By Andy Furman
NKyTribune staff writer
It was one heckuva drive from Pittsburgh just for a bat.
For John W. Miller, it was well worth it. The bat is the award given to the yearly Casey Award winner. Miller, received the honor Sunday afternoon at Braxton Brewery in Covington (27. W. 7th Street) at the Spitball annual awards ceremony. His book – The Last Manager – won over some 70 entries nationwide.
If you’re not familiar with The Casey, it is the annual literary award that has been given to the best baseball book of the year since 1983. The award was created by Mike Shannon and W.J. Harrison, editors and co-founders of Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine.
“It all started in Covington,” Shannon told the Northern Kentucky Tribune, at an affair that attracted close to 200 baseball fanatics. “I started Spitball,” he said, “because I love baseball. I was an English major in college — North Carolina Wesleyan ’73 – and I wanted to be a writer. I have published 30 books on baseball.”
Too bad he’s not eligible for a Casey Award – but Miller was – and he won. It just made sense, as Miller, now a resident of Pittsburgh, is your true baseball nut.
“I lived in Belgium 30 years,” the 48-year-old Miller told the Tribune. “My parents are from the Baltimore-D.C. area, but migrated to Belgium. “I fell in love with baseball while I was there (Belgium). “It was my connection to America. In fact, Belgium Little League Baseball was quite popular. I learned the game there.”
So well, in fact, he earned a baseball scholarship to Mt. St. Mary’s University in Maryland.
Baseball playing ceased after college, but his love for the game – and writing – never died. In fact, he was with the Wall Street Journal, 13 years.
And of all things, it was his association with the Journal that opened the door to sports writing.
“I moved to Pittsburgh in 2011,” he recalled, ”for global trade coverage. However, when Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver passed in 2013, someone on the sports desk knew I was an O’s fan and asked me to write his obituary.
“Under Weaver, who died early Saturday morning at 82,” he wrote in the Journal, “the Birds flourished as a league standard for excellence, and Weaver emerged as a fiery and funny genius who changed the way the baseball is played and watched.
“The Orioles averaged 106 wins in his first three full seasons, he continued, and won the newly formed American League East Division in five of his first six. He won 100 games five times. Weaver’s overall winning percentage of .583 (1,480-1,060) ranks fifth all-time among modern managers with over 1,00 games. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1996.”
Miller knew – he knew Weaver revolutionized baseball — and he wanted everyone else to know it, too.
So, all Miller did was spend about five years researching and traveling and submitting proposals for a book, that won him a– gulp, bat.
“I interviewed over 200 people,” he said. “I went to St. Louis. I talked to his three kids, and his widow. I went to Baltimore, and talked to people where he lived.”
His hard work paid off – not only with a bat – but The Last Manager was a New York Times Best Seller – Number Seven – last March, he said. It’s really no surprise to Miller – not his success as much as the praise for Weaver.
“He helped push Baltimore’s baseball franchise to the forefront of the American conversation,” he said. “The Orioles never basked in the limelight more than when Weaver was in charge, leading them to four pennants, and a World Series victory between 1968 and 1982.”
He had the dual ability to become a great manager as well as an entertainer. “His face-to-face confrontations with umpires,” he said, “Were classic.”
Writing the book was probably easier for Miller than selling it to publishers.
“It took me six months to find an agent,” he told the Tribune. “The agent is the gatekeeper to the publisher.”
He claims he had 24 book proposals rejected – 21 were ignored — three were read and he received a “No” – and finally he got his ‘Yes.”
Baseball, says Miller, has been a theater of mind my entire life.
“I grew up listening to the other John Miller, who was a radio broadcaster for the Orioles. I listened to games on the Armed Forces Radio Network before I returned to the states.”
Now he has a Casey Award – and a bat – which by the way he can have his team use. Yes, John W. Miller coaches baseball at Allderdice High School – the biggest public high school in Pittsburgh.
“We were 3-13 the year before I started coaching,” he said. “Last year when I took over we went 14-7.”
Maybe he was using some of the Earl Weaver strategy he wrote about in The Last Manager.