Lou Gorman: High and Inside

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When the Red Sox let him go as general manager in 1993, Gorman stayed on and assembled the short list of replacements, including his successor, Dan Duquette. Old-school Gorman remains with the Red Sox. New-school Duquette, fired by the Red Sox in 2002, runs a baseball camp in the Berkshires. Gorman became the Red Sox ambassador, Duquette their orphan.

With an undergraduate degree in literature, he began working on a master's at Georgetown when the Korean War interrupted his early literary plans. Those ambitions rekindled three years ago with his first book, "One Pitch From Glory" and a second, the just-released "High and Inside: My Life in the Front Offices of Baseball."

In a clean raconteur's way, unglamored by a ghost writer, Gorman took a couple thousand hand-written pages and wove together in "High and Inside" four decades of baseball with stories of contract negotiations, trades, media spats and front office politics with a inevitable stain of steroids.

Much like the man, "High and Inside" is forthright and honest. What comes through most is Gorman's devotion to the game and his unique 44-year place as the bridge between baseball's two worlds.

Read The Game Today: A Game in Transition, the final chapter of High and Inside, My Life in the Front Offices of Baseball Exclusively at HOFN.com

When he began his front-office career, re-signing a player usually meant an enjoyable dinner with family, punctuated by a brief talk about money, and then on to dessert and coffee. Today the protracted angst between management and agents, with the player removed, shares more common ground with bitter divorce proceedings.

The Red Sox World Series wins in 2004 and last year spawned dozens of books from the likes of horrormeister Stephen King, to the original "Idiot," and now Yankee Johnny Damon, to any number from sports columnists and beat reporters.

But Gorman's "High and Inside" has the long echo of age and authenticity not found in any of the quick-buck exploitations of Red Sox Nation. Put on the radio and listen to a game – any game will do – and read Gorman's words as the backbeat of baseball this summer.