In The Red

What with all the talk about Judith Regan and O.J.'s so-called tell-all memoir, the reading public lost track of another Regan product that might be equally dismissed. Coming soon to a book shop near you, or perhaps not, is a fictional biography of Mickey Mantle.

The book pretends to be Mickey Mantle telling his life story to Leonard Shecter, a long deceased writer who worked on the wildly popular Ball Four. The latter was a real memoir, the story of Jim Bouton as told by himself, and he was blunt and honest about baseball life. Whatever was in the book, Bouton wanted in, no matter how unpleasant it might have been. The author of 7, the Mickey Mantle story, just plain makes stuff up, but it could have happened that way, dear reader.

Why not just pen a biography? It's been done, and by no less an authority than Mickey Mantle's wife, who put up with his wicked ways. Then too, the baseball legend is still a hero to many, and even if author Peter Golenbeck could track down some witnesses to confess, it would not be the same. In fiction, the author controls the characters, and he controls what they say and what they do and where they go.

Not to forget, but sex sells, and the sex life of a baseball legend should fly out of the book shop door. Isn't that what ReganBooks was all about, after all? Selling, and selling in big numbers? So what better book to promote than one with a huge baseball icon and lots of smut, with Marilyn Monroe tossed in the mix?

Robert Thiel of the Book Stall in Winnetka doesn't think the novel is going to make it. The problem is, the stories related in the book might have come from other ball players trading tales, hearsay that can't be proved or disproved. So it's not an authentic telling of Mantle's womanizing ways. And the dialogue, being in a novel, is all made up, so the average sports fan isn't likely to buy the book. A guy would know the difference between the fiction stacks and the sports section, apparently, and he won't bother with the novel because he wants the real thing. And there's the whole issue of a big hero being reduced to some weak, testosterone driven cad. Many would prefer that the hero remain on his pedestal and they don't care to hear about his clay feet.

First the expense of the O.J. pulping, and now the potential tanking of the next release. ReganBooks might be a going concern, but it's going into the red. Nothing a change of leadership can't fix.