If you have never heard of the book, “Pouring Six Beers at a Time and Other Stories from a Lifetime in Baseball,” you are not alone. Published by Triumph Books in 2007, the book was written by Bill Giles, former president and now chairman of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Its publication did not set off tremors in the publishing industry and did not ignite a run on book stores or amazon.com. To say it began publishing life under the radar and has remained there would be accurate.

Last week, however, thanks to a sharp-eyed reader, I learned about the book’s existence and a nugget within its pages that prompted me to get it as quickly as possible so I could see for myself that he wrote what the reader, Greg Spira, said he did. I found it stunning.

In writing about the owners’ collusion against free agents in the mid-1980s, I have said several times, most recently last week, that only two management people, former commissioner Fay Vincent and former labor executive Richard Ravitch, have acknowledged the illegal collusion.

However, reader Spira, reading the tale I told about former Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and his denial of collusion, alerted me to page 290 of the Giles book, and it was a revelation:

“Ueberroth devised a plan for the 1985 signing season where teams were not to make any significant offer to a free agent if the team that had that player under contract wanted to keep him. That plan did help slow down escalating salaries in 1985, 1986, and 1987. Unfortunately, the plan also happened to be illegal and blatantly obvious.”

Make Giles No. 3.

Giles, however, has a distinction that separates him from Nos. 1 and 2, Vincent and Ravitch. He testified in one of the collusion hearings, and he told a different story from the one he wrote about in his book.

“Giles lied,” said Marvin Miller, who had not been retired long as head of the players union when the owners began conspiring against free agents in 1985. “He said under oath there was no collusion.”

I asked Giles on the telephone last Friday about the change in his version of collusion. “I don’t really remember that,” he said of his 1987 testimony before an arbitrator.

“I thought the whole thing was wrong,” he added. “I bucked the system and signed Lance Parrish when many people were telling me not to sign him; I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

Giles signed the veteran catcher all right, but he wrote in his book that he wanted to sign him “provided it did not cost much more than the $1.1 million the Tigers,” his pre-free agent team, “had offered him.”

Giles got Parrish for a $1.2 million salary, nevertheless playing the illegal collusion game because the idea of it was to keep salaries down and Giles cooperated in keeping Parrish’s salary down.

Giles, in the book, offered one other observation that was honest. Noting that collusion cost the owners $280 million, he wrote, “More importantly, the level of trust by the players of the owners was severely – and almost irrevocably – damaged.”

OFFENSE OFF AGAIN

Statistical data for the first month of the season arrived from two different directions the other day and, taken together, indicate an offensive crisis in the major leagues.

A report from Stats statistical service shows that teams have averaged 4.31 runs a game through last Thursday, the lowest first-month average since 1992 when the average was 4.12,

At the same time, Major League Baseball informs us that through last Wednesday only six grand slams had been hit this season, creating the possibility that fewer grand slams will be hit before May 1 than in any season since 1990, when batters slugged five grand slams in the first month. Only five were hit in 1995, but that season was delayed until April 25 because of the players strike.

What do these statistics mean? Obviously, it’s early in the season, and poor weather could be a factor in reduced offense, but hitting has been declining for several seasons and the start to this season portends further decline. The absence of steroids and amphetamines could be having an effect on batters.

The last season scoring rose was 2006. Since then the average runs per game per team has slipped from 4.86 to 4.80 to 4.65 to 4.61 to 4.38 last season. Not enough of this season has been played to say the decline will continue, but the decline in the first month of last season forecast the season-long decline.

PULITZER JURY SUFFERS HEAD TRAUMA

Impact. I always used to think that reporters and newspapers won Pulitzer Prizes on the basis of the impact their reporting had. I would think the Pulitzer for public service would especially have something to do with impact.

Has any reporting ever had greater or more widespread impact than Alan Schwarz’s reporting on concussions and other head injuries?

Schwarz’s revolutionary reporting for The New York Times forced the National Football League to see that its view of head trauma was all wrong and to change the way it dealt with head trauma. It induced officials and coaches at all other levels of football, down to the pee wee level, to look at and treat head injuries differently, more carefully, more intelligently.

It spread to other professional sports leagues as well, prompting Major League Baseball and its players union to establish a special disabled list for players who suffer concussions. Schwarz never even wrote about baseball in the context of head injuries, but baseball got his message nonetheless.

Impact? This is impact. Impact on whole sports, impact on players, coaches, officials, maybe most important impact on kids, countless number of kids, most of whom haven’t been born.

Did the seven-member Pulitzer jury understand any of that? I don’t know. I tried to find out by calling some of the jurors, but I reached none and none returned my calls. I was left to speculate that they didn’t get it and decided they were as bad as editors. But then I realized they are editors, five of the seven at least:

• Robert Blau, managing editor, projects and investigations, Bloomberg News, Washington, D.C. (chair)
• Emily Bell, director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism , Columbia University
• Felice Belman, editor, Concord Monitor
• Aminda Marques Gonzalez, executive editor, The Miami Herald
• Valerie Hoeppner, director of education, Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, Nashville, Tenn.
• Debra Adams Simmons, editor, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio
• Sherman Williams, assistant managing editor/visual journalism, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Note that five of the seven are women. Not to be sexist, but maybe they don’t pay attention to football and simply don’t understand the danger of head injuries. Maybe they don’t know that former football players have killed themselves as a result of the effects of their head injuries.

There has to be some explanation for why the Pulitzer jurors failed to comprehend the significance of Schwarz’s reporting.

They gave the public service Pulitzer to the Los Angeles Times for “its exposure of corruption in the small California city of Bell where officials tapped the treasury to pay themselves exorbitant salaries, resulting in arrests and reforms.”

As admirable as the work of two Times reporters was, it was hardly a first. Newspapers have uncovered municipal corruption forever and have won Pulitzers for their work. No other reporter has done what Schwarz has done or had the impact his efforts have had.

Uncovering corruption in Bell, Calif., will not deter politicians and officeholders from being corrupt elsewhere. Next year or the year after another newspaper will uncover corruption in another small town.

No newspaper in the next year or years will duplicate Schwarz’s work. It will remain unique. This incidentally was not the first opportunity the Pulitzer people had to award Schwarz a Pulitzer. Twice before in the previous three years they passed on him. They were wrong then, too.

A reader of this Web site, Robert Russell, sent me a copy of the e-mail he sent to the Pulitzer board last week.

“That Alan Schwarz, NYT Sports, is a finalist and not a 2011 winner is a miscarriage of journalism justice and a mockery of the Pulitzer Prize.

“Do they know anything about the Mega-Billion dollar business of football and the serious issue of game related head injuries-concussions. Do they know that the year long reporting on the concussion issue in football, by Schwarz in the NYT, by itself, produced more positive results than any other piece by any of your PP winners?

“Schwarz reporting stopped the NFL concussion stone-walling tactics in their tracks, and the result was not a trickle-down rippling, but a deluge of positive changes in the way football is now played, coached and officiated, all with safety from injury, especially head injury of primary importance…from the NFL down to and through the youth leagues.

“Schwarz reporting has forever changed the culture-rules-and head injury treatment standards of the game. In addition, his pieces on the matter of helmet ‘reconditioning’, the exposing of a scam of gigantic proportions were worthy of a Pulitzer on their own. The beneficiaries of Schwarz’s reporting are the hundreds of thousands of players: NFL pros, college, high school and the youth leagues; their coaches and team medical staff; parents and/or spouses. From the grizzled NFL veteran to the 6 year old kid putting on a helmet for the first time

“What other PP winner has done so much good for so many? And he is just a finalist!

“Shame on you for failing to honor the BEST writing and reporting for 2010 ….and 2009.”