Behind the mask;: An inside baseball diary (A Maddick manuscripts book): Freehan, Bill: Amazon.com: Books

Bill Freehan, Detroit Tiger catcher, tell his story.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006C2RV2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ [Maddick Manuscripts, Inc.; distributed by] World Pub. Co., Cleveland
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 1970
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 225 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds

Customer Reviews:
10 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Customer reviews

10 global ratings

5 star
58%
4 star
28%
3 star
0%
2 star
0%
1 star
14%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

PETER HOYOS
Great Source Material: The Most Important Book about the 1967-1969 Detroit Tigers
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2019
Verified Purchase

If you have read Ball Four, by Jim Bouton, you will recognize the structure employed in Bill Freehan’s Behind the Mask. It is a journal or daily diary recording the games and events that transpired during the 1969 Tigers baseball season. Published in 1970 Behind the Mask was overshadowed by Bouton’s controversial bestseller, which hit the bookstores a few weeks later.
Certainly by today’s standards, Behind the Mask seems tame when compared to subsequent sports books published in the 1970s and beyond. In Behind the Mask, you will not read about chronic drug abuse or the sex-capades of twenty-somethings during long road trips, although there is a funny story about Tom Timmermann’s blind date in Seattle. In contrast to Bouton’s scandalous book, Bill Freehan offered main-stream opinions about baseball with respect for his teammates, coaches, field manager, GM, and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
The reader experiences the highs and lows of major league baseball through the descriptions of a World Champion and All-Star catcher, who along with his teammates was struggling to keep pace with the surging Baltimore Orioles. Along the way the reader gains keen insight about the team’s unique chemistry and the seeds of its destruction.
Unlike Bouton, Bill Freehan was at the pinnacle of his career in 1969. He was not fighting for his job. In the 1960s he was the best catcher in the American League. The Tigers’ players shared genuine respect if not affection for each other. They were a band of brothers with no cliques. The tension developed during the season and was aggravated by the pressure to repeat as champions. Communication problems between manager Mayo Smith and Johnny Sain culminated in the August 10th firing of the pitching coach. Mr. Freehan wrote, “If John [Sain] said the same things to Mayo he said to us, there shouldn’t have been any problem.” The recurring theme is that the Tigers players wanted a disciplinarian to enforce the team’s rules equally among the players. The primary antagonist was rule-breaker-in-chief Denny McLain.
Although Behind the Mask has been out of print for years, it is often used as source material for books, essays, and articles about the Tigers. All the other books reviewed in this article cite Behind the Mask as a source. When his teammates talk about their ball club, they often refer to the same stories that Mr. Freehan wrote about in his book, but they decline to discuss the impact that the book had on the team’s morale during the disastrous 1970 season.
If Behind the Mask was controversial in its time, it was because it came out during the unravelling of McLain’s career. In his 2006 SABR article entitled “Ball Four”, Mark Armour explained the situation that developed in March 1970, “McLain was being investigated by baseball for conspiring to operate a sports book, for which he was suspended for half the season. Freehan was embarrassed by the contents of the book, apologized to his team, and more or less refused to talk about it ever again.”
Behind the Mask has been out of print for many years. I found my original paperback copy of this book at a garage sale. Over the last 30 years, I have read and reread this book many times. I always have the same questions. Did Freehan’s teammates know he was writing the book in 1969? What impact did the book have on the team’s morale and its ultimate decline? These are the questions that the 1968 Champions don’t like to be asked, but they are also historically significant.

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report
jonathan
1969 relived by one of the best catchers of all time
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2020
Verified Purchase
If you want to relive tigers 1969 season this is the book, freehan shares great stories in this diary like detail of Detroit's complete 92 win second place finish to the Orioles. Special chapter on special treatment of Denny McLain who manages to go 24-9 on his part time job while flying all-over. Wonderful special book

Read more

Helpful

Report
Larry Dodson
Great Player...But poor book for thwe money!
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2017
Verified Purchase
For almost $20.00 this little pocket book isn't worth it. Of all the books I.ve purchased this year it's the worst yet.

Read more

Helpful

Report
Pugwash
Squatting for Dollars
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2016
Verified Purchase
Visualize the solid, veteran menacing catcher who can hurt his opponent with both the bat and glove, and Bill Freehan comes to mind. He was ranked twelfth all-time best catcher by Bill James in his seminal historical abstract in 2002. Freehan wore the Tiger colors his entire career, and played in a lineup with Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Willie Horton and Jim Northrup, among others.

The book is a journal of sorts, written almost the identical time as Ball Four. This book is more sterile, keeping locker room hijinks from between the covers, and focusing more on the inner sanctum of its author. It begins on the last play of the 1968 World Series, and takes the reader through the 1969 season.

Freehan shares the ride with the reader, sharing his frustrations of the 1969 season, his thoughts on the roster turnover for the new season ( the scrubbie oath is one of the funniest passages of the book), and life under the Sphinx-like Mayo Smith. Smith did a masterful job guiding the team to the baseball summit in 1968, but Freehan shows a human, flawed side here as we see the players in his dog house, and his kid gloved treatment of Denny McClain, who was in the midst of maybe the best all-time two season pitching run in modern day baseball history. McClain comes off as a childish cad, unaware of the chaos he litters around himself.

By turns interesting, funny and a historical chronicle, Freehan brings the human foibles of Norm Cash, Al Kaline, Gates Brown and Mickey Lolich to life, while also providing some very keen insight into his own life and thoughts.

Not as deep, raucous, or introspective as Ball Four, and for that reason, substantially more obscure.

Read more

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Don 1854
Glad to have found it here .
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2018
Verified Purchase
Good read.

Read more

Helpful

Report
Ron S.
I think this is a very underrated baseball book and a good read for any baseball fan
Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2015
If there are any Detroit Tiger fans out there who don't have this book, you should get it.
Bill's diary was written the season after their 1968 World Series championship season. I think this is a very underrated baseball book and a good read for any baseball fan. Orioles fans will love it! :-)

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Behind the mask;: An inside baseball diary (A Maddick manuscripts book) Unknown Binding – January 1, 1970

Product details

Videos

Customer reviews

Review this product

Images in this review

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Source Material: The Most Important Book about the 1967-1969 Detroit Tigers

5.0 out of 5 stars 1969 relived by one of the best catchers of all time

1.0 out of 5 stars Great Player...But poor book for thwe money!

4.0 out of 5 stars Squatting for Dollars

5.0 out of 5 stars Glad to have found it here .

5.0 out of 5 stars I think this is a very underrated baseball book and a good read for any baseball fan

Great Source Material: The Most Important Book about the 1967-1969 Detroit Tigers

1969 relived by one of the best catchers of all time

Great Player...But poor book for thwe money!

Squatting for Dollars

Glad to have found it here .

I think this is a very underrated baseball book and a good read for any baseball fan