I had forgotten about Dizzy Trout.Last week Jim Gullo and his son Joe came to the McMinnville Community Media studio to do an Arts Alive interview with Lynda Phillippi. Jim wanted to talk about his forth coming book "Trading Manny" , the story of a Father teaching his son Joe to love Baseball during the steroid scandals which made respecting baseball very difficult.
I was never a big baseball fan. Although I remember the summer of 1953 or 54 I searched the neighborhood, the school, the city for a card on mostly Detroit Tigers and then Boston Red Sox pitcher Dizzy Trout. He wasn’t that great pitcher and he was a bit long in the tooth, but I loved his name and he wore glasses, so I could relate. I had rookies Jim Gilliam, Harvey Haddix and Ray Jablonski to trade, I was even willing to throw in 10 rare red cat’s-eye marbles. I never found Dizzy’s card. I read that year “Disappointment is necessary to develop character”, I wasn’t convinced. In 1955, the World Series went to the Brooklyn Dodgers over the New York Yankees, and my interest in baseball fanned out.
By 2006 when Lance Williams and Mar Fainaru-Wada book "Game of Shadows" came out, followed in 2007 by the "Mitchell Report", it was not a shock or even a surprise that baseball players were abusing steroid drugs to get a competitive edge. Only 89 players?
It turns out I was not the only one who thought 89 might be a low ball number. In 2007 Jim Gullo/s his seven year old son Joe, whose baseball hero was Manny Ramirez, was asking, Page 20 of "Trading Manny" “Look Dad,” he said, waving a card of a player who had not been named by Mitchell or associated with drug use. “This guy hit forty-eight homers in 2001 and hasn’t hit more than twenty-one since. He was probably using drugs, wasn’t he?”
To redeem his own love of baseball and to be true and honest to Joe in a time when baseball was down, Jim Gullo and his son went on a quest to find the truth about steroid use and to seek the soul of baseball. “Trading Manny” is the story of their journey.
On the same day as the Arts Alive interview Jim posted on his BLOG an instructive chronology of “Trading Manny” from the inception of the idea to the publishing of the book. If you have a book idea and are getting ready to get to the writing, check out the blog post.
On Febrary 28th, Jim and Joe Gullo talk with Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi about their journey and the writing of the book. You Tube has a 15 minute limit. The 30 minute show is the above is Part One and go to Part Two to see the last half of the show.
Jim Gullo lives in McMinnville. In addition to the forthcoming "Trading Manny" he has a recent novel "Fountain of Youth". He is the editor and publisher of a web magazine http://www.oregonwine.com covering Oregon wine industry.
