8.13.2017   Hall of Fame catcher tells his remarkable story

Longtime Texas Rangers catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez tells the story of his Hall of Fame baseball career in They Call Me Pudge: My Life Playing the Game I Love (with Jeff Sullivan, Triumph Books, $25.95 hardcover).

Rodriguez grew up in a small town in Puerto Rico with one brother in a close-knit family where “everything in our house revolved around baseball.” He dedicated the book to his parents, Joe and Eva, “for all their love, inspiration, and sacrifice.” He was signed by the Texas Rangers at age sixteen and started playing in the majors at nineteen. In twenty-one seasons, thirteen of them with Texas, he caught more games than any catcher in Major League history, won thirteen Gold Gloves as the best defensive catcher, was the American League Most Valuable Player in 1999, and had more than 2,800 hits. He led the Florida (now Miami) Marlins to a World Series title in 2003.

Rodriguez was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible, only the second catcher so honored (the other was his childhood idol, Johnny Bench), and was inducted last month. Throughout the book, Rodriguez speaks with confidence about his baseball skills, but not in a bragging sort of way. He was just that good. His numbers and his leadership spoke for themselves.

So did his ever-present smile. “I wasn’t conscious of my smiling,” he writes. “I guess I was just happy. I was in my happy place, playing this game I so respected and adored.”

Songs about Abilene: In his revised, expanded edition of Abilene in Song: The Women There Don’t Treat You Mean author Joe W. Specht tells about more than a hundred songs in which Abilene, Texas, either plays a role or is mentioned in passing.

The book (TexasStarTrading.com, $20 paperback) includes a CD of five of those songs, sung by Abilene musician Greg Young, ranging from the 1963 number one hit “Abilene” to “The Abilene Waltz,” recorded in 2016.

New novel: Laredo author Edward Swift gets right to the point in his new novel, Walking on Glory (CreateSpace, $9 paperback), killing off the main character in the first sentence.

Glory St. Michael is based on a Dallas millionaire who died penniless in 1991. Walking on Glory is Swift’s ninth book and eighth novel.

Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.