The Book On Sports: All Sports Books: Owning a Piece of the Minors (Writing Baseball)

Klinkowitz is quick to point out that owning a minor league franchise is far more work, responsibility, and disappointment than romance portrays it to be. "True," he admits, "we'd acquired our franchise for nothing"--a story in itself--"and had labored mightily to keep it essentially worthless, of value only to ourselves and the thousand or so fans who loved it on a daily basis." Yet, for all the hours vending beer, filling ticket requests, making sense of directives from the parent organization, repairing the team bus, watching his league be encroached upon by slick out-of-town owners in search of that romantic adult fantasy, and, quite literally, fighting city hall, there are more than a fair share of intangible payoffs: retrieving a hitter's first home-run ball, the face of a player when he's called up a rung, the friendships with fans, the sense of civic pride, and the camaraderie with fellow beleaguered owners. In the end, Waterloo sadly loses its team. "Having been proved a busher once again," Klinkowitz muses, "I haven't let this ... humiliation turn me away ... I would have saved them if I could." That he couldn't makes for an emotionally complex, funny, and moving parable. --Jeff Silverman

Product Description

Owning a Piece of the Minors is by and about a man who lived his dream and acquired a baseball team. When Jerry Klinkowitz joined the group that ran the Waterloo, Iowa, Diamonds in the 1970s, ownership of a minor league baseball franchise conferred little mystique. Neglected for a half century, minor league baseball was at best obscure. Yet in the purchase of fantasy, what difference if your desire is out of style?

Klinkowitz continued his work with the Diamonds through the 1980s and much of the 1990s. In Owning a Piece of the Minors, he maps out his personal journey through baseball and probes his fluctuating fortunes and those of his team as he evolves from a fan to a team executive and, most important, to a writer writing about baseball. This baseball story begins with a nine-year-old Klinkowitz who is elated when Milwaukee lures the Braves from Boston; this story of a love affair with baseball might have died—and in fact suffered a ten-year hiatus—when the apostate Braves fled to Atlanta in 1965.

Klinkowitz rediscovered the joy of being at the baseball park when, as a middle-aged professor, he took his own children to the Waterloo Diamonds games. Gradually his involvement with the Diamonds grew deeper until he owned the team. His immersion into team activities was complete, from shagging batting practice and working the beer bar to struggling with the Cleveland Indians and then the San Diego Padres as minor league affiliates to accommodate baseball's resurgence.

Klinkowitz writes of loss—first the Braves and later the Diamonds; of writing baseball fiction; of attending the 1982 World Series back in Milwaukee; of the great old ballparks around the country, including Wrigley, Fenway, and old Comiskey Park; of fictional and factual accounts of how the Diamonds franchise was lost; of friendships among season ticket holders in "Box 28"; and of Mildred Boyenga, the club president and Baseball Woman of the Year. A first-rate stylist, Klinkowitz shows the problems and perks and, most rewarding, the priceless relationships made possible in the world of baseball.