Right Down The Middle Summary

Ralph Terry may be best known for giving up the home run to Bill Mazeroski in 1960 that allowed the Pittsburg Pirates to win the World Series, but many fail to see that he was also the MVP in the 1962 World Series and went on to have a great career in the golf world. The book Right Down the Middle written by Ralph Terry himself along with John Wooley writes out Ralph’s life from growing up in Oklahoma as a child up to him being a professional golfer on the Senior PGA Tour. The book also gives a very neat perspective as to what the overall baseball system was like and how the Yankees operated during their “Golden Age” of baseball. Over the course of this review I will give some of the stories that I thought were interesting and for the first story I will write about the way contracts were debated
This in turn gives us as readers many stories and historical references we may have never known or may have forgotten. For example, in the latter years of Ralph’s career he signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians and general manager Gabe Paul that had a base salary of $30,000 and $1,500 for every win over 10 wins up to 15 wins. Essentially it was a $38,000 contract which Ralph was looking for, but it came with its kinks. In 1965, these types of contracts were not legal which was automatically a red flag, but they went along with it anyway. Ralph won 10 games and had a good ERA, then out of the blue the club stopped using him. He ultimately got one more win and ended up making his total for the year $31,600. This event as Ralph says it “mentally divorced” him from baseball as he was fed up with general managers and the business of baseball. Ralph ultimately held out of signing a contract with the Indians and was traded a few days before the season started to the Kansas City Royals for another player and