Dad makes hit with baseball book

   Two years ago former Brave Dale Murphy sent me his self-published book, The Scouting Report and asked if I’d review it in my column. I was flattered to think he thought I knew that much about baseball. And with Murphy being a former Gwinnett celebrity, I thought surely my review would be a big hit.

   However, after reading Murphy’s book, I realized it was more of a guidebook for athletes who made – or were hoping to make – the big leagues. Topics included finding a money manager and deciding which products to endorse. I considered my Gwinnett readership and could think of only two people to whom this advice might apply: Jeff Francouer and Brian McCann. And by this time, both of these guys were so far into their careers they probably already knew all this stuff anyway.

   This year, Gerald Barnes, of Norcross, sent me his book, The Road to the Big’s (Booksurge Publishing, $20.99) and asked if I’d read it and give him feedback.

   “It’s about what it takes to make the big leagues,” he said. Here we go again. What do I know about this? Sure, I did my part with my own three boys driving them to practice, selling candy bars, working the concession stand and covering all the bases to keep my kids in the game. But as far as this book goes, I didn’t even get the title. Road to the Big’s? It looked to me like a grammatical error, which Barnes fully explains on page 19.

   As for the book itself, it’s not an instruction book on making it to the big leagues, but a delightful show-don’t-tell account of his son Alec’s quest to become a major league player. On one level, Barnes makes hard hitting connections between the popularity of baseball and the philosophical and spiritual roots of our country. He skillfully weaves together baseball, history, geography, child rearing, politics, religion and philosophy, occasionally batting out challenges to political correctness. On another level he soft pitches a delightful story of Americana from 1950’s beer ads to the adventures of Norcross homeboys like his son and his friends Inman Dubberly and Daniel Sineway, who played the game all through high school. 

   Barnes maintains that baseball, like America, has an enduring legacy composed of opportunities, not limits, and describes well all the opportunities he and his son experienced through the game. As Amazon reviewer Todd J. Caras puts it, “This book pinpoints and validates how baseball exemplifies and validates our core beliefs as Americans.” Though the book is subtitled “A view of American Culture from the diamond, the dugout and the bullpen,” it’s also very much about a very special father-son relationship. And you don’t need to know anything about baseball to appreciate that.

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