Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George

The best behind the scenes look at the Yankees since Bronx Zoo and Ball Four. Appel is the author of a number of baseball books but this is his best as he goes back to his earlier days to recount the tales of toiling for George and the Yanks. Many stories are brand new here, at least for me, and it is a pleasure for Yankee fans and Yankee haters to recall them. A great beach or bleacher summer read.

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to work for George Steinbrenner in the front office? Marty Appel had the "pleasure" as the key P.R. guy for a couple of very important years when George "re-entered" baseball and the "new" Yankee stadium opened. I could not put this book down. My only regret is that Marty quit around the early part of 1977 and not 1997. This book is a "must" for anybody who wants to know what goes on when the press is not looking!

A delightful tale...and it is all true! Marty Appel has had the privilege of a career that baseball fans dream of. His passion for the Yankees and skill in spinning a story, make this book a joy from first word to the last. Marty's journey is filled with humor, inside stories and characters that make up baseball and the New York Yankees. Read about the heart and soul of a team that is a legend, by someone who loves the game and the people in it.

Not only is this an enjoyable tale...it's true. For an insider's look at a career that combined a love of the Yankees with an exceptional talent for enthusiatically telling their story, this is the book to read.Share in the history and the personalities that made up Marty Appel's professional world. Dream along with Marty as he builds a career at the epicenter of his passion...with the New York Yankees.

Unlike Maury Allen's disappointing "All Roads To October", which presented itself as a comprehensive overview of the Steinbrenner era but was just a dull, lackluster personal memoir with skimpy rehashings of old info, Marty Appel doesn't pretend to offer us anything more than his own personal memoir of working with the Yankees from 1968 to 1977, where he rose from a college student given the job of handling Mickey Mantle's fan mail, to the demanding position of director of Public Relations. And what a fascinating memoir it is, offering an up-close look at the Yankees from the latter days of the dreary CBS years of the early 70s, through the return to glory in the early years of George Steinbrenner's tumultuous ownership. Appel offers anecdotes that range from the spellbinding (being present when Gabe Paul made his phone call to Bobby Murcer telling him he'd been traded) to the poignant (running after Horace Clarke to say goodbye to him following Clarke's trade, and being the only member of the Yankee organization to so much as say goodbye to the perpetual symbol of 1965-74 Yankees mediocrity) to the comical (Willie Randolph's insistence on wearing #30 when Appel and clubhouse man Pete Sheehy had been trying to keep it unofficially retired after Mel Stottlemyre's release). This book is a must for all Yankee fans who grew up in the 70s and ranks as a great supplement to Philip Bashe's comprehensive overview of the era "Dog Days." Don't miss this one!