"Cracking the Show", by Thomas Boswell

Thomas Boswell is quite simply the best baseball writer of his era. By "his era", I mean the period in which his seven books weere published, which is 1982-1996.

His books are collections of the columns he wrote for "The Washington Post" and various magazines. Since he didn't retire untl 2021, it remains a mystery, at least to me, why he's put out no books since 1996.

"Cracking the Show" covers the time period of 1989-1993. I enjoyed reliving the great World Series of that time period. The 1989 earthquake series, swept by the A's, was followed by the 1990 series, in which the A's were swept by the Reds. Boswell explains how the Reds simply overwhelmed the A's with their fundamentally sound baseball: "Once the game began, everyone saw how the Reds' speed and base stealing, their hit-and-runs and bunts, their pursuit of the extra base, and their mighty bullpen both unnerved and unmanned the A's". Boswell mocks the haughty A's: "Unfortunately, even in defeat, the dominant tone of the A's was that of the disbelieving, excuse-seeking blowhard." Boswell makes an apt comparison of the 1988-1990 A's to the 1969-1971 Orioles, in that both of these were dominant teams which went to the World Series three years in a row as favorites, but only won one of them.

Boswell gives much-deserved criticism of the 1991 series, in which the Twins won because of their home-field advantage. (The Metrodome was a monstrosity, and thank goodness Target Field has since replaced it.) Boswell says: "So this is what America's pastoral summer game has become--a sport played in a large, loud tin drum." With four extra-innning games, this series was "the closest, most drama-filled, but surely not best-played or best-managed Classic of all time".

And then we had the Toronto Blue Jays reigning supreme in 1992 and 1993. Boswell says that "if a team ever won with presence, with an aura of utter confidence, it was these '93 Jays...Maybe nothing beats a sense of entitlement."

The most significant off-the-field story durng the five-year period which this book covers was the lifetime ban Pete Rose received for betting on baseball. Boswell starts the book with a collection of seven columns he wrote about this sad episode.

Boswell echoes the mixed freelings most of us feel about Rose. In a column entitled "Arrested Adolescent", Boswell writes: "For thirty years, America has cheered Rose for remaining a child. He was selfish but charming. Vain but joyous. Shallow but shrewd. Crude but funny. Greedy for all the candy but generous once he got it. Prone to the vices but honest about it. Oblivious to society's conventions but also mythically large. Given no gift, save his obsession for baseball, he made himself a hero." Boswell's conclusion: "Rose deserves our empathy, though maybe not too mcuh sympathy."

The Rose saga can be seen as a three-act drama. While Boswell agrees with the first act (the lifetime ban), he has harsh criticism for the final two acts. The second act was the prosecution of Rose for income tax evasion, for which he received a five-month prison sentence. Boswell points out that this prosecution was "for neglecting to report about three percent of his income. How does that compare to the national average?" I can answer this question. The IRS tells us that only about 87% of income is reported. This thirteen percent of unreported income is four times the perentage that Rose failed to report. The usual approach in this type of situation woud be to allow the taxpayer to pay the back taxes, plus interest and penalties, with no criminal consequences. But because Rose was prominent, he was treated overly harshly, just as Hunter Biden is being treated today.

The fact that both presidential candidates are calling for removing the inconme tax on tips illustrates the general antipathy we have towards taxing cash income. Certainly many Americans have earned money they failed to report to the IRS. Why Rose was so severly persecuted by the government remains a mysstery to me.

But the grestest injustice Rose suffered was the vote ruling him ineligble for the Hall of Fame. By a 12-0 vote, the Hall of Fame board voted to "exclude players on the permanently ineligible list from the ballot". The only living person on this list was Pete Rose.

Boswell's feeling about this is summed up by the title of his 2/5/91 column: "White-Collar Lynching". The sensible approach would have been to keep Rose on the ballot and allow the baseball writers to decide whether he should be enshrined or not. This is what the board has done with the steroid cheaters, who damaged the game far more than Rose ever did by his betting. The writers have responded admirably by keeping out players like Bonds and McGwire who otherwise would have made it easily.