Pine-Tarred and Feathered by Jim Kaplan Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1985 Pine-Tarred and Feathered is Jim Kaplan's diary of the 1983 season, during which Kaplan was a baseball beat writer for Sports Illustrated. Anyone who is interested in sportswriting would learn something from reading this book. It's an educational look into the writing process at the most important magazine in sports today. Many since-forgotten names pop up during the course of the book. One of Kaplan's longer pieces to run that year is a profile of can't-miss White Sox prospect Ron Kittle. And Kaplan was right--Kittle didn't miss in 1983, but his future soon went as sour as that of his team. Kaplan also does a piece on gritty Astros shortstop Dickie Thon, a year before his career was altered forever when he was beaned by Mike Torrez. But Kaplan also covered a number of events that are still remembered today, including:

• Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan's yearlong battle with each other over Walter Johnson's career strikeout record. The record switched hands between the two immortals a number of times during the 1983 season.
• Pete Rose's yearning to break Ty Cobb's single-season record. In 1983, it looked like the aging Charlie Hustle wasn't going to be able to stick around long enough to break the record. Kaplan correctly predicted that Rose would end up with the Expos, a team that needed some veteran leadership.
• The famous Pine Tar Game from which Kaplan took the name of the book.

The book is slow in parts because Kaplan doesn't seem to exhibit much love for the game. It's more like a ho-hum job for him. The best parts of the book by far are when he talks about the sometimes hectic schedule that a Sports Illustrated writer has. In one part, he spends a long week following the up-and-coming Detroit Tigers double play combo of Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, only to have the story dropped because the photographs of the pair, taken at Minnesota's Metrodome, were too dark for publication. "It's easy to forget that there's an 'Illustrated' in Sports Illustrated," an editor tells the disappointed Kaplan.

As I said, it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly why Kaplan is working as a baseball writer. He doesn't have the love for the game that separates writers like Thomas Boswell and Roger Angell, both mentioned in the book, from the writers like Kaplan. So I wouldn't recommend this book to the average baseball fan. But if you're interested in becoming a sportswriter, give the book a try. Kaplan does do a good job of explaining the newsgathering/writing/editing/publishing process at a major sports magazine.

Pine-Tarred and Feathered may be available for purchase on the net at one of these sites.

--JingleBob, March 14, 1999

© 1999 JC White