A rare diamond

Once in a generation, there's a sportswriter who can transcend the rest of the industry and become something bigger. The great Ring Lardner, and in more recent times Frank Deford, started out covering ballgames, but took their talents higher. They had so much more to say, and were able to take on larger societal commentary, while still ostensibly using the lens of a writer observing sweaty guys in a stadium. Today it's Howard Bryant. Howard is a senior writer for espn.com and ESPN the Magazine. He's been a beat writer in the Bay Area, New York and Boston and he's a voter in Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame balloting. In short, his sports writing bona fides are pretty well unimpeachable. What sets Howard apart is that he's an extraordinary thinker. His first two books were dead serious, sober studies of subjects that most others would just as soon avoid. In fact, most of his colleagues have avoided the topics like a heaping plate of health food in a press box. His first book was "Shut Out: a Story of Race and Baseball in Boston". Howard meticulously researched the tangled, difficult history of the confluence of race, sports and society in the land of the bean, the cod, busing and the Tobin Bridge. What he found wasn't pretty, and in the face of what could have been a torrential backlash, Bryant painted the picture as it was, not how we all wished it had been. For instance: Tom Yawkey and Joe Cronin, two high priests of Red Sox legend, were dyed in the wool racists. Had the franchise been more enlightened, we could have had Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams on the same team. Perhaps even Willie Mays. Sadly, Boston and the team's leadership couldn't handle that much progressive thought, regardless of the prodigious talent that was there for the taking. As a result, the Red Sox were the very last team in the league to integrate (all hail the immortal Pumpsie Green).  And didn't win a pennant for two decades, or even come close to one. There's much more to the book, though, and I encourage you to read it. You too, non-sports fans.

Howard's next book was "Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball". It's the definitive history of what's now called the Steroid Era and explains brilliantly why I loathe both Bud Selig and the Players' Union. You can't have an intelligent discussion of what took place in baseball between the mid-1990's and the early part of this century without fully appreciating the saga behind Messrs. McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, Selig and Fehr.

This week, I saw Howard give a talk at the Boston Public Library about his latest - and longest - book to date: "Henry Aaron: The Last Hero". Howard's a very good writer, but what sets him apart from the rest are two things. First, he researches like few others. Deep in his bone marrow he's a journalist first, and getting it right matters above all else. Additionally, he isn't just regurgitating facts and figures, but weaving within the baseball story the threads of a more important saga, namely how the balls, strikes and home runs relate to the people, the times, and the greater society. Baseball has always played a pivotal role in the lifeblood of the country, but the sports pages aren't the place to talk about it, and most guys who spend their time in the press box aren't equipped or interested in addressing What It All Means.

In each of this three books (and if you talk to him you'll hear it even more clearly), Howard makes sure you understand that the people in the drama don't live in vacuums. They are a product of, and protagonists in, the greater drama of their sport and their culture. This is what Ken Burns did so well in his documentaries, and what only the very best history teachers understand: it's all about context. In the Aaron book, Howard explains that although the man would have been a superb hitter in any era, what he did, and the times in which he did it, made him something very special. More to the point today, he did it with purity, without the need for the Cream, the Clear, androstenedione or human growth hormone.Aaron's story is much more than a baseball story, it's an American drama, spanning critical eras of the 20th century.. Hank Aaron played the game, and in a real sense, still plays a different one today. People remember Hank Aaron's performance in All Star Games and during the great chase for Babe Ruth's home record in 1973 and the spring of 1974.  Howard tells the story as well of Henry Aaron, who is a complex, talented, proud, deeply wounded and troubled man, one who has never entirely come to grips with the full impact of the events he's both lived through and shaped.

Henry Aaron is a true American hero, not just for our time but for all time, and to paint the picture accurately in a way that made him more than just a faded color image of a man hitting a home run into the humid Atlanta night off Al Downing in April of 1974, it took someone who could unearth the real diamond amid a vast ocean of dirt.

I'd bet folding money that many years from now, hopefully while I'm still around to see it, Howard Bryant is going to receive the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, which is the highest honor a baseball writer can receive. At that juncture, a writer is said to be a Hall of Famer (since the award is announced during the annual induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, NY). By then, who knows, he may have already nabbed a Pulitzer, too. In the meantime, read the three books he's already written, and watch for what he has to say. There are a lot of writers working today, but there's nobody who's doing it better than Howard Bryant.

Photo credits:  Howard Bryant, Bill Chapman/Viking. Aaron cover, amazon.com.