Books for Jocks

Do jocks read?

Of course they do. Some of them.

The real question is, do jocks and ardent sports fans read enough to support an all-sports bookstore?

“Damned if I know,” answered Otto Penzler with a nervous laugh. He is about to find out. Yesterday at 8761 Beverly Blvd. in West Hollywood, Penzler and two partners opened the doors of SportsBooks, a bookshop they believe is the first to deal exclusively in sports reading.

“My bet is clearly, yes, there is enough of a market out there,” he continued, “otherwise I would have never gotten into this. But it is new territory. We have to take our best shot and see what happens.”

They are not treading lightly into the new territory. SportsBooks is an almost 2,700-square-foot shop in a well-heeled commercial area just down the street from the Pacific Design Center and the Beverly Center. It’s stocked with more than 20,000 items, according to Penzler, including current books and magazines, vintage first editions and collectors’ items such as copies of the “Baseball Digest” annual dating back to the 1880s.

The cost of getting to opening day, Penzler said, ran “well into six figures.”

But Penzler, 48, is no rookie when it comes to the book business. A former sportswriter for the New York Daily News and publicist for ABC Sports, he started a tiny publishing company out of his own New York apartment in 1976. Under the banner Mysterious Press, he issued fine, limited editions of mystery books. Three years later he opened Mysterious Bookshop, which carried only mysteries.

Mysterious Press exploded into prominence in 1985 when Warner Books became its partner. The arrangement overnight transformed his venture from a novelty press to one that had the financial clout to lure such authors as Ross Thomas, Andrew Greeley, Ed McBain, Donald Westlake and Patricia Highsmith.

And the store was enough of a success that he opened a branch of it in West Hollywood in 1989.

Last year Penzler sold Mysterious Press to Warner Books. He stayed on as a consultant and continued to edit several of the books published by the imprint, but he began to look for new specialty niches.

Given his background, it’s not surprising that he turned toward sports. Also not lost on Penzler was the fact that several sports books had become huge best-sellers. Most recently, for example, the autobiography “Bo Knows Bo,” by Bo Jackson and Dick Schaap, had been on best-seller lists for months.

But would that translate into a reliable market that extended beyond a few best-sellers?

“That’s what made it an attractive venture for me,” said Art Kaminsky, a New York attorney who has been agent for several athletes and sports-broadcasting figures and who signed on as a partner in the new bookstore. “It’s a risk, but it’s also true that the first people to do things get the biggest rewards.”

Penzler decided there were two keys to success in the new venture. First, he would have to offer a wide variety of vintage books available almost nowhere else. His search for this memorabilia led him to Sherman Oaks, where a famed sports-book collector, Goodwin Goldfaden, lived and operated a mail-order business out of his house. Goldfaden, whose business card reads “Since 1925,” sold Penzler his complete stock of about 12,000 items.

“The guy is about 100 years old,” Penzler said, “but he drove a tough deal. And then he told me, ‘I’m selling you my inventory but not my business. I’m going to start again from the beginning.’ ”

Among the rare items SportsBooks will sell for up to $1,000 are a 1967 book about the “amazin’ ” Mets signed by 28 members of the team (“Backstage at the Mets”) and a book about Jack Dempsey that is signed by the famed boxer.

Second, he figured that his store could prosper by bringing in sports superstars for book signings. Baseball greats Hank Aaron and Maury Wills already have agreed to be there on April 13 to sign their new autobiographies.

As for the future, “I’d give both arms to get Mickey Mantle,” Penzler said. Mantle’s book about his famed 1956 baseball season is due to be published soon.

One other question remained. Why did Penzler, Kaminsky and third partner John Berylson--all of whom are based on the East Coast--decide to try out their new venture in the city that stole the Dodgers?

“New York is a good sports town. L.A. is a great sports town,” Penzler said, “with winning teams and tremendous support. And you got all these people out here doing sports themselves, jogging and doing aerobics.

“But if you want to get down to pragmatic reasons, there was this great space open next to my bookstore here. How could I resist filling it?”