DUGOUT DAYS: Untold Tales and Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Career of Billy Martin

Over the course of his 20-plus years as a baseball manager, Billy Martin became as well known for his on-and-off-field brawls as he was for his winning teams. However, Martin remains the only baseball manager to transform two teams—the Texas Rangers and Oakland As—from being 100-plus-game losers one season into league champions the next. DeMarco, a management consultant and lifelong Yankee fan, believes that Martin's abilities as a teacher and mentor have been undervalued because of the attention paid to his drinking and his turbulent relationship with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. At the core of the author's premise is that on today's cutthroat global playing field, the corporations that win are those that are driven by passionate, focused leaders. DeMarco asks readers to put aside any biases against Martin and to focus instead on the qualities that made him a winning manager and baseball icon. In chapters following the course of Martin's career, DeMarco summarizes key leadership skills (e.g., building a team of talented and dedicated players, putting yourself in your followers' shoes, getting the public on your side), reinforced by recollections from the many baseball legends, including Rod Carew, Ray Negron, Willie Horton, Phil Pepe and Mickey Rivers, whom he interviewed. However, while his premise has validity, DeMarco fails to link examples of Martin's success with the corporate world, and, frankly, it's hard to imagine today's business leaders looking back to Martin's career for insight. In the end, the book is more a celebration of Billy Martin's baseball genius than a management guide, but as such DeMarco's book pales beside Wild, High and Tight by Peter Golenback and Martin's autobiography written with Phil Pepe. Agent, Marty Appel. (May)