Review: John D’Acquisto’s ‘Fastball John’

John D’Acquisto spent most of his life pitching for West Coast teams. In his 266 games in the majors, only 14 of them were for teams located in a state besides California. I was always aware of him – helped by his big rookie season and of course his appearance on baseball cards – but never really much more about him than say Marty Pattin or Lerrin LaGrow. He had kind of a Jewfro and threw hard but if asked to tell you much more than that, it would have been a struggle.

But over the past two days, I rifled through his book, Fastball John, which he wrote with the aid of David Jordan, who is a Facebook friend of mine. I got it as a Christmas present for myself. It came a couple of days before the 25th and I put it under the tree, to ensure that there was at least one gift that I would be excited to open.

D’Acquisto had written stories for Jordan’s site, instreamsports.com, which were terrific. They were insightful without being self-congratulatory and they brought to life guys who I knew essentially only from their Topps cards. D’Acquisto had instant credibility – he was a first-round pick and a guy who spent a decade in the majors. But he was never a full-blown star. Yet it didn’t matter because he had both a good writing style and no shortage of stories to tell.

I was a touch intimidated when I opened my present and found the book was over 500 pages long. With social media and everyone linking everything, it’s quite possible that I read more now than ever before in my life. But it’s usually in chunks of 10 minutes or fewer with the absence of guilt/freedom to move on at any point if it failed to hold my interest. If an online story stinks – move on to the next one and make a mental note of the person who linked it and the site that ran it.

Yet a book is different. When’s the last time I read a 500-page book? But whatever trepidation I may have felt quickly went out the window. The style and the content that I enjoyed so much in articles online was still right there, only there was so much more to digest and appreciate.

One of the challenges in writing a review is to decide how much of the story needs to be relayed to entice a potential reader to go ahead and make the plunge and invest both the money and the time to read the book. Assuming of course that you want your readers to do that. So let me be clear that if you like baseball and remember guys from the 1970s then you absolutely want to read this book.

The book contains information on Hall of Famers and perennial All-Stars but that’s a small part of the story. It’s just as much about D’Acquisto’s interactions with guys like Terry Forster or Steve Ontiveros or Clay Kirby. It’s as much about Decatur and Fresno as it is about San Francisco and San Diego. It makes Frank Funk as important as Roger Craig.

And while it’s almost always about baseball, it’s also about music and cars and girls and office politics and banking and sports motion analytics and horses and legal entanglements. It’s about the draft, both baseball and Uncle Sam’s, and MLB’s labor issues, what it’s like to be a free agent and even the Senior League.

Being a West Coast guy, there’s not a ton of direct contact with guys on the Mets. Yet Keith Hernandez, Joe Torre and Ray Sadecki all have parts, even if when they crossed paths with D’Acquisto didn’t match up with when they were on the Mets. He was only on the Cardinals for a brief time, so there aren’t a ton of Hernandez tidbits. But what’s there is excellent.

Regardless, Fastball John is a terrific read. Available only in paperback, you can pick up a copy at the usual places. Amazon and their suite of sellers has it available for as low as $16.99 while it’s also available for $20.99 at Barnes and Noble. Another option is to order through the book’s Facebook page, where if you ask nicely, you can get a signed copy for $25, including shipping. Buy it today.