Minor Players, Major Dreams

While it's no Ball Four-major-leaguer Jim Bouton's hilarious demystification of baseball-Mandel's book has a lot going for it. A weekend ballplayer since college, Mandel paid for his own contract for a chance to be on an independent rookie-league team in Ogden, Utah, and to write a book about it. Only his teammates managers, and ownership were in the know, and the result is his chronicle of the 1994 season riding the pine for the Ogden Raptors. The book's best bits are glimpses of ordinary baseball life-real manager swearing, real bus-ride trivia games, real too-much-beer dismissal stories-and Mandel sprinkles them around but leaves you wanting more (how do you play Flip? And what are the 20 other names for ground balls hit past second?). The story follows the season but occasionally doubles back on itself, and Mandel, sometimes awkwardly, splices interviews into the framework of home stands and road trips. The only real problem with Minor Players is Mandel's insistence on dream-theme pedantry combined with less-than-stellar writing (sunlight ""radiates,"" ""glints"" and ""floods"" within the first page and a half), but when he's describing the games, or the ballparks, or the surprise of seeing Red Sox great Luis Tiant take the field as an opposing team's pitching coach, the shortcomings are forgiven and Mandel makes an appropriate and likable spy. Bonus appearances include those by the Silver Bullets (suspiciously the only women who make it into the tale, and not far into it at that), and Rich Morales Sr., erstwhile White Sox shortstop and father of the Raptors' second-in-command, Rich Morales Jr. (Feb.)