Score An Error On New Baseball Book
It started with hope and promise. It ended with anger and disappointment. OK, maybe that's a bit too dramatic. After all, I'm only talking about a book here. But anyone who invests time (and money) on a book expects some return and in this case, the readers have been ripped off by the author's and publisher's neglect.
The book is "George," Peter Golenbock's new biography of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner (published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). As an avid baseball fan, I've enjoyed Golenbock's past works, which include collaborations with former Yankees Graig Nettles, Billy Martin and Sparky Lyle. Those associations gave me good reason to expect "George" to be interesting and entertaining. (Disclaimer: I received the book as a publisher's freebie, as I planned to do a radio/Internet interview with Golenbock).
I don't always start a book at the beginning. In this case, I skipped to the middle, which had, what I expected to be, some of the juiciest material. At first, it lived up to my expectations. It was interesting, fun and flowed…but then, as our TV counterparts like to say, something went terribly wrong!
On page 228, in a paragraph about the 1984 Detroit Tigers who opened the season 35-5, Golenbock wrote that the team was "led by pitcher/organist Denny McLain." Whoa! Time warp! Worlds collide! No way! A true baseball fan would know that would have been impossible, as McLain had retired from baseball in 1972! But wait, there was MORE. As I read on, the mistakes kept coming.
Here are just a few that I found:
And that's not all! It turns out there were even more mistakes, as posted by another angry reader on the Amazon.com page devoted to this book(Roger Maris is listed as a Hall of Famer; The Yankees were winners of the 1959 American League pennant; Thurman Munson died in September 1979; the Phillies won the World Series in 1981. None of the above statements is true).
OK, I realize this is not Armageddon and the world's very existence does not depend on any of this. The book is hardly a best seller (Amazon ranks it as 12, 679th in sales as of Friday morning 4/24/09) and, as the story itself is compelling, the Web site's readers gave it four stars overall. They may not have been aware of the mistakes. But what about the rest of us? And what about integrity, accuracy, quality and trust that readers expect from non-fiction books?
John Wiley & Sons, Inc, the publisher, hired an outside publicist to handle the radio interviews, and when I called him to express my dismay (and cancel the interview), he told me Wiley was aware that there were problems and planned to correct the situation. Wiley's in-house PR person told me they had released written statements by the author and publisher, but denied my request for a formal interview. In a subsequent email, I reminded him that I could have kept the original interview appointment with Golenbock and ambushed him with the information, but chose to take the high road instead. I received no response.
Here are the written statements from Golenbock and publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Peter Golenbock's statement:
"I regret and take responsibility for the errors in my current book and am working with the publisher to have those corrected at the next possible printing. I appreciate the eagle-eyed baseball fans who brought it to my attention."
Wiley's statement:
"We at Wiley take the quality of our publishing very seriously, and always investigate concerns about errors in any of our titles. Regarding Peter Golenbock's book, we are currently taking steps internally to correct the errors which will be reflected in the next reprint."
Golenbock has also posted an apology on the Amazon.com page for his book. But there are so many questions left unanswered, such as:
How could so many mistakes make it past the author, proofreaders, fact checkers and finally, the publisher?
Was there any fact-checking?
Does the author even read his own work?
What did the publisher know about these gross mistakes - and when did it know it?
How much of this was done in a rush to beat competing books to the market?
Why didn't the publisher recall the first printing and offer exchanges or refunds to readers who bought the tainted books?
Who should be most accountable for this publishing fiasco?
Finally, why should we ever again believe anything written by Mr. Golenbock or published by Wiley?
We may never find out, and readers of "George" may ultimately go to their graves believing that Denny McLain was still pitching in 1984 and other misinformation contained in the book.
Post script: This past week, I reread my 29-year-old paperback copy of "The Bronx Zoo," Sparky Lyle's 1978 season diary which Golenbock co-authored. I found one glaring error, a reference to then-Yankee coach Gene Michael as "Gene Michaels." They didn't even bother to fix it for the paperback version. Sigh.
Peter King is a CBS Radio News correspondent.