Author cooks up books about baseball, bios
William Cook writes stories about American history
BY JENNIFER AMATO Staff Writer
William Cook's interest in writing began in high school, where he was the editor of his school newspaper. Yet he didn't become serious about writing books until he reached his mid-40s, starting out with novels that he couldn't get published.

William Cook

One day, while thinking he may need a new hobby, he remembered what a former teacher had told him: Write about something you know the most about.

He realized that was baseball.

Cook grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lived within walking distance of the old Crosley Field. He also played baseball in his childhood.

So, he began researching the 1919 World Series.

"The 1919 World Series: What Really Happened?" was Cook's first book, published in 2001. The games between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds were overshadowed by suspicion and the subsequent indictment of eight White Sox players for throwing the games.

"I had never been satisfied with the simplistic notion that if the Chicago White Sox had played the season fair and square, they would've beaten the Cincinnati Reds [anyway]," Cook said.

William Cook, of North Brunswick, has written several books about the history of baseball, including "Waite Hoyt: A Biography of the Yankees' Schoolboy Wonder."

Cook said the book has stirred up controversy among baseball historians, including the Society for American Baseball Research. It also sparked about 20 new titles surrounding the issue of the World Series games.

He continued on with "Waite Hoyt: A Biography of the Yankees' Schoolboy Wonder," published in 2004.

Hoyt was signed by the New York Giants at the age of 15 and by 21 was playing for the New York Yankees.

The Hall of Fame pitcher was also an alcoholic who overcame his disease and became one of the first players to transition to the announcer's booth, eventually living out the last 35 years or so of his life sober.

"He was an amazing guy and a hell of a ballplayer. I don't understand why he doesn't get more attention," Cook said, labeling Hoyt as a perfect candidate for the YES Network's "Yankeeography" program.

Hoyt is also well known as being a good friend to the legendary Babe Ruth. Cook said he learned a lot about Ruth while researching Hoyt, including that Ruth donated money at Mass every Sunday and that he genuinely loved kids because of his own orphanage experience.

"There was a lot to the man that you don't see presented," Cook said.

Next came "Pete Rose: Baseball's All-Time Hit King," published in 2004 and Cook's biggest seller.

On Sept. 11, 1985, Rose collected hit number 4,192 of his career while playing at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, surpassing Ty Cobb's record. However, less than four years later, he was banned for life from baseball for allegedly betting on Major League games and was then convicted for tax evasion. Yet in 2002, current Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig took an application for Rose's reinstatement, again igniting a controversy about Rose's legacy.

There was also "August 'Garry' Herrmann: A Baseball Biography," published in 2008, centering around the man who bought the Cincinnati Reds in 1902 and by 1903 had become the head of the National Commission, a three-person ruling body that governed baseball in the years before a commissionership was instituted.

"I like biographies a lot because you really get to look at a person's life in depth. Unfortunately, you're looking at dead people, but you get to make an arrogant judgment about their life and their contributions," Cook said.

His extensive knowledge allowed him to speak about Herrmann at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame & Museum.

"It was a great honor to go to my hometown," he said.

The New York Mets fan has also appeared on ESPN in the production "The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the 1919 White Sox for 'Throwing' the World Series" as well as on CN8 in Philadelphia and various radio stations across the country.

In addition, Cook has written chronicles about the summer of '64, detailing the pennant race in the National League, where the Phillies lost the last 10 of 12 games in the season; the opening of the Mets' Shea Stadium; Jim Bunning's perfect game; and Lou Brock's trade from the Chicago Cubs to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he developed his Hall of Fame career.

Cook also wrote about the Louisville Grays scandal of 1877. During the second year of the National League, the Grays were a charter team and started to lose during an East Coast road trip. It was found that some player threw the games.

In 2006 Cook decided to adjust his genre because "there are a lot of stories in American history that I want to tell."

Completed last year, the profile of George Remus, "The King of the Bootleggers," was his first attempt.

Remus was a pharmacist turned lawyer turned master prohibitionera bootlegger who built one of the nation's largest illegal liquor empires. As a trial attorney in Chicago, he watched bootleggers pay their fines in cash in court, and he realized he could make more money illegally than as a lawyer by buying warehouses and pharmaceutical distribution companies, since using alcohol for medicinal purposes was acceptable.

He was convicted in 1922 of violating the Volstead Act, which made it illegal to buy and manufacture spirits, and was sent to prison.

After being released, Remus murdered his wife after she had a publicized affair with one of the prohibition agents who built the case against him. He was found not guilty of the murder but was judged insane during a probate hearing, and was sent to a mental institution.

"He was such a sociopath, I was glad to get him out of the house," Cook said. "You live with these people for a year and you start thinking about their thought patterns."

Cook said that the subsidiary rights for the book are under negotiation between the publisher and a screenwriter from Los Angeles, so the book could potentially become a movie.

And last September, Ken Burns' company Florentine Films expressed interest in including some of the Remus story in their forthcoming PBS documentary about prohibition, scheduled for airing in 2010.

The North Brunswick resident's most recent book is based on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case and should be published later this year.

Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927 and became an instant celebrity. In March of 1932, his son was kidnapped in Hopewell, and Americans followed the case intensely.

Yet many people also considered Lindbergh to be a Nazi supporter based on anti- Semitic comments he had made, although Cook said, "I don't think he was sympathetic to the Nazis; I think he was in awe of their military might."

Cook became interested in the story when in 2007, on his 63rd birthday, he was introduced by his neighbor to Maj. Otto Stockberger of Milltown, who was 100 years old at the time and was the last surviving member of the New Jersey State Police who were involved with the investigation of the kidnapping. Stockberger shared his scrapbooks before passing away about six months later. Cook continued to do research for the next year at the New Jersey State Police Museum, the Princeton University Firestone Library and the New York Public Library.

"It's an interesting project, not only trying to follow the evidence … but to enter into the whole controversy of this case that never seems to be actually adjudicated," Cook said.

The former Chicago resident moved to New Jersey in 1987 to marry Susan Johnson, who worked at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where Cook was working on a project for his Chicago management company. She passed away in 2001, and he has since developed a relationship with a woman from Manalapan.

Formerly employed in health care administration and management, Cook served on the North Brunswick Township Council from 1991 to 1993, the first Republican to be elected to the governing body in more than a decade. He said politics is one of his other passions, in addition to writing and baseball.

As for writing, he said he follows the advice of Latin musician Tito Puente, who said, "If you're going to play with me, play."

"I think, by extension," Cook said, "if you're going to write, you gotta write. … I don't care if it's writing emails or writing letters or writing school papers, write as much as you can. Find something you know about and just write about it."

He said rejection is built into any career, so criticism should be received, listened to and analyzed. With a few of his books not published, he said the biggest stumbling block for new writers of any age is to accept the fact that their works will be changed by editors.

"If you can't change your work, you are never going to make it," he said.

Since completing his work about Lindbergh, Cook says he is "in limbo" about what his next project will be, "but I guarantee I will think of something."

Most of Cook's books may be obtained through amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or target.com, or may be ordered from the publisher at its website, mcfarlandpub.com, or at 1-800-253-2187.

Preorders for the Lindbergh book may be made through American History Imprints at americanhistoryimprints.com.