Washington Nationals and architect Joe Spear by phone.

Tim O’Shea: When you found out Waid was stepping down from the Flash, what was it mainly that attracted you to the assignment?

Tom Peyer: I’ve loved The Flash since I was a kid, so that’s all I needed right there. I also really enjoy writing characters people outside of comics have heard of. I hope you never have to explain R.E.B.E.L.S. ’94 to your dental hygienist, because it’s a pain. So thanks, Flash, for being pretty well-known.

Also: the writers before me–particularly Mark Waid and Geoff Johns–made him such a fully-realized character. It’s impossible not to love Wally once you get to know him, and we know him very well.

O’Shea: Reading the solicitations for upcoming issues, the current storyline creates a rift between Jay and Wally. From your perspective how important is the Jay/Wally dynamics to the book?

Peyer: Jay is such a good character, I want to use him as often as I can. I love the idea that he and Wally are both named The Flash and they both patrol the same city. It’s like Starbucks. One on every corner. The dynamic: Wally knows a whole lot but Jay knows even more. While he’s nice and charming about it, Jay doesn’t hesitate to give unasked-for advice. Which isn’t always the best idea. But when you get old, you’ll do it, too.

O’Shea: More than superpowers, supervillains and the average overall spandex challenges, you seem interested in exploring the fears and hurdles of Wally West the parent–am I correct?

Peyer: Yeah. We’ve known him since he was a kid, and now he has kids of his own. His whole trip through life, all of that growth, really makes him human (what’s that, Spidey? Change the subject? No!). So I won’t walk away from that. You know how some new parents seem to experience every little thing as an emergency? Wally and Linda are like that. But they have a good reason. Their kids could super-speed into adulthood tomorrow. Or die of old age. At the beginning of my first story their stress level was already at nine. It’s going to be at ten for awhile.

Having said all of that, I plan on more solo Flash action than you might expect. The twins are still very important, but it won’t be quite the team book that had been envisioned.

O’Shea: What inspired the new character, Spin? Is it, perchance, Bill O’Reilly? And speaking of spin, how did you end up collaborating on Colbert’s Tek Jansen?

Peyer: Not O’Reilly so much; I was thinking more about the straight news segments that are simply there to scare us into staying tuned. Although in Flash #238 I poked a little fun at O’Reilly’s enemy Keith Olbermann, a TV news guy I actually sort of like.

I got into the Colbert project via my co-writer, John Layman, who had been invited to submit a pitch. He thought it would be fun to work together, and it certainly has been for me. He’s the funniest guy in the world. To look at, I mean. Not very witty, though.

Did you know John is a dedicated animal rights activist? Well, he isn’t. But I slipped that into his Wikipedia entry last year. I wrote that he ends all of his comics with “Have your pet spayed or neutered.” Someone eventually deleted that from his entry. Sadly.

O’Shea: Would you like to have a long run (pardon the pun) on Flash, or are you satisfied with doing an arc or two?

Peyer: I’d love to stick around for as long as they’ll have me. Everyone: buy two copies!

O’Shea: Each artist brings a unique vibe or talent to the character of Flash–from your perspective what does Freddie Williams II bring to the Flash with his approach?

Peyer: A lot more energy than I have. He’s a kinetic wonder. Just like The Flash. And he’s in that beautiful career phase in which every issue looks better than the previous. I love following artists when they’re growing (and I sometimes lose interest once they’ve arrived at the point they’re going to occupy forever).

O’Shea: This arc is an effort to comment on TV news–can you still find positive aspects of TV news or has it become a lost cause for you?

Peyer: TV news is the stupidest thing in the world. Bubble-headed, self-promoting, exploitative, manipulative, lazy, manic-depressive, racist. If there are any TV news people reading this: your job is important and you completely effed it up. My comics are more accurate. We don’t need you for anything.

Okay, I’m peeling the foil off my head now. But you asked.

O’Shea: I’ve always respected the work of editor Joan Hilty, how important is she to the creative process on Flash. As a former editor yourself, do you think you collaborate more effectively with editors (moreso) than other writers?

Peyer: I can’t speak to other writers, but I hope I do it well. When I was an assistant editor, I was going over a script with Jamie Delano, a better writer than I’ll ever be. I questioned some story point or other and he said something like, “as long as we can agree on what effect we want to achieve, there are a thousand ways to get there.” Perfect. Generally speaking, the writers who fought for every precious syllable had hacked it out in a single draft. Their defense of the work grew out of an insecurity. But the ones who really understood how to do it wanted to hear any suggestion that would make their stories better.

So I try not to be insecure. Which is good, because Joan is fussy. Which is also good. She thinks about the work very carefully and there’s always a lot of back-and-forth between us over scripts. And we always end up with a better book for it.

O’Shea: How did the gig editing O Holy Cow: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto come about?

Peyer: For the uninitated, it was a book of verse, the contents of which we appropriated from the late Yankee legend/shortstop/broadcaster’s play-by-play. It started as a weekly column in the Village Voice, and that led to the book. The whole thing was my partner Hart Seely‘s idea and it must have been a good one, because Harper just published a new, expanded edition.

O’Shea: As a Yankees fan, do you think Hank Steinbrenner’s mouth/attitude will ever approach the unique level of absurdity his father could reach at times/ How much do you miss Joe Torere?

Peyer: As anyone who follows the White House has learned, the boss’ son is always a worse boss than the boss. Hank is behaving fairly well right now. But as his years and prescriptions increase, he will find a way to run the Yankees into the ground. Maybe forever.