Pete Reiser: The Rough-and-tumble Career of the Perfect Ballplayer (review)

Harold Patrick "Pistol Pete" Reiser was a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon of a baseball player whose ten-year Major League career (1940–52), with three years off for military service in World War II, makes him an interesting and tragic figure from beginning to end. This biography of that period of his life is both well written and well balanced.

"Pistol Pete," a nickname given him in his youth for his love of cowboy movies and a popular western character of the same name, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1919. By age twenty-one he was a Major League baseball player with the Brooklyn Dodgers during their midcentury rising stature in the National League.

Reiser played the game only one way, "all out." In 1940 he became Rookie of the Year. Thereafter, he more often than not led his fellow players in many key areas of play, including hitting, fielding, and base stealing, or was very near the top. Sadly, the area in which he was far and away more proficient than his colleagues was crashing into outfield walls, both home and away. He was often carried from the field unconscious.

During his military service in the Army, from 1943 to 45, he was under the command of more than one vainglorious brass hat who expected big things of themselves based on Reiser's efforts with company baseball teams. His injuries were from time to time exacerbated, and on one occasion, when he fell down a hill chasing an outfield fly, resulting in a separated shoulder, they were increased. He was finally discharged from the Army by a doctor who found, based on the history of his physical condition, that he should never have been inducted at all.

Back in the Major Leagues, Reiser's batting and base-stealing abilities came to the fore despite ten more collisions with outfield walls, persistent headaches and dizziness, another shoulder separation, and various fractures and contusions.

The baseball player most often touted as the best there could be and surest to reach the Hall of Fame at career's end finished his career decidedly down as the result of a long slide directly related to his many injuries.

On more than one occasion the author makes reference to what he considers Dodger management's failure to confine Reiser to infield positions, at which he was also adept, for his own benefit. However, it should be remembered that the first priority of a manager is the good of the team.

It's for the reader to decide whether there is a real culprit in this story who should be rebuked, or whether Reiser's own ambition, or reckless naiveté, is to be faulted—or a combination of both.

While the book basically deals with Reiser's playing career, it is the further references to Reiser's stints as a Minor and Major League manager and coach that tickle one's interest. Because his acumen in this area seemed to have been appreciated and he met with some success, a little more information, both factual and anecdotal, would have been appreciated.

For those not familiar with the career of "Pistol Pete" Reiser, this book will enlighten and entertain. For those who know of him and perhaps even saw him play, it will provide a more rounded picture.