Happy Book Birthday to Schoolboy

Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in social media posts, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero (Nebraska, 2024) by Waite Hoyt and Tim Manners.

About the Book:

Waite “Schoolboy” Hoyt’s improbable baseball journey began when the 1915 New York Giants signed him as a high school junior, for no pay and a five-dollar bonus. After nearly having both his hands amputated and cavorting with men twice his age in the hardscrabble Minor Leagues, he somehow ended up the best pitcher for the New York Yankees in the 1920s.

Based on a trove of Hoyt’s writings and interview transcripts, Tim Manners has reanimated the baseball legend’s untold story, entirely in Hoyt’s own words. Schoolboy dives straight into early twentieth-century America and the birth of modern-day baseball, as well as Hoyt’s defining conflict: Should he have pursued something more respectable than being the best pitcher on the 1927 New York Yankees, arguably the greatest baseball team of all time?

A Word from the Author:

When eight boxes of Waite “Schoolboy” Hoyt’s files arrived on my front porch some five years ago, I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t fathom how I might turn his papers into a book. I certainly could not have predicted what would unfold over the next half-decade, and especially during the last year since the book’s release.

I certainly developed a whole new appreciation of the power of books, in particular their ability to touch and connect people in surprising, and maybe even supernatural, ways.

An early hint that this project had magic arrived the night I received a surprise voicemail message from Bob Costas. Yes, the Bob Costas. Or, as I said to my wife Beth at the time: “Bob f***ing Costas!” I had sent Bob a letter asking if he’d write a jacket blurb, and he ended up penning three paragraphs, which became the book’s foreword.

The miracles continued when Chris “Mad Dog” Russo gave me a half hour on his Sirius XM show. This likely explains why Schoolboy briefly became the #1 new baseball book on Amazon. I’ll bet Charlie Hustle did not see that one coming! 🙂

When my publicity campaign took me to Cincinnati, where Waite had been the voice of the Reds for 24 years, the wizardry assumed an otherworldly hue. The morning after visiting Waite’s grave at the Spring Grove Cemetery, I woke up to find a penny stuck to my ankle. I peeled it off and froze when I saw the date: 1984. The year Waite died! I like to think it was a penny from heaven, Waite’s ethereal way of letting me know he approved.

Schoolboy received its fair share of newspaper, radio, television, podcast, and blog attention. By far, the greatest honor was the invitation to a sit-down interview at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. This turned out to be a moment when baseball, books, and life converged in a most unexpected way.

A dark phase of Waite Hoyt’s life came after he and his first wife Dorothy divorced; he did not see her nor their two children for forty years. Forty years! Nobody in the family knows exactly why and Waite is no longer available for comment.

Understandably, this astonishing lapse was cause for raw feelings within the disparate Hoyt family. Incredibly, Schoolboy all but erased any lingering discontent and some twenty-four family members decided that my Hall of Fame appearance was as good a reason as any for them to have a reunion. And that’s exactly what happened. We had a fabulous party in Cooperstown.

When I set about corralling those eight boxes of Waite Hoyt’s papers, I thought I was just working on a book about a baseball player. Over time, I came to appreciate that Waite Hoyt’s story was more about life as he found it, and his struggles to make sense of it.

What I never saw coming was that this book could—and would—help bring his family back together.

Reviews:

“He is far more eloquent—hence the Schoolboy nickname—than one might expect of baseball’s early crew and speaks extremely candidly about his struggles coping with hazing, the temptations of life on the road, and alcoholism. Though all the pictures of Hoyt are black-and-white, this autobiography is as colorful and relevant as they come.”—Zach Koenig, Twinkie Town

“Just call Tim Manners a true ghostwriter. The longtime writer, editor, essayist and baseball fan has resurrected the ghost of Waite Hoyt, the ace of the New York Yankees pitching staff during the 1920s.”—Bob D’Angelo, The Sports Bookie

“Worth the Waite! In reading a terrific new book by Tim Manners with Waite Hoyt–‘Schoolboy’ (triumph)–I learned that Hoyt pitched three complete games without allowing an earned run”—Bill Gartland, Baseball Digest

“Veteran Reds fans old enough to have listened to Waite Hoyt broadcast Reds game on radio will really enjoy the new Schoolboy book published 40 years after his death.”—John Kiesewetter, Cincinnati Public Radio

“Manners’s skill as an editor may have a great deal to do with the flow and ease of the read, reminding me of listening to Hoyt’s voice, just as I heard it when I listened to the games with my mother and grandmother. The book brings back a flood of summer memories.”—Daniel M. Linnenberg, NINE