GILES HATBORO SIGNING A HUGE
SUCCESS
Former Phillies executive and part club owner
was at the Society's Museum/Library/Gift Shoppe on Saturday
June 16th from 10am-1pm signing copies of his new book, "Pouring
Six Beers at a Time and other stories from a Lifetime in Baseball"
co-author (Doug Myers).
This hardcover 332 page masterpiece is a must
read for baseball fans all across the land as indicated in
the foreword by Philadelphia columnist Jayson Stark. In Bill
Gile's dreams, baseball was always more than just a game.
It was a show you could sell to women and to kids and to folks
who barely knew a baseball from a beach ball. It could be
part sport and part Disney World. What Bill Veeck was to baseball
in Cleveland, St. Louis and Chicago, that's what Bill Giles
was to baseball in Houston and Philadelphia.
Bill Giles' new book celebrates 'sixpacks'
and - you guessed it! - Phillies baseball
By: Mike Morsch - Executive Editor
Although he's spent a good portion of
his life around characters, Philadelphia Phillies Chairman
Bill Giles doesn't really think he's one himself.
"I don't consider myself anywhere close to a Casey Stengel,
or even a John Kruk, for that matter, but I'm definitely different
than most people who marketed the game," said Giles in
a recent telephone interview.
Those innovations, and the characters Giles encountered along
the way, are detailed in a new release from Triumph Books
titled "Pouring Six Beers at a Time: And Other Stories
from a Lifetime of Baseball" by Giles, along with Doug
Myers.
Local fans will get a chance to talk to Giles at several scheduled
book signings, one of which is set for Saturday, June 16,
at a time to be determined at the Philadelphia Athletics Historical
Society, 6 N. York Road, in Hatboro. For details, go to www.philadelphiaathletics.org
or call 215-323-9901.
The title of the book is based on Giles' life in baseball,
and details his experience in his first full-time baseball
job in 1960 as business manager of the minor league Nashville
Volunteers in the Southern Association. There he was in charge
of public relations, promotions, advertising, and ticket and
concession sales. In other words, a jack-of-all-trades.
According to a passage in the book, "This is one trick
you can try at home. You line up six open bottles and six
cups, then bring your hands palms down through the line of
beers into the lined-up cups. Like a well-turned double play,
timing is everything - though you should know that Nashville
beer patrons are much less forgiving than second-base umpires
of the alcohol-equivalent of the phantom tag."
"The theme of the book - like pouring six beers at once
- is about the balance you try to accomplish between a business
and a sport," said Giles.
The Phillies chairman comes from a famous baseball pedigree.
His father, Warren, was president of the Cincinnati Reds and
later of the National League and was elected to the Major
League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979. And Giles' godfather
is the late Branch Rickey, another Hall-of-Famer and longtime
baseball executive who essentially invented the minor league
farm system as an executive for the St. Louis Cardinals and
who, as an executive with the Brooklyn Dodgers, broke baseball's
color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson as the first African-American
to play in what was then an all-white Major Leagues.
"I've had some fun experiences throughout my years in
baseball and I thought people would like to read about them,"
said Giles. "Now that I've written the book and read
it a few times, I say to myself, 'Jeez, there were a couple
of other stories I should have told.' But not all of them.
Some of them are a little risqué."
Readers can get the inside scoop on Giles' involvement in
the early days of the Houston franchise - then called the
Colt 45s and later the Astros - and his involvement in the
birth of indoor baseball, the construction of the Astrodome
and the advent of artificial turf.
There are many interesting tidbits about his years with the
Phillies, including the last season at Connie Mack Stadium
in 1971 and the move to Veterans Stadium and the famous "Kiteman"
promotion to deliver the first ball of the 1972 season.
And of course, there are some inside baseball anecdotes about
the signing of Pete Rose to join the 1980 club, the final
ingredient to what would become the team's only World Series
title in its history; the 1993 squad, which lost the World
Series to the Toronto Blue Jays, courtesy of Joe Carter's
dramatic home run off Mitch Williams in Game Six; the effort
to bring an old-style ballpark to Philadelphia with the opening
of Citizens Bank Park in 2004; and the economics of baseball.
"The part of baseball economics is the one chapter I
worried about the most," said Giles. "Some people
who have read it think it's educational; others think it's
boring. The majority of fans are like Joe Sixpack, and they
probably don't care about the economics of baseball. All they
care about is being entertained on the field and winning."
Giles said that the salaries of baseball players are always
more heavily discussed than the salaries of players in other
professional sports.
"Baseball is held at a different level by media types,"
he said. "There are always more things written about
baseball players, be it the Brett Myers situation from last
year [Myers was accused in a domestic dispute with his wife
while in Boston, but charges were eventually dropped] or steroids.
For some reason, it's more interesting to be a little naughty
in baseball."
Giles began writing his family memoirs in 2001-2002. After
showing some of the finished product to two of his granddaughters
who were less than enthusisastic about it, a friend convinced
Giles to turn the project into one about baseball.
So Giles wrote three or four chapters and sent them to noted
baseball author David Halberstam, who critiqued them and told
Giles he thought people would be interested in the information.
"I really loved writing the book," said Giles. "One
hope I have is that it will bring back memories for the people
who have been Phillies fans for a long time. Both the good
times and the bad times."
As for the 2007 Phillies, Giles is understandably high on
his marquee players and as optimistic as anybody at the start
of a new season.
"Chase Utley is a man's man and Ryan Howard is a lovable
guy," he said. "You can feel it around town. Even
back in the early 1980s when we had all those good teams,
there wasn't as much talk as there is now about this team."
In addition to the book signing at the A's Historical Society,
three other book singings are scheduled at the Majestic Clubhouse
Store at Citizens Bank Park: Sunday, April 15, from 12:30
to 1:30 p.m.; Thursday, April 26, from 2:05 to 3:05 p.m.;
and Saturday, May 12, from 3 to 4 p.m.
|
