WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS OF BASEBALL

ESPN writer and radio commentator McGee recounts a sentimental education in the front office of a minor league baseball team.

It was 1993, and McGee, fresh out of college and living with his parents, was desperate for a job. He auditioned for ESPN only to be dismissed by sports-journalism pioneer Al Jaffe. Nonetheless, McGee, author of The Road to Omaha and Sidelines and Bloodlines, was determined to find a career in sports, so he traveled to a “Baseball Job Fair” in Atlanta to make his case. He managed to sign on with the Asheville Tourists, who played in “a perfectly picturesque All American throwback minor league ballpark.” Though only paid $100 per week, McGee was pleased with his new job, especially since he had enjoyed minor league baseball since he was a kid. The author’s account opens with a very funny sideshow moment involving “Captain Dynamite,” who, for $500, blew himself up in his “Exploding Coffin of Death.” Among other colorful characters populating the narrative, McGee recounts the exploits of a 57-year-old former pitcher–turned-coach nicknamed Tomatoes for his florid complexion and known for “his legendary and unprecedented ability to eat an entire pizza while also gnawing on a plug of Red Man chewing tobacco while washing it all down with a beer.” Most of the team could have come out of Ron Shelton’s great film Bull Durham, with similarly grim chances of making it to the majors, while McGee himself chronicles his blundering from task to task, miscounting ticket sales here and cooking hot dogs there. Throughout, the author delivers entertaining set pieces, including an improbable dust-up between league mascots. Near the end, McGee has harsh words for the greedy MLB owners who, in 2021, cut 40 minor league teams “because they had been deemed unnecessary.”

A picaresque, funny account of a side of lesser-rung baseball too little represented in the literature.