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A Yankee Book Review
by SG

The Yankees blew a chance to steal a win last night, as a shaky Al Leiter somehow held the Twins to one run over five innings where he allowed 13 baserunners and threw 115 pitches. Johan Santana was not particularly sharp, but managed to hold the Yankees scoreless over seven innings. The Yankee bullpen blew any chance at a comeback by allowing 6 runs over 4 innings. It was just one of those games where the team never really had a chance to win. With a day game scheduled to start at 1:05, the Yankees will hope to do better against Joe Mays. They'll have to, because odds are that Aaron Small will give up a few runs.

Changing topics,

A Yankee book review

As baseball fans in general, and Yankee fans in particular, many of us grew up dreaming of playing in the majors. Unfortunately, without the physical talent to do so, we were stuck watching the game, either from the stands or on television. However, there are some who were lucky enough to be more involved with the Yankees, despite not playing for them.

Matthew McGough is one of these people. Matthew grew up watching the Yankees of the early 80s, and had a poster of Don Mattingly on his wall. He took the initiative to write a letter to most of the Yankees front office to apply for a position as a bat boy. To his surprise, he was hired for the 1992 season.

Matthew details his stories from two years in the clubhouse and dugout of the 1992 and 1993 Yankees in his book, Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age with the New York Yankees from Random House. From his first day, where he got to meet his idol Mattingly who sent him running around on a wild goose chase, to his last day where he watched the Yankees edge Detroit 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning, Matthew shares shares his stories.

I enjoyed this book very much, as it provided some insight into players as people, not just statistics or what we see on the field. It was great to see that Mattingly's reputation as a great guy was based in fact. Matthew also got to see the arrival of people like Bernie Williams, and was there the day 18 year old draft pick Derek Jeter came to Yankee Stadium for the first time and was too shy to hang out with the players, instead hanging out with the bat boys in the clubhouse.

The author also shares details of his life outside of baseball, but the bulk of this book has to do with the stories of his life in the dugout and clubhouse, including his story of Old Timers' day.

I would recommend this book to any Yankee fan who remembers the 1992-1993 Yankees and wants to read a little bit about the players outside their stat lines. Matthew has graciously volunteered to do a question and answer session with any of our readers, so if you have questions about players or general baseball stuff feel free to post them or email them to me, and I will forward them on to Matthew. He has also offered to give away a signed copy of his book to one of our readers.

You can purchase Bat Boy from this link and also read an excerpt of his book here.

--posted at 11:10 AM by SG / |

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