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"You have to be in charge of the game to be a good umpire...If you let the players climb all over you, the game falls apart."--Jocko Conlan. "Entertainingly told ...[Jocko has an] almost primitive zeal for baseball and conveys it in colorful anecdotes."--New York Times Book Review. "[Jocko] is by turn salty, nostalgic, jocular, egotistical, shrewd, and autocratic--and always Irish--a winning combination for an umpire. Jocko's style, even filtered through Robert Creamer's ghost writing, reveals a gifted and voluble raconteur. There is a long parade of familiar names and mostly unfamiliar anecdotes."--Library Journal. The ultimate umpire relives the good old days on the diamond. Jocko Conlan was an outfielder for the Chicago White Sox when, one afternoon in 1936, he became an umpire. Thus began a career lasting more than a quarter century, most of it with the National League. Through the skillful writing of Robert W. Creamer, the ebullient Jocko makes his many years of umpiring so real that the reader can smell the peanuts and hear the swat of the ball. Jocko is packed with funny stories about famous players and the beleaguered umpire's lot. Robert W. Creamer, who has contributed a new afterword to this Bison Books edition, was formerly a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated. He is the author of Stengel: His Life and Times (also available as a Bison Book).
