Fairly At Bat: My 50 Years In Baseball, From The Batter's Box To The Broadcast Booth [Paperback]

Ron Fairly had an unbelievable 1958, in which he started the year playing baseball at the University of Southern California and ended it as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. And then it got better.

Fairly at Bat is a dramatic, funny, and altogether entertaining romp through a 50-year career as a player and broadcaster, including as a member of three World Series champion Dodgers teams in the 1950s and 60s.

All the stars of those great teams are here, not just as players, but as people, teammates and friends. The old guard from Brooklyn and the new stars in Los Angeles: Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Frank Howard, Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills and so many more. How the Dodgers who came west made Los Angeles their own, even winning a World Series in a football stadium until Dodger Stadium was built.

Fairly takes you into the lives of baseball players of the 1960s and 70s, not only between the basepaths, but in off-hours before and after the games. His memoir includes not only the Dodgers, but players he faced such as Cardinals Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, or just met along the way, like Red Sox hitting star Ted Williams.

The incidents are famous, of course, like the 1963 World Series sweep of the New York Yankees, how a bad scouting report almost cost the Dodgers the 1965 World Series and what it was like to be swept by Baltimore in the 1966 Series. The way baseball was in a rougher time, with brushback pitches and even the infamous Marichal-Roseboro brawl in 1965.

Fairly pulls no punches, discussing his relationship with the Dodger management, including owner Walter O'Malley, general manager Buzzie Bavasi and manager Walter Alston. He includes an amazing story about Alston pulling a star pitcher after 10 pitches ... in batting practice!

So much more: why Fairly chose USC for cl³F