How's the book going? - It's gone!!!

This morning the proofs and manuscript of "The Major League Pennant Races of 1916" were sent to the publisher. The index follows by e-mail tomorrow and not too long after that it will be on its way to the printer. (Hopefully on presses somewhat more modern than what is pictured to the left.)

My best guess at this point is that the book should see the light of day around the middle of February, just in time for spring training. In an earlier post I wrote about how fact checking and proofreading were the two worst parts of writing a book. Unfortunately I had forgotten about how unpleasant a task it is to prepare an index - about as tedious as it gets. There was also a lot of checking to do on the proofs - this is a bigger stage. If you misspell the name of a New Jersey Civil War soldier few people will notice, if you misspell the name of a Hall of Famer like Christy Mathewson (one t, not two) everyone will notice.

Interestingly as Paul and I were finishing these mind numbing tasks, I was also finishing Jon Meacham's new book - "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House" which I will write about in a day or so. In reading the acknowledgements, I noticed that he had somewhere between 6-7 fact checkers as well as 2-3 people who both check citations and found material. A slightly larger operation than Paul and myself - if I sound jealous that's because I am! You can also tell that his day job as editor of "Newsweek" opened more than a few doors including that of the White House itself.

His acknowledgements did confirm something that I had been thinking about since the Lincoln Forum. During the forum I heard about how authors such as Harold Holzer have peers/friends in the field who read their manuscript sometimes chapter by chapter while it is being written. Not to proofread it, but to comment on the content. Meacham makes similar comments which made me realize that I need to do the same thing on a smaller scale - find people with expertise in the field who can serve as a sort of writing seminar. If I have enough time, I may try to do that with the Pioneer Project, but definitely with the Lloyd letters - the challenge is finding the right people.

The final stages of working on "The Major League" made me realize some of the things I have learned about writing the history of a baseball season. Since 1871 there have been almost 140 seasons of professional baseball with only a small number having their histories written and with good reason. In fact this is one of the few season histories that I am aware of that will tell the full story of both leagues - Cait Murphy's "Crazy 08," for example devotes one chapter to the American League. The volume of material is such that this had to be a two author project.

There is another aspect of the sheer amount of information that makes season histories hard to write. The best seasons are those with dramatic finishes, typically over the last month of the season. But the season encompasses another five to six months including spring training. How to tell that story without getting bogged down in mind numbing detail is a challenge. I think Paul and I did this as best as we could for the first time with this genre, but I also think if I do another one that what I learned this time will be helpful. It might, for example, be better to spend less time covering the details of say April-June and devote that space to the stories of the players, managers who make up the season.

Decisions about another full length book won't be made until the end of 2009 (at the earliest) while I finish off other writing projects. But I would certainly consider another history - the 1889 baseball season when the Brooklyn Bridegrooms and New York Giants won tight pennant races to play in an early subway series has some appeal. And then there is the story of the 1914 Braves who were in last place on the 4th of July, didn't hit .500 until August, but won the pennant going away before sweeping the heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. So many possible books - so little time.