‘THE DAILY ONLINE SPORTS MAGAZINE "Summer of '98: When Homers Flew, Records Fell, and Baseball Reclaimed America" by Mike Lupica (Putnam, $23.95) "The Perfect Season: Why 1998 was Baseball's Greatest Year” by Tim McCarver and Danny Peary (Villard Books, $19.95) "Diamond Chronicles" sno MICLES Edited by Don Zminda (Stats, Inc., $19.95) 3 fe Reviewed by Andrew Milner Sportsiones Magazine ‘August 9, 195 The consensus among sportswriters began to form in June of last year, after David Wells threw a perfect game and Kerry Wood struck out 20 Astros, when Sammy Sosa hit 21 homers in 22 games and Mark McGwire was weeks ahead of Roger Maris, and when the Yankees won and won and won, that 1998 was not just a good baseball season, or even an exciting one, but The Greatest Baseball Season Ever. One can easily imagine New York book publishers inking the contracts even before the All-Star break, to immortalize 1998's place in history. It was easy to understand the good feeling. Baseball books written during the early ‘90s generally painted an apocalyptic view of the game. Peter Gammons's "Coming Apart at the Seams" and John Feinstein’s "Play Ball" presented owners and players in a battle to the death. The strike of 1994 cemented that dark view of baseball's future. In this context, talking about baseball in any sort of reverent way (as the Ken Burns PBS series did, for example) was looked upon with suspicion — that is, until last summer. Mike Lupica and the duo of Tim McCarver and Danny Peary have each written 1998 retrospectives. These two books are engaging, easy reads, and are occasionally observant. But they simplistically reinforce the idea that 1998 was the best of all possible baseball worlds, and that everything that occurred last year happened for the best of all possible reasons. Neither of these books goes beyond the surface of such a season.Readers get no investigation into Mark McGwire's supplemental intake, let along any hint that his 70-homer output might eventually be asterisked. They celebrate the Yankees’ 114-win season (McCarver: "This Yankee team not only wanted to win but knew just how to do it!"; Lupica: "The Yankees had become as much an example as anything about how right things were with baseball."), yet neither book asks whether the filthy rich Yankees represent a new era of the game in which we'll see 114- win seasons more often — and 114-loss seasons. McCarver and Peary's "The Perfect Season" is divided into brief chapters on individual subjects. There are touching tributes to recently deceased Richie Ashbum. (McCarver's one-time broadcast partner), Harry Caray, and Dan Quisenberry. A few chapters focus on the future of such young stars as Kerry Wood and Jason Kendall. But given their experience in the sport, these authors write with astounding naiveté in their predictions, for example, about Wood: "If it turns out he won't pitch long enough to make the Hall of Fame, then at least he'll give fans a lot of thrills. And, fitting for a shooting star, he'll go out in a blaze of glory. If [this] flamethrower is destined to burn himself out, then so be it." As if pitchers should risk injury and career longevity for "thrills." And they believe Jason Kendall is the next Johnny Bench: "Rarely in baseball history has a catcher been referred to as a great all-around player, but at a young age Kendall is almost there." Be grateful McCarver and Peary aren't investing your 401(K) money with the same recklessness. Lupica presents a season-long narrative punctuated with notes he wrote to his young sons during the McGwire- Sosa home run race ("Dear Zack-o: He did it! No. 62, baby! Your dad"), along with his own memories of the Mantle-Maris race of 1961. Stories about how baseball unites the generations have been done before, most notably by Roger Kahn in "The Boys of Summer” and "Memories of Summer." Lupica isn't quite in Kahn's league, and occasionally he, as McCarver and Peary do, lapses into meaningless baseball romanticism. Lupica celebrates Darryl Strawberry's joining the 1998 Yankees, seemingly free of off-field problems: "Once he symbolized everything that was wrong with baseball, all the arrogance and excesses and selfishness of the modern athlete, all the ones who had been blessed with this kind of talent and then tried to throw it away with both hands. But now it was as if the magic of the season had touched Darryl Strawberry too. What could possibly go wrong for him now?" One hopes "Zack-o" won't later bedisappointed to learn of Strawberry's humiliating arrest in the spring of 1999. But Lupica is to be credited for several fine vignettes in “Summer of '98," especially an interview with Matt Williams. In August of 1994, Williams led the major leagues with 43 home runs. On August 12, the strike began, and Matt's run at 62 homers ended. Lupica notes that Williams had grown to accept that his one shot at immortality was gone, just as Mac and Sammy jostled their way past Ruth and Maris. This chapter is reminiscent of George Plimpton's 1974 account of Hank Aaron's pursuit of #715, "One for the Record," in showing the human side to a statistical chase. Where the above two books get lost in excessive rhapsodizing about baseball's allure, the one truly satisfying account of the 1998 season, "Diamond Chronicles," gets down to the nuts and bolts - Sosa won the MVP award, but was he really more valuable than McGwire? How long could Kerry Wood pitch? Who's going to hit 756 home runs? 800? "Diamond Chronicles" is a collection of material from the America Online website for STATS (a sports data service co-founded by Bill James), beginning with excerpts from STATS interoffice email from early 1998 to early 1999. While reading private electronic correspondence might make you feel like an amateur Ken Starr, you get great informal discussions of hot baseball topics. Just as McCarver and Peary went crazy over Kerry Wood's 20-K performance, the STATS gang was less optimistic: Bill James predicted in May, "I'd bet that he doesn't win 100 games in his career." This section is like a great college bull session, where anything's fair game. (James's comment on Sinatra's death? "Frank Sinatra's publicist has just announced that he is planning another comeback.) There's even a discussion of great sports- related movies, such as "Raging Bull,""Cobb," and "Brian's Song." The book is filled out with selections from STATS columns from analysts Jim Henzler, Mat Olkin, and Don Zminda. These writers offer consistently well-researched and accessible pieces. In his May 7 column, Zminda ranks the top 10 greatest pitching performances ever; Wood's masterpiece ranks 3rd. Olkin's article dated January 12 of this year describes how Wood's workload led to his possibly career-ending elbow injury. And one Henzler piece convincingly argues that Mac deserved the MVP over Sosa."The Perfect Season" and "Summer of '98" are well- intentioned, well-written books, books meant to be drunk in quickly, like cheap wine. "Diamond Chronicles" is a book you're meant to pour into a beer glass and drink right now with a group of your buddies. While the books by Lupica and McCarver and Peary are at times admirable, | enjoyed more the unpretentious approach of the STATS team. Andrew Milner is a writer and editor in Philadelphia.