If Your Act Plays New York, You Can Make Book on It

How does a person get himself removed from a mailing list?

It’s not the political stuff or the underwear catalogues or the encouraging letters from Ed McMahon that I want to stop getting.

What I would like to stop is the flood of books written by and about New York athletes.

Don’t get me wrong, they are all fine books, every one of them, all potential Pulitzer material. Full of insight and anecdote. Penetrating, thought provoking, riveting. Or so say the book liners.

It’s just that I have no more room in my library, garage, auto trunk or bomb shelter to store any more New York sports books, all of which I am intending to read one of these days.

I don’t know why it is that the free world has become overrun with books about New York sports heroes. Could it possibly be because all the big book publishing companies are based in New York, and the people who decide which books get published are all Mets-Yankees-Giants fans?

Naaaah.

Never mind that New York is the only city in America where the mayor writes a best-seller. Or where the richest landowner writes a best seller. Donald Trump! An autobiography of a guy whose main claims to fame are once owning a United States Football League team and once building a tower.

In Los Angeles, we had a guy build his own towers, with his own hands. Did anyone badger Simon Rodia to write a book on the Watts Towers?

But back to sports.

In New York, the football Giants win one lousy Super Bowl and within days America’s bookstores are crammed with Giants’ books. Thirteen of them, each by a different guy. Books like “Parcells--Autobiography of the Biggest Giant of Them All.” And “Leonard Marshall--the End of the Line,” with an introduction by Bill Parcells. In that book, Chapter 17 is titled “Bill Parcells.”

The blockbuster of that crop was Lawrence Taylor’s book, “Living on the Edge,” in which he reveals that he kicked a nasty cocaine habit by playing golf.

Even the Giants’ strength coach wrote a volume, for a grand total of 13 book-like offerings from this one-year dynasty.

In the Big Apple, though, football is small potatoes. Baseball is the wellspring of immortal prose.

A sampling of the horsehide literary outpouring:

“Balls.” Autobiography of Graig Nettles, ex-Yankee.

“Bats.” Autobiography of Met Manager Davey Johnson.

“Bums.” An oral history of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Buns.” Not a book, but a calendar, which has nothing to do with baseball but sounded good with this list.

“Ball Four.” The famed Jim Bouton book, still in print.

“Billyball.” One in a series of Billy Martin autobiographies. Billy also co-authored “Number 1,” which also chronicles the life and times of Billy Martin’s favorite baseball character.

I have a hunch we can look forward to the following titles:

“Bologna.” The Yankees’ clubhouse caterer blows the whistle on superstars who under-tip and talk with their mouths full.

“Bunions ‘n Blisters.” The Met team podiatrist’s no-holds-barred inside story of how he nursed a foot-weary ballclub to a World Series championship.

“Socks and Jocks.” The Yankees’ laundry man gives helpful hints, such as how to remove stubborn pine-tar stains.

But back to reality, in a manner of speaking. Want books on former players? How about “The Mick” (Mickey Mantle) or “Slick” (Whitey Ford, with a forward by Mickey Mantle)? Or “Reggie,” or “The Bronx Zoo” (Sparky Lyle).

Save a separate bookshelf for New York managers’ books, sports fans. Pick up on:

“Sweet Lou.” Lou Piniella’s story.

“Stengel.” The definitive book on the Ol’ Perfesser.

Or either one of the Billy Martin books. I don’t know which to recommend. I’m waiting for “Billy: The Early Years and the Late Hours--All the Juicy Stories I Didn’t Dare Reveal in Those Other Two Books.”

Present players? There are “Guidry,” and “If At First . . . “ (Keith Hernandez) and “Nails” (Lenny Dykstra). There are others, too. Dwight Gooden has a book out. I don’t know if it’s a baseball book or a golf book. Check with your librarian.

And in what other major metropolis would a boring, overbearing, bullying, largely unsuccessful windbag absentee sports owner rate two books on himself?

In New York, every player, coach, manager, owner or batboy is a hero, and a co-author. Can you imagine the clamoring of publishing houses to sign Darryl Strawberry, the Met who recently put the knock on his manager and several teammates in a magazine story?

I can see it now:

“Bile.” The blockbuster, lid-blowing, stinging, revealing expose of the Mets, in which mundane gossip and petty clubhouse bickering as told by an underachieving malcontent sour-grapes shoulda-been superstar is elevated to a literary art.

Not that I’m putting any of these New York books down. I’ve only read bits and pieces. Like in the Whitey Ford book, I read the part where some drunk in a bar mistakes Whitey’s drinking pal, a former polio victim, for Mickey Mantle. The drunk notices that one of “Mick’s” legs is withered, and the sot cries his eyes out in sympathy.

Hilarious stuff. Probably helps if you’re half fritzed when you read it.

Individually, all these books probably are not classics. Taken as a body of work, however, they define our culture, give credence to the generally accepted belief that our society is a macrocosm of New York sports.

And I guess it would be rash to have my name taken off the mailing list for receiving free review copies of these fine books. But would you publisher guys please forward all future volumes to my new New York sports books warehouse in Barstow?