The Cup of Coffee Club: 11 Players and their Brush with Baseball History by Jacob Kornhauser (review)

Reading Jacob Kornhauser’s new book, I couldn’t shake the opening line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” For while the stories of baseball’s heroes are remarkably similar, the ones contained within The Cup of Coffee Club are each singularly tragic. At least nobody throws themselves under a train.

Kornhauser has collected eleven such tales and if they’re in fact representative of what it’s like to reach the summit, for one day only I’m glad I never got beyond high school ball. But I suspect they’re not; Tolstoy never saw a baseball game, but he probably nailed it when it comes to the stories of the men who played a solitary game in the big leagues before returning to Earth forever.

The book is a fascinating concept: letting readers in on the experience of living out your dream only to have it snatched away after only the slightest nibble. What’s that like? Is it worth it? Or is it better to have never gotten there at all under the theory that only once one experiences Eden can he truly comprehend what he’s missing?

Kornhauser interviewed his subjects to get their takes, and while they all seem to be trying very hard to put the most positive spin on things, it’s not difficult to see that what they’re struggling to define as success nevertheless feels very much, at least to them, like a profound failure. These are revealing, albeit tough reads.

Take, for instance, the stories of Larry Yount and Stephen Larkin—brothers of top shelf Hall of Famers. Larry was the older brother (of Robin) and Stephen the younger (of Barry), but no matter, the comparisons with their more famous siblings hurt—even to read them, albeit in different ways. And then there’s the tale of Jeff Bannister, who overcame childhood bone cancer, osteomyelitis, temporary paralysis (caused by a home plate collision during a college fall league game), and the untimely death of his father to reach the big leagues with the Pirates on July 23, 1991. In sketch form this story feels like a success, overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds and all.

But Kornhauser digs deeper and reveals it to be bittersweet at best. Bannister got a hit in his only big league at-bat, ending his career with a perfect 1.000 batting average. Great, right? But it was a rainy night, the game was a blowout, Bannister played what would be termed “garbage time” had this been the NBA, and he was sent down as soon as the Pirates’ starting catcher, Don Slaught, returned from injury. From then on, Bannister admitted to Kornhauser, he “play[ed] angry” (76). “When you achieve your dream or you climb Mount Everest and all of a sudden, you have to come back down,” he continued, “it’s just a memory. What’s next? You always need that next step. I didn’t have that next step.” (77).

None of them did. Which, perhaps, is the only through line connecting these eleven tough sketches. At least some members of the cup of coffee club have a Jeff Bannister-like memory: Roe Skidmore’s one game likewise produced a hit, and he has the yellowed ball on his mantel to prove it. Yount, by contrast, holds the distinction of being the only pitcher in Major League history to be credited with an appearance without having faced a single batter in his entire big-league career. Kornhauser’s book is sprinkled with fascinating revelations like that one, but there’s a macabre aspect to each of them. They’re fascinating because they’re tragic in one way or another. Which, once again, makes me grateful that none of these tales end in Anna Karenina-like fashion.

Because each story is so different than...