An Interview With Jim Brosnan
This article was written by Richard Johnson
This article was published in The SABR Review of Books
This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).
James Patrick Brosnan was a baseball pioneer. A tall righthanded pitcher of average ability, he spent most of his career pitching for the Cubs, Cardinals, and Reds. Known as the “Professor” because of his habit of smoking a pipe while he read, the bespectacled Brosnan made his mark as the first baseball player to write honestly about the game from the inside. His first book, The Long Season, is considered a classic because it was the first book to relate what it was really like to play in the big leagues. Brosnan related his experiences in an insightful yet humorous journal format. He uses this same format in his second book, Pennant Race, which deals with his stint with the 1961 National League champion Cincinnati Reds. Both works have served as the inspiration for countless player journals starting with Ball Four. To date none of Brosnan’s imitators have brought the same sensitivity and literary skill to their work. It is also worth noting that Brosnan never enlisted the aid of a ghostwriter, which places him nearly alone among ballplayers whose names appear on bookjackets. I recently spoke with Brosnan via telephone from his home in suburban Chicago.
Q. When did you begin to write and when did writing become a vocation for you?
A. Well, I first wrote when I was in school. I recall having a history teacher in high school for whom I wrote a paper in the first person. He ended up liking it so much he read it to the class and then notified my English teacher about my work. Following this recognition I began to write freelance pieces for myself outside of class. I began keeping a journal the winter I was drafted into the army which I continued throughout my hitch.
Q. Were you inspired by any particular writers or books?
A. Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway with Hemingway first, although I don’t admire him as much now. I inherited a library which includes most of Twain’s work. If anyone has had a strong influence over me it has been Twain.
Q. As a kid in Cincinnati were you a regular reader of the sports page and publications like The Sporting News?
A. I was a regular reader of everything. I spent as much time in the library as on the baseball diamond (baseball being the only sport I played).
Q. Was this encouraged by your parents?
A. My mother encouraged my reading not my father. In fact he disliked the fact that I spent so much time reading. I remember he once found me reading on the couch at around midnight and tossed a baseball rulebook in my direction and suggested that I should be reading it instead. This happened when I was sixteen and about to sign a professional contract.
Q. Who were some of your heroes while growing up in Cincinnati?
A. I could only visit Crosley Field when I walked there. My weekly allowance of ten cents only allowed me one way trolley fare. On Saturday afternoons my knothole gang membership came in handy as it got me free admission to the ballgame.
Q. Is there a culture of baseball in Cincinnati?
A. No doubt about it. I was fortunate to grow up in the Western Hills section of town where Joe Hawk, a local elementary school principal, selected the best players from Elder and Western Hills High Schools for his champion American Legion teams. My neighborhood must have produced over two dozen major league players, plus many more who signed professional contracts and played in the minors.
Q. Was there any specific player you patterned yourself after or did you let your skills develop on their own?
A. It was more of a self-made thing. I would go to Crosley Field to observe what the players did in order to ape it. I wouldn’t recommend this to kids. No doubt I could have used a coach. Joe Hawk was an organizer and recruiter, not a coach. He had a marvelous eye for baseball talent and as a result his Bentley Post Legion teams made the national finals for something like six straight seasons. I ended up playing on a national finalist in 1946 with Western Hills neighbors Don Zimmer and Jim Frey.
Q. That must have been a great atmosphere from which to launch a pro career.
A. I played with so many great players while growing up. Competition such as national championship games was great preparation for the minor and major leagues.
Q. Do your baseball friends still view you as “The Professor” and do your writing friends view you as “the ballplayer”?
A. I’ve been to a couple of Old Timers’ games and I was surprised to find myself welcomed as an ex-ballplayer, not as a writer. When I left baseball I was much more perceived as a ballplayer who wrote. Writers think of me more as a writer than ex-player.
Q. Is there a community of writers in Chicago who meet on a regular basis and are you a part of such a group?
A. There probably is such a group but no, I don’t belong to it. I sometimes am asked to appear as a resident sports person on a show entitled, “Chicago Tonight.” Generally I appear on panels comprised entirely of writers.
Q. What inspired you to write The Long Season? Did you approach an editor or vice versa?
A. It was a combination of both. I had written a couple of pieces for Sports Illustrated and had prepared a third about the trip the Cardinals had made to Japan. For some reason the third piece didn’t work out. On my way to spring training I decided to stop in New York to find out why my piece on the Japanese tour didn’t work I met with Bob Creamer who explained things to me and also met with Robert Boyle, who as assistant editor at Sports Illustrated had introduced me to the magazine in the first place. Boyle suggested that I meet with a friend of his who was an editor at Harper and Row because there was a notion that I could possibly write a book bringing the same perspective to the game which I had in my articles. Since Harper and Row was only nine blocks south of the Time-Life building I met with Evan Thomason, the executive editor there, for twenty minutes and emerged with a book contract. There was no advance, nothing except an agreement that I’d supply them with fifty pages by the end of spring training … which I did.
Q. Was there anything that had been written by a ballplayer until then to which you could compare your work?
A. As I look back on it Christy Mathewson wrote Pitching in a Pinch, although it would have been better if he’d left the writing to somebody else.
Q. Did you carry a notebook or tape recorder with you during the season?
A. Early in my career I’d bring a record player along on road trips and later on I received stares from teammates when I carried a briefcase of books on road trips. However I didn’t use a tape recorder to take notes or record conversations. … I did use a notebook and carried one with me at all times.
Q. How did your teammates react to The Long Season?
A. I can’t recall anyone, save for Jay Hook, who liked the book enough to tell me. The immediate reaction from Larry Jackson and Ken Boyer was that such books shouldn’t be written. Jackson reasoned that I wasn’t a good enough pitcher to write a book. His inference was that I hadn’t been around long enough to tell the story. Jackson and I had roomed together at one time. A couple of years after the book’s publication he had been traded to the Cubs and I was working in television in Chicago. We kind of hashed things out one night at the Kon Tiki over some Polynesian food and many Mai Tais. He thought that I had gone too far in describing what was “inside.” Of course I know that I didn’t because both books were primarily filled with my thoughts and no one else’s. Gino Cimoli really thought I had ripped him in Pennant Race and told my roommate Howard Nunn that he would never forgive me. However, it took only two martinis at the Rendezvous bar in Cincinnati for him to realize I hadn’t written anything about him that hadn’t been written before by other writers.
Q. Where did you draw the line regarding reporting the extra-curricular activities of your teammates?
A. Well, two things — sex, except where I was concerned and profanity as used in the clubhouse. I didn’t think it was appropriate for the book. It’s not that I’m a prude or didn’t use such language myself. First and foremost was my desire to write a funny book. It was not meant to be either sensational or revealing in that sense. I was trying to be entertaining about a subject I felt had been mistreated at the hands of ghostwriters. The life that we led had not been truly represented in print. Even the good writers had held off from writing the truth in order to preserve their relationship with the ballclubs.
Q. I know that you admired Dick Young for his pioneering method of reporting from the clubhouse rather than from the cozy protection of the press box.
A. I liked the idea that this guy was going to report what actually happened instead of staying away from the players and manufacturing quotes. Many writers such as Edgar Munzel in Chicago would quote ballplayers without even speaking to them. I personally didn’t like Young but I did appreciate the fact that he tried to get the facts in his work.
Q. Did management view The Long Season in a negative light? Did it influence contract negotiations or have a negative effect on the length of your career?
A. The answers to your questions are yes, yes, and yes! I did a series of interviews with Bing Devine two years ago and he was still very upset by the book. Several weeks before publication Sports Illustrated, which had the serial rights to the book, printed the first few chapters which dealt with my contract dealings with Devine. I remember that Joe Reichler and Joe Garagiola both called me a traitor to baseball. Garagiola and I have since worked things out. I lost a big contract to write an hour-long television show because Bill DeWitt of the Reds forbade me unless he was granted absolute censorship power over my work.
Q. What would the show have been about?
A. Basically my views towards spring training. You might remember a show that featured Sam Huff which I believe was called “The Violent World of Sam Huff” which featured a remote camera following him during the course of a game. Well, this program was going to be produced in the same manner. The producer, Gerald Greer; was shocked that DeWitt wanted to censor the program simply because I had written the book the previous season. It ended up costing me four thousand bucks which is exactly the amount Dewitt had been trying to cut from my salary in the form of a 25 percent cut. When I was released I contacted all the ballclubs and the only owner who expressed any interest whatsoever was Charlie Finley.
Q. In subsequent years have some of the people who were initially critical or vindictive changed their minds towards you and the book?
A. Many baseball people still get me mixed up with Jim Bouton. Unfortunately the two names are so similar. Luke Appling couldn’t tell the difference; he kept calling me Bouton at an Old Timers’ Game.
Q. Do you know Jim Bouton and has he ever indicated that he was inspired by your work?
A. No, I know he wasn’t. The guy who was inspired was the guy who wrote the book (Leonard Shecter). (Brosnan laughs.)
Q. Bouton’s role in the creation of Ball Four was to send tapes to Shecter for transcription and editing?
A. Right.
Q. In crafting your books did you try to write something every day?
A. Very likely if I heard something interesting I’d write it down right away — even in the john if I had to. No one could tell what I was doing because I was always writing things down. For the first book people didn’t care but for the second book players were approaching me with suggestions. I’d take my notebook to the bullpen with the expectation that players would call me aside and say, “Hey, here’s one for ya, Broz.”
Q. What did you think of Ball Four?
A. I knew the book would be funny but I also knew that I would’ve been offended if the book had been written about me and my teammates.
Q. I’m sure you’ve seen the sign that hangs in most baseball clubhouses which proclaims, “All that you see here, what you say here, let it stay here when you leave here.” Your thoughts on this message?
A. The year after The Long Season was published they had enlarged that sign in the visitors’ clubhouse in Milwaukee from the size of a sheet of letterhead to a three foot by two foot placard. I knew this was directed at yours truly.
Q. What is it about pitchers which make them the best participating chroniclers of the game?
A. Pitchers think more, they analyze more and spend more time thinking about what they’re going to do. They are constantly projecting themselves into situations.
Q. Did you ever sympathize with the plight of the beat reporter under deadline or were you more a critic of their work?
A. I remember encountering a young reporter from the Daily News who was pressed for a story and was coming up dry. I tried to help him but couldn’t come up with anything and felt terrible as a result. More often than not I felt a contempt for those writers who quoted players to whom they never spoke. … I felt this was very low.
Q. Who do you admire among today’s baseball writers?
A. I love Roger Angell and enjoy Bob Verdi, he’s very good. Verdi not only writes for the Chicago Tribune but has two radio shows and writes books. Tom Boswell has a good sense of the game as does Peter Gammons. Jon Margolis from Chicago is also very good and has a sense of humor.
Q. Can you explain the current boom in baseball publishing?
A. I’ll quote Margolis: ‘There are too goddamned many bad books about baseball.” I suppose baseball books sell better than football, basketball, or hockey books or the publishers wouldn’t print them. Baseball fans are also more likely to read about their sport.
Q. What are your favorite baseball books?
A. (Brosnan moves the phone to maneuver himself near his bookshelf.) Well, The Boys of Summer was great as was The Life That Ruth Built. Hardball by Bowie Kuhn (pause) … I hated it! I liked Bill Brashler’s book on the Negro leagues [The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings] and I seem to have everything by Angell and Boswell.
Q. Have you read any of Bill James’ books?
A. Only a few articles, but I haven’t read any of his books. I’m not a numbers guy. I don’t think statistics prove a hell of a lot. This may sound like a knock on SABR but it isn’t.
Q. Was one of your books more fun to write than the other?
A. I thought Pennant Race was better written, a view no one else seems to hold. I enjoyed writing it more as it was more fun playing for a winner than a loser. I haven’t had a reason to read both in a while but I still feel Pennant Race was smoother and more revealing about myself. However, Long Season was funnier.
Q. Have you ever read any of the other player journal books other than Ball Four?
A. I was very disappointed with Graig Nettles’ book (Balls). He is a funny man who seemed to allow his writer (Peter Golenbock) to write the book without his personal editing. He should have been able to write a very funny book but it didn’t come off at all. On the other hand, Sparky Lyle’s book (The Bronx Zoo) was much better than I had expected.
Q. What is it about clubs like the Red Sox and Cubs which inspires writers?
A. It must be the history of failure. They try and try and fail. This appeals to people because we all experience failure more than success.
Q. What future writing can we expect from ]im Brosnan?
A. Well, I’m still working on a novel I promised Harper and Row twenty-five years ago. My editor still sends me a Christmas card asking for his book! I’m less willing to spend time writing now because I enjoy reading more.
Q. In your opinion has there ever been any first-rate fiction written about baseball?
A. Bang the Drum Slowly is very good in the way it captures the way baseball people talk and look at each other. The Natural is great myth but Malamud apparently knew very little about baseball. I like to think that Robert Coover’s Universal Baseball Association is the kind of book I could’ve written if I hadn’t pursued a professional baseball career.