The Pine Tar Game

May 11, 2015
During professional baseball’s rough-and-tumble era, Bondy, a veteran sports columnist for the New York Daily News, relives the 1983 Pine Tar game between the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees, with all of the wacky subplots included. Bondy describes the maddening tempo of the dog days of that summer, when bad blood erupted between erratic Yankees manager Billy Martin and club owner George Steinbrenner, and the overall league view of the team was that of “robber barons” buying pennants and plundering talent. He does his homework on Royals owner Ewing Kauffman and his loyalty to the small Midwest city, his anti-union stance and thrifty budget, and his disdain for “King George” Steinbrenner and his Bronx Bombers. There’s a surprising cameo by conservative radio maven Rush Limbaugh, who worked for the Royals as promotions director, and is quoted as saying that the Yankees were “the Darth Vaders from the Northeast.” Bondy packs everything into the contentious finale of the four-game series, which caused a brawl and was replayed due to a rule about excessive pine tar on a Royals player’s bat. With this memorable game, Bondy shows how far America’s pastime has come, with new rules, big paydays, and the specter of steroid use.

April 15, 2015

Former New York Daily News sportswriter Bondy (Who's on Worst?) explores the backstory, in-game details, and aftermath of a memorable 1983 baseball matchup between the mighty New York Yankees and the upstart Kansas City Royals. Bondy blends previously published accounts with his own new interviews to tell the story behind Yankees manager Billy Martin accusing Royals superstar slugger George Brett of cheating by applying too much of a grip-aiding sticky substance on a bat used to blast a game-winning home run. This is much more than the story of just one incident in one game. Rather, it's the richly detailed and insightful history of two very different franchises on a collision course--the big-budget, long-successful Yankees, led by the notoriously demanding George Steinbrenner, and the penny-pinching but improving Royals, guided by Steinbrenner's polar opposite, the mild-mannered Ewing Kauffman. Bondy examines not only the decades coming up to the game but also the weeks following, when lawyers, judges, players, managers, and team owners sparred over the umpires' controversial handling of the incident. The author gives voice to them all in this well-rounded and unbiased account that keeps to the facts and lets the reader decide who was the hero and who was the villain. VERDICT Bondy's history lesson is both fun and informative and should appeal to passionate baseball fans of all ages.--Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2015
To the true fan, this vision from a July 1983 game between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals might be as iconic as, say, those of World Series homers hit by Bill Mazeroski (1960), Carlton Fisk (1975), and Kirk Gibson (1988): a crazed George Brett, charging the game's umpiring crew from the Royals' dugout to violently protest their reversal of a potentially game-winning homer he'd hit off the nearly unhittable reliever Goose Gossage. The reason for the reversal: pine tar too high up the handle of Brett's bat. Sportswriter Bondy builds an improbably rich and entertaining tale from the incident, detailing the blood feud that had developed from four recent, hard-fought playoff series between the teams; presenting the characters involved; setting the stage for the game; and coolly explaining the final outcome: a reversal of the reversal, resulting in the completion of the game a month later and a Yankee loss. Spurred by renewed interest in the Royals from last year's World Series appearance, this one could find a lot of readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)