Say Hey, that Willie Mays still hasn't grown up

Willie Mays says 'Hey'
when he finally gets up

Sports writer and columnist Gerald Eskanazi went on to become a sports and general life biography/autobio ghostwriter.

And, shock me!

Athletes aren't all they're fluffed up to be, even long after retirement.

Eskanazi ghosted Carl Yastremski's bio, and also ghosted the original ghostwriter on Willie Mays' bio. 

Shades of one of Tricky Dick Nixon's most famous utterances, he's a "ghostwriter's ghostwriter"!

He gives some dish here at CJR.

First, about Willie:

After mailing the final chapter to his agent, I left for San Diego and the Super Bowl. That’s where I got a call at my hotel from Willie’s agent, suggesting the “mensch” chapter—“to show how he’s grown as a person, how he’s learned to accept a different kind of responsibility now that he’s no longer an athlete.” 

That sounded like a fine idea. For the first time, I was given Willie’s phone number. ... I called Willie, and he was enthusiastic about talking about his post-baseball career. ... But I had been around enough athletes to know how to stroke him and to be empathetic. So he told me how he failed to keep appointments, bemoaning the fact he had lost a $100,000-a-year job as an official greeter at a Las Vegas casino because of lateness; of how he no longer could rely on the club to give him a wake-up call to get somewhere or to make his travel plans. But he sounded to me as if he’d come to grips with those difficulties, and to my surprise he readily agreed tp pick me up around noon on Tuesday at the airport near Carmel, CA.

Well, having read two bios of Mays (neither one of them Esternazi's "deep-ghosted" one), I know the reclusive part is true.

I also find it funny as hell talking about an African-American from the Deep South becoming a "mensch."

That said, had Willie grown up?

Erm, not ’zactly:

I arrived there ready to meet the new, responsible Willie. Ten, 15, 20 minutes after landing I looked around. No Willie. 

Half an hour later, I called him. 

“Willie?” I said. 

“Who’s this? he replied. 

“Jerry. Jerry Eskenazi,” I said. 

“Who?”

I explained I was the guy who was writing his book, and where was he? He got a bit agitated. He complained he had just gotten up, he had things to do, he had this and he had that. I told him there were no cabs around. I didn’t even know where he was staying. He agreed to pick me up.

I'm also not surprised by this.

Yaz just said 'Fuck it.'

Yaz? Things start out great.

Yastrzemski, on the other hand, was eager to talk and to meet. … 

A major theme of the book was his work ethic—how he had gotten up early working the family’s onion farm on Long Island as a kid; how he tried to beef up his smallish frame. When the book came out, we did a book-signing at the flagship Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue, and it was the biggest event in the store’s history. We did some radio and TV shows in New York as well. The contract called for him to do eight interviews.

So far, so good. Well, don't count those chickens, Jerry!

Because they don't often hatch:

After our whirlwind tour, I drove him to the LaGuardia shuttle to catch a flight to do Larry King’s radio show in Washington, his eighth interview. After that, I hoped, would be even more of Yaz’s lucrative book signings and appearances in Boston—sure to sell a ton of books. 

“Tell me, Jerry,” said Yaz, who was pocketing more than $100,000 as an up-front advance. “How many books do we have to sell to start getting royalties?”
I told him, about 40,000. 

“Fuck it,” was his literary reply. “We’ll never sell that many. I don’t think I’ll do any more appearances.”

Also, for readers who think non-fiction books are a huge seller, this should be a reality check. And, for editors, as well as authors or ghosts, who dream of bucking the trend? That's why Barnes and Noble has those stands and buckets of $5 remaindered books.

So, kids, and kids at heart? Don't believe the PR that's called an "as told to" or is in any other way a ghostwritten book, sports or otherwise.

And, that's part of the big issue. 

Besides that, as the book publishing industry cuts corners almost as much as newspapers, ghostwriters will get paid less and less, and in the future, they'll be doing Skype or Google Hangouts to visit with the subjects of their ghosting. 

No more freebie golf trips to Carmel!

Counterfactual history: Taft wins in 1952

Robert A. Taft/Wikipedia photo

Just how much different would American history have been in Robert A. Taft, not Dwight D. Eisenhower, gotten the Republican presidential nomination in 1952, then gone on to beat Adlai Stevenson in the general election?

A lot in at least a few ways, and at least moderately different in a number of ways. For the sake of this counterfactual story, I am also going to assume that cancer does not kill him in 1953.

First, the lot of organized labor might actually be better. You may be saying “Huh?” if you recognize Bob Taft as one half of the Taft-Hartley anti-labor bill. But, by two or three years after it had been passed, he reportedly thought it had swung the pendulum too far, especially in terms of the amount of government intervention involved, and actually tried to modify it. However, the House and Senate couldn’t agree on one version.

So, +1 for Taft so far vs. Ike.

Second, we likely would not have a military-industrial complex. He would have gotten an end to the Korean War on the same terms as Ike and then, per his libertarian tendencies, would have fought to end the military draft. Along with that, he would have fought to cut general defense spending.

Now +2 for Taft.

Third, we wouldn’t have had the Cold War, at least not in the same degree. Again, in part due to his libertarian stance on many issues, he was not a fan of the Red Scare. Along with that, he would have cut Joe McCarthy off at the pass long before Ike did.

Let’s call it +3.

Fourth, Earl Warren likely wouldn’t be chief justice. As Dewey did in 1948, Taft in 1952 probably would have named him, not Dick Nixon, as Veep. That, in turn, affects the future Supreme Court hugely. And, it affects the civil rights movement along with it.

Oops, we’re back to +2.

Fifth, Taft would have at least tried to fulfill his pledge to roll back the New Deal. He probably wouldn’t have been completely successful, but probably would have gotten enough Southern Democrats to roll back fair portions of it. Social Security, even, might have been trimmed. It certainly wouldn’t have been expanded to include people like farmers, as Ike did in blatant GOP politicking.

Now, we’re back to +1, if that.

Now, some political futures.

First, I’m going to assume that Taft not only is not killed by cancer in 1953, but serves out his full term and is renominated.

However, the anti-New Deal push, plus Cold War fears being ratcheted up by Democrats, make him vulnerable. Stevenson is seen as damaged goods, since he didn’t lose to a war hero like Ike, just to Taft. So, who do the Dems choose?

Maybe Averill Harriman, who actually got last-minute backing from Harry Truman in the real 1956 Democratic race? Or Estes Kefauver wins after all? I’ll hypothetically say Harriman, with Eastern Establishment members of both parties backing him, to beat Taft.

But, with a Democrat now in the White House … the push for civil rights (with no unanimous Brown ruling of 1954 because of no Chief Justice Warren) heats up, and winds up making Harriman vulnerable in 1960.

That, in turn, leads to a more nuanced version of the 1964 GOP primaries getting moved up to 1960. Many Republicans favor Rocky, but others rally to Goldwater because an all-New Yorker race seems off-putting. (Dick Nixon is toiling away in the Senate still.) Goldwater gets the nod, loses to Harriman, but not as badly as to LBJ.

Result? No big mandate for a Great Society or a massive civil rights push.

Having way failed to get the presidential nomination for son Jack in 1956, Joe Kennedy tells his son to wait until 1964 rather than challenge the incumbent president in 1960 in a Democratic party battle. Jack, faithful to the legacy of his stroke-incapacitated dad in 1964, runs himself, but without all of h is dad’s connections, has to cut a deal with LBJ on the second ballot to get the nomination.

With civil rights on a speeding –up slow burn in 1964, and a Massachusetts senator seen as uncaring and a Texas senator seen as a southern racist, Rocky gets the GOP nod, wins handily, and serves two terms, with Nixon as Veep.

The Kennedys never get the same legacy as in real life. Bobby loses to Humphrey in the 1972 primaries. The Hump beats Nixon who, under the eye of Rocky, can’t do too many dirty tricks.

I won’t extend my alternative history further than that, but it’s an interesting concept at least.

Let’s not forget this could have a second option — Taft dies in presidential office of his cancer after all, and Earl Warren becomes president.

Happy 100th, HHH

Better to celebrate Hubert Humphrey's birth centennial than Ronald Reagan's. Rick Perlstein wonders why the anniversary is largely being ignored.

In a word, Rick: Vietnam.

In two words vs. one word: "real liberalism" (overall) vs. "neoliberalism."

The real tragedy, more than him losing to Nixon in 1968? Him losing the nomination to Jimmy Carter in 1976, then Carter eulogizing "Hubert Horatio Hornblower" four years later.

Krugman is right that period, 1974-76 or so, marks the start of neoliberalism and the real start of increasing wage inequality.

Bush and Buchanan — the parallels

Many people rate Andrew Johnson the nation's worst president. He undermined the start of Reconstruction, was openly racist, and had such a huge ego as to claim once that it was god's design to have Abraham Lincoln assassinated so he, Johnson, could become president.

Well, among the professional historian types, Lincoln's other "bookend," James Buchanan, often is ranked second-worst. And, to the unacceptability of many modern Republicans in general, let alone neocons, wingnuts, etc., George W. Bush is given a spot in the bottom five, even if not specifically ranked.

Glenn LaFantasie, in a Presidents' Day argument that Buchanan should actually be No. 1, also notes the parallels between him and W., starting with two of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history — Dred Scott, which Buchanan knew about in advance and had bullied one Northern justice into signing off on, and Bush v. Gore.

No, Sean Wilentz, Grant was NOT all that

I get tired of professional historians, who should know better, who claim President Grant was such a stalwart defender of Reconstruction. Only in terms of the soft bigotry of low expectations of comparison with Andrew Johnson was he so.

Simply not true in general. The bits of truth that are there were largely from Grant's first term. By a year or so into his second term, he was already largely abandoning Southern blacks to their fate.

RIP Howard Zinn

Good-bye to a man who told the truth about American histoyr.

China being removed from Nixon?

Or, at least, reshuffled. Controversy over statues of China's Communist leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai inside the Nixon Library is all part of its transition from private control to coming under the operation of the National Archives, like other presidential libraries.

What the story says about its private owners "spinning" Tricky Dick's legacy is totally true. I was there less than a month after Mark Felt outed himself as Deep Throat, and the library had not a word about it.

Remember Spaniards and Indians on Fourth

The Spaniards, at the time of the American Revolution, actually had more social freedoms than the 13 colonies/states. Treatment of slaves was less harsh and more defined under law. And, they weren’t “papist thugs.”

So, that’s your anti-jingoistic message for the Fourth of July this year, my American friends.

Ranking the presidents: This blogger's view

Ranking the presidents

Since it’s a popular task for both armchair and more professional historians, I’m going to wade into the battle myself.

Presidents are ranked by numeric order and given a letter grade on the standard A-F scale, including pluses and minuses. Contra historical writing, since I’m analyzing presidents, not presidencies, Cleveland’s two presidencies are lumped under one rating.

1. Abraham Lincoln, A+. I don’t believe in perfection, but Lincoln comes very close. I don’t strongly denigrate his early views on race, but do note he was a moderate, not a true progressive, when coming to the White House. But, he evolved and grew, including through his personal meetings with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass. My final comment quotes Secretary of War Edwin Stanton: “He belongs to the ages.”

2. George Washington. A. He set the tenor for the office of the presidency, being amongst the people without being too much of the people, something that Reagan recognized but Carter and Clinton didn’t; the same can be said of many members of the House in Washington’s own day. My one minor knock is his adding “so help me God” to the oath of office, thereby giving the “civic religion” so beloved by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia its first bit of nose under the camel’s tent.

3. FDR. A. I can’t see any other Democratic candidate in 1928 — certainly not either Al Smith or John Nance Garner — handling the Depression nearly as well as Roosevelt did. The only major fault is that he didn’t think of a national health insurance plan at the same time as Social Security, which of course wasn’t his original idea anyway.

4. TR. A-/B+. Though not an actual bigot, his less than fully-enlightened (for his day) racial attitudes, as exemplified in the Brownsville Army incident, knock him off the A pedestal.

5. Ike. B+. I think Eisenhower deserves more of his modern reassessment than what Truman got more than a decade ago. Yes, it’s easy to skewer Levittown, duck and drop nuclear bomb drills in schools, and such, but, Ike was prescient about the military-industrial complex, in possibly the best farewell message besides Washington’s, kept those duck and drop practices from ever having to become real, and presided over the economic boom times that allowed Levittown and suburbia.

6. James Monroe. B. He stayed under the radar screen, didn’t screw anything up, and got Quincy Adams to pen the Monroe Doctrine.

7. LBJ. B/B-. In his own words, that “bitch of a war,” which knocked the props from beneath the Great Society, keeps him from being in the top five. Nonetheless, as Republican hacks have shown today with politicizing the so-called “War on Terror,” LBJ’s fears of being tarred with the label of “first president to lose a war” weren’t to be taken lightly.

8. Carter. B/B-. A president of integrity and principle on a variety of domestic political issues, he got pummeled for it. Doesn’t get his share of credit for fall of the Soviet Union, as he started the “Reagan” defense build-up. Not ranked higher due to lack of political flexibility and acumen.

9. James K. Polk. B/B-. If we’re ranking him solely on morals, the way he provoked war with Mexico would get him severely dinged. But, as far as achieving the goals he proclaimed in 1844, he hit a grand slam. A B seems like a compromise, if we don’t look too hard at the slavery issue.

10. Hayes. B-. Elected president in 1876 by a bipartisan commission of SCOTUS justices and Congressmen, that just “happened” to break 8-7 on party lines, he restored integrity after the Grant corruption years and by promising not to run for re-election. Nonetheless, he got his hands tied by GOP agreement to end Reconstruction — which the Grant Administration had been phasing out anyway.

11. Jefferson. B-. Ranked lower than other presidents based on presidential years only. Louisiana Purchase was given to him, not initiated by him; the Lewis and Clark voyage was originally, in essence, espionage. His embargo on American commerce during the Napoleonic wars wrecked New England’s economy and he was basically clueless. Other high points, though, for submitting to a Supreme Court ruling defining the bounds of executive privilege, and getting the Adams-era Alien and Sedition Acts repealed. Gets dinged further for presidential and post-presidential retreat from earlier views on slavery-related issues.

12. Truman. B-. High marks for desegregating the Army and for how he handled MacArthur, though European allies in the Korean War had hoped for even swifter action. But, his domestic accomplishments were modest, and his administration was marred by the worst cronyism in hiring since Grant. Ranked lower than other B- presidents because of the integrity issue.

13. Kennedy B-. Let’s puncture the myth of Camelot. He blew the Bay of Pigs by not either going all-in, including air support, or else scrubbing it. His post-Pigs obsession with Castro gets him dinged, as does the illicit sex, not on account of the sex itself, but for ditching the nuclear “football” while doing so. Pluses for calm in handling the Cuban missile crisis and offering inspiration to a younger generation.

14. Taft. B-/C+. Yes, he did initiate trust busting beyond cases inherited from TR, and he didn’t really screw anything up, but he had no vision for the office.

15. Reagan. B-/D. Reagan wasn’t all that bad in his first term, and, although he had to lie to himself about what a tax increase was in 1982, he swallowed the need for it. D, or lower, for the second term, for Iran/Contra. Plus, it’s a legitimate question to ask if the onset of Alzheimer’s was influencing some second-term decisions.

16. Clinton. C+/D. Took the worst of the edges off welfare reform and gave us a balanced budget, among other things. Gave us NAFTA and the WTO, on the other hand, and botched health care reform; probably, any bill would have been tough to get past Congress, but his plan didn’t make it any easier. The D shows how much I’m disappointed that he expanded the Bush I privatizing of the Armed Forces and started, though not to the degree of Bush II, illegal “renditions” by the CIA of terrorism suspects.

17. Madison. C+/C. A decent man and a great political theorist, promoted over his head into the presidency.

18. Arthur. C. Credit for backing civil service reform after Garfield’ assassination; unclear if he would have done so otherwise.

19. McKinley. C/C-. While he didn’t screw much up, his pious platitudes about taking on the “white man’s burden” in the Philippines, while annexing Hawaii, introduced imperialist America to the world stage.

20. Cleveland. C and D. The C is for his first term, his principles on budgetary matters, and for being reasonably principled in general. The D is for his second term, for his anti-labor stance and his role in exacerbating, or at least exacerbating the pains of, the Panic of 1893, arguably the country’s first modern industrial depression.

21. Garfield. C-. His Congressional and Civil War generalship careers indicate this would probably be about the right spot had he lived to serve out his term, if not a bit lower.

22. Benjamin Harrison. C. Quiet administration that didn’t screw much up. A nonentity otherwise, other than not having a clue about the rise of organized labor.

23. John Quincy Adams C- (would get an A- as Secretary of State and A as Congressman). His administration itself was not bad, but honoring the “corrupt bargain” with fourth-place presidential finisher and former Speaker of the House Henry Clay by making him Secretary of State (at that time the normal stepping-stone to the presidency). He should have had the political sense to know that would guarantee a one-term presidency, and that Clay favored him over Jackson anyway.

24. Ford. C-. Political ineptitude, not to mention ethical questionability, for his pardon of Nixon, especially its unseemly speed after taking office. He could have stalled thing out until after the 1976 election, as far as the political sensibility of not pardoning Nixon right away.

25. Bush, George H.W. C-/D+. Handled the Gulf War well, but the blame is ultimately his for April Glaspie. Too slow to “cut losses” with Gorbachev rather than Yeltsin, and otherwise react to a post-Cold War world.

26. Adams. C-/D. Avoided war with France in 1798; but, first president to manipulate immigration and civil liberties for political advantage by signing into law, and personally backing much of, the Alien and Sedition Acts. Arguably, with hyperworry about French radicals, THIS, not A. Mitchell Palmer in 1920-21, was the first Red scare.

27. Woodrow Wilson. C-/D. At times, one wishes Wilson’s two terms could be considered separately, like two presidencies. That said, the major accomplishment of his first term, the establishment of the Federal Reserve, is probably overrated, and just as Taft inherited some trust-busting from Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson inherited some from Taft. The four constitutional amendments of a direct income tax, women’s suffrage, Prohibition and direct election of U.S. Senators, were the doings of Congress and state legislatures; Wilson could have used a bully pulpit, especially on women’s suffrage, but didn’t. And his racism, which began from the start of his first term and his official segregation of the executive branch is an indelible blot. Plus, even though stroke-afflicted, he presided over the first Red Scare.

28. Coolidge. D+/D. Failed to address the agricultural depression happening throughout the “Roaring ’20s” and also failed to see the stock market house of cards building up already in 1928. Term otherwise undistinguished.

29. Hoover. D. Far more intellectually qualified than any other of the D-rated presidents, his stubbornness about his idea of the role of the federal government, even though he tried some tinkering at the edges later in his term, get him ranked here.

30. William Henry Harrison. D/Inc. Yes, he only served a month, but giving a two-hour inaugural laced with Latin maxims while standing without a hat in the rain indicated a lack of common sense.

31. Tyler. D. Stuck by his principles when succeeding W.H. Harrison; nonetheless, outside of hating Jackson, such principles should have kept him firmly in the Democratic party. Little accomplished.

32. Van Buren. D. Cluelessness about the country’s first major recession and its causes, and failure to step out from Jackson’s shadow, say enough to put the country on a better financial footing.

33. Grant. D. He did enforce Reconstruction halfway vigorously in his first term, but then started backing away. Possibly the most corrupt administration in presidential history.

34. Harding. D/D-. Not an F, because he recognized, if belatedly, the cronyism and corruption in his cabinet and started trying to do something about it when he died.

35. Fillmore. D/D-. Yes, some version of the Compromise of 1850 was probably necessary, but Fillmore was certainly lacking in leadership in crafting the bill, especially in not anticipating the reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act. In addition, he thought more highly of himself than warranted.

36. Taylor. D-. While his Jacksonian resolve to hang Southerners who refused to accept the admission of California as a free state is admirable, it, if he had lived, would have thrown gasoline on the Compromise of 1850.

37. Nixon. D-/F+. Gets bumped out of pure “F” territory for having more brains than the four below him. The combination of Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, on the one hand, and Watergate on the other, offset détente and environmental legislation.

38. Jackson. D-/F+. His blatant disregard of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Cherokee removal, combined with his cluelessness about the Bank of the U.S. and his temper, amply earn this ranking, for the first imperial presidency.

39. George W. Bush, F+. The only reason he is not ranked dead last is the following three presidents’ failings were even more egregious, and at more dire times in our country’s history.

40. Pierce. F+. The slightest of bumps above the three bottom dwellers, but his signing off on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Missouri slaveholder corruption in Kansas that led to “Bleeding Kansas” and accelerated the march toward secession, is bad enough.

41. Andrew Johnson, F. Intemperate when sober and even more so when drunk — stubborn, petulant and politically a butterfingers — Johnson refused to see that he in fact wasn’t following what Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy had been moving toward before his assassination. Lincoln never would have been Thaddeus Stevens, but he would have been closer to him, far closer in spirit, than to Andrew Johnson.

42. James Buchanan, F. His failure to stand up for the United States of America in the face of secession says enough.