The Suitors Of Spring

by Pat Jordan

On his way to publishing FALSE SPRING, one of the greatest baseball books ever written, Pat Jordan assembled this unique collection of character studies. The profiles are honest and insightful in a way only Pat Jordan can be.

From the brilliance of Tom Seaver, who willed himself to greatness, to the indifference of Sam McDowell, who should have had Seaver's numbers; from a confident Bruce Kison, who is followed from the minors to a world series triumph; to the legendary Steve Dalkowski, who threw so fast Ted Williams refused to bat against him, yet never got a whiff of big league air.

The result is a fascinating look into the hearts and minds of winners and losers, dreamers and doers, from the low minor leagues to the world series. What goes on between the lines is determined to a great degree by what is inside of each ballplayers.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

145 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Mike Reuther]

I’ve read plenty of baseball books, but as someone who loves the craft of pitching, I couldn’t get enough of Pat Jordan’s Suitors of Spring.
Never mind that this book was published more than 40 years ago.
The author profiles some of the most interesting hurlers and how they approached their job, but beyond that, probes their hearts and minds.
I especially enjoyed the profile on Johnny Sain, a once successful pitcher, who helped many hurlers as a pitching coach, but always found himself out of a job after wearing out his welcome with teams.
All these pitchers and former pitchers bring something different to the book, their perfections, and to be sure, their imperfections.
Some are enigmas, such as Cleveland Indians fireballer Sam McDowell, who despite his immense talents, is unable to find great success in the big leagues.
Then there’s Tom Seaver, at the time of the book’s publication perhaps the game's most celebrated pitcher, who worked hard to find success.
Perhaps the wild card of the pitchers is Bo Belinsky, the high-living, skirt-chasing former California Angel, who tossed a no-hitter early in his career only to see his career flame out. Jordan catches up to Belinsky just after his playing days have ended, hanging with him in his Los Angeles bachelor’s pad and meeting some of his zany friends and hangers-on.
Jordan has a unique insight into the world of pitchers, having pitched in the minors for several years. The book includes a marvelous profile of Jordan as a high school pitching phenom when scouts were hounding him to sign with their big league teams.
A pitcher stands in the center of the diamond, holding a ball in his hand. He can decide what kind of pitch to throw and where to throw it. He has a certain grip, a control on the game like no other player on the field. The pitcher literally puts the ball in play.
But is he ever really in control? That is the real question Jordan seems to be seeking in this book.

[Tom Stamper]

I read this on the strength of enjoying Pat Jordan's great memoir, False Spring. It's a series of baseball pitcher profiles written for magazines like Sports Illustrated in the early 1970s. The book is fairly short and I wondered if Jordan's writings were just sporadic or if he only wanted to choose the top shelf stuff. I don't think there is a bad profile here. The question is whether the reader will know enough of the names to be interested in the material. For instance, I knew nothing of characters like Bo Belenski or Sam McDowell, but I found them compelling enough that I went to Wikipedia for more info after I finished their pieces. Tom Seaver was still pitching when I came of baseball age and his profile might therefore be the most interesting for Generation X people like myself. Yet the profile I enjoyed the most is that of Johnny Sain, and almost forgotten baseball figure that loomed large as a pitcher in the late 1940s and a pitching coach in the 1960s. Sain is much discussed in Jim Bouton's book Ball Four and he is also called out as a great pitching coach either by Roger Angell or Roger Kahn in a book I read over ten years ago. Pat Jordan can you please write an entire biography of Johnny Sain for the sake posterity?

[Mike]

Standout feature pieces by Pat Jordan on Tom Seaver, Johnny Sain, Sudden Sam MacDowell, Bo Belinsky, amateur baseball scouts, and Steve Dalkowski. A tremendous read.

[Spiros]

Before publication of FALSE SPRING, the memoir of his flameout from professional baseball, Pat Jordan gathered seven articles focusing on pitchers who were at varied degrees of development at that time: from blue-chip high school prospect Art DeFilippis (I'd never heard of him, either), to All-Stars Tom "Terrific" Seaver and "Sudden" Sam McDowell, to former celebrated big leaguers Johnny Sain and Bo Belinski. Jordan, inevitably, is far more fascinated with failure and wasted potential than he is with stories of success; the piece on Seaver feels a little flat, those on Belinski and Steve Dalkowski, the 100 MPH prospect who could never harness his stuff long enough to achieve a place in the big leagues, fairly sing.