Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George

Rating:
Summary: Baseball needs Marty Appel
Review: As a Red Sox fan, I was ready to read this and get whacked in the face with the hubris usually shown by anything Yankee. I was surprised by the balance shown. Marty Appel knows more about baseball than a lot of people running the game now. He was born about 30 years too late as people like Epsteil, Beane and Riccardi get to run ballclubs, while Mr. Appel 30 years ago had to come up through the ranks with Steinbrenner's Yankees no less. Mr. Appel also wrote an excellent biography on one of the first superstarts of baseball back in the 1800's--King Kelly. I recommend both books highly.

Rating:
Summary: From Big Bad Baseball Website
Review: I have read all the great Yankee books like Balls, Bronx Zoo, Number One, The Best Team Money Could Buy, and I can honestly say this is the best of them all by a long shot! I have read this book three times and find myself reading certain chapters again and again. I am 35, and this book takes me back to the sites, smells and sounds of the mid-70s when Gabe Paul and George Steinbrenner were putting together the beginnings of a dynasty. You'll find yourself remembering just what you were doing when the Bobby Bonds-Bobby Murcer trade and the signings of Catfish and Billy Martin were taking place. The birth of free agency is also looked at in a way more understandably than I have ever seen in any medium. No review can say enough about how fantastic a read this book is. So many baseball books are just regurgitative facts that you can get from old newspapers and magazines. This book is a true fan's insider look at the most most storied franchise and it's return to glory post-Mantle.

Rating:
Summary: A smart, sensitive memoir
Review: Marty Appel served in the Bronx Bombers' public-relations office for nearly nine years, and was the PR director during the tumultuous early George Steinbrenner years (from 1974 to 1977). Appel's "Now Pitching For the Yankees" recalls the turmoil of that period -- and Appel's ability to function under pressure --with wit, a keen eye for detail and sensitivity.

None of the long hours Appel spent at the ballpark, the turmoil he witnessed, or the high-pressure tactics of owner Steinbrenner have dimmed his appreciation for his colleagues and bosses. It comes through in the pages of this warm, often touching memoir.

The boldface names are there -- including Steinbrenner, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson -- along with less-famous but pivotal Yankee characters like clubhouse man Pete Sheehy, team execs Michael Burke and Gabe Paul, and Appel's mentor in public relations, Bob Fishel. (It even mentions the writers: Appel's anecdote about one scribe's losing battle with bladder control in Boston is priceless.)

Appel also reflects on his vibrant post-Yankees career, including a bittersweet period with the Atlanta Olympics and a still-thriving stint as a baseball author (subjects include early baseball star King Kelly, former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and former Yankee captain Thurman Munson).

"Now Pitching for the Yankees" is a good find for anyone who loves baseball, cherishes its history and appreciates the people behind the scenes who make it happen.

Rating:
Summary: Excerpted from Sports Collectors Digest 8/17/01
Review: NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES FIGURES TO RANK AMONG CLASSICS; MARTY APPEL PLANTS HIMSELF SQUARELY IN THE PR HALL OF FAME WITH BEHIND-THE-SCENES BOOK By T.S. O'Connell

Now Pitching for the Yankees, subtitled Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy and George, is a major hit in literary circles, as well it should be. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I would point out that Marty is a friend and a valued columnist in our magazine, but I would love this book even if it had been written by somebody I didn't like. It is, in a word, maahhvelous. I steal a line from Billy Crystal, because it's appropriate in this instance, since Marty was a consultant on "61*", that wildly successful HBO film that was released this spring. But gushing from the likes of me sounds pretty silly when you consider that the book is getting (as far as I know) universally enthusiastic reviews, with folks dropping it into those lists like "The 10 Best Baseball Books of All Time," and frequent rumblings about it being one of the best front-office books ever produced.

In the weeks since the book came out, Marty has been busy making radio and television appearances, which included appearing on Tim McCarver's show on Fox SportsNet. Now Pitching for the Yankees is already sold out in its first printing, with a second printing planned, and there are still reviews to come from Larry King in USA Today and the New York Times.

I would be hard pressed to single out a single incident in the book, only because I found so many intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: From website Johnnyvsports.fws1.com
Review: NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George by Marty Appel (TOTAL/Sports Illustrated) Hardcover available Barnes & Noble, Border Stores, online Amazon.com ISBN 1-930844-18-2

No secret here, I don't care for Pinstripes. The Babe looked best in scarlet socks. Baseball's most hallowed grounds built in 1912 can be found in Kenmore Square. Dracula, Frankenstein, they're nothing, the Green Monster rules. To be a Bosox fan in Westchester County, NY, you've got to be tough and on the ball. So in reading Marty Appel's NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES, I can unabashedly say he's got game and a wonderful book.

Perhaps, the opening chapter of NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES entitled: Yankee Fan From Brooklyn immediately made me realize Marty Appel may be a fellow Brother in Arms. Yes, there's the love of Baseball. But no greater love can there be then, in spite geography one bonds with a team in opposition territory and roots for them. NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES warmly and lively tells of that love and the fulfillment of actually working for the club.

NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George with a foreword by Yogi Berra regales over thirty years of inside Yankee yarns which any Bronx Bomber fan, true baseball historian, or budding sports marketer will want to know. Hired at 19 for a summer job of answering Mickey Mantle's fan mail, Marty Appel became the Franchise's third public relations director. Appel's Yankee front office years spanned from CBS ownership to the Boss. '68, Year of the Pitcher, a .500 ballclub, Ralph "The Major" Houk to '77, Designated Hitter, ALCS Champs, "BillyBall". Marty Appel shares with us from his key view some of the most momentous occasions of Yankee History. Mantle Day. Free Agent, Catfish Hunter's inking. Refurbishing Ruth's House. Chambliss' ALCS walkoff.

NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES also boldly and candidly takes us into the clubhouse and Yankee offices to hear some of behind the scenes rationales on personnel deals made and trades never completed. Sure, twirlers Peterson and Kekich swapped wives and lives, but don't you really want to know which Yankee Superstar was going to be left unprotected in the Expansion Draft? Or how a P.R. Director catches the non-negotiable task of getting Oscar Gamble's haircut? In NOW PITCHING FOR THE YANKEES, Appel gives us the zany and the poignant of his Yankee heritage.

Rating:
Summary: The Other Side of the '70s Yankees
Review: Only if you really know your New York sports would you realize that Marty Appel's in a much more unique position to write a tell-all book about the 1970s Yankees than many other athletes. During his progression over 10 years from Yankees' fan-mail gopher during the Horace Clarke years, to PR director during the 1976 World Series, Appel had once-in-a-lifetime encounters (with the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Mike Burke, Gabe Paul, George Steinbrenner and ... Oscar Gamble) every single day.

"Now Pitching...", finally out in paperback, shows Appel's origins as a Yankees fan when everyone else was rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and how he turned his love for the game into a career (when everyone else was watching the NFL). Most of the book covers the Yankees from 1968 to 1976, Appel's reign. Although many of the stories are familiar to baseball readers from what seems like 100 other books, only Appel is giving you the inside view. Nowhere else will you get such insider detail about Oscar Gamble's infamous haircut, Sparky Lyle's theme music, or George Steinbrenner's management style.

The book flags a little -- only a little -- when Appel leaves the Yankees and makes his mark in other ventures, such as team tennis and local NYC broadcasting. The most interesting part focusses on Appel's brief fish-out-of-water turn with the 1996 Atlanta Olympics organizers.

Marty Appel's been a very lucky guy -- who else gets to be friends with both Mickey Mantle and Billie Jean King? "Now Pitching for the Yankees" is several cuts above your standard baseball autobiography.

Rating:
Summary: ESPN.com review of 2001 baseball books,
Review: When I bought this book I thought I was in for just a number of inside stories on the Yankees. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the ups and downs of the career of Marty Appel. True, much of the book covers his years with the Yankees as their PR director during the 1970's. He was there for the years when the Yankees played in Shea Stadium in 1974 and 1975 and during the time big trades were made involving Bobby Bonds, Mickey Rivers, and Willie Randolph in addition to the signing of Catfish Hunter. He enjoyed working with George Steinbrenner but did have one particular low moment with George following the publication of a Yankee yearbook which contained photos of players with hair longer than what suited the Boss. Marty took a chance one day to ask clubhouse attendant Pete Sheehy to tell him all about the Babe and Pete provided a revealing secret in four words. After leaving the Yankees with Joe Garagiola Jr. Marty worked at a number of baseball related jobs, some of which proved to be more rewarding than others. One of those jobs was with Topps Chewing Gum, and I believe I found a mistake on pages 294-295 where Marty states that Topps began issuing trading cards in 1950 with All-American football players before they did baseball cards. The All-American football cards he refers to were issued in 1955. Topps first issue of baseball cards came in 1951 with the Topps Red Backs and Topps Blue Backs which were cards designed to be used as a baseball game. The low point was his move to Atlanta to work with the Olympic games that were going to be held there. This move proved to be a mistake, but it was a risk that he took. Interesting advice is given to young readers to never take anything for granted, be a good listener, read everything you can, and respect those you deal with. Marty Appel hit a grand slam home run with this book just as he did with an earlier effort on Michael Kelly entitled Slide, Kelly, Slide and in working with Bowie Kuhn on his book entitled Hardball. His latest effort, Now Pitching for the Yankees,is another first rate job.