Larry Dierker's Book and the Funniest Story Therein

(RATED R)

A long time ago, around the 1980s, the Houston Chronicle hired a journalism expert to assess the readabililty of its staff's prose.

The expert had a special formula that he used to measure who could write and who couldn't.
It turned out the writer who scored one of the highest, if not THE highest, readability scores was Larry Dierker, the former Houston Astros pitcher, broadcaster and field manager. At the time, he was writing a regular column for the paper's sports section while working as a color man on team broadcasts.

Since Dierker already has shown himself to be more literate than the average retired professional athlete, it shouldn't be a surprise that his new book, "This Ain't Brain Surgery: How to Win the Pennant Without Losing Your Mind," is as fluid as his delivery to the plate once was.

Simon & Schuster published it.

It's an enjoyable read if you're a fan of baseball, and more than enjoyable if you've followed the Astros since their birth in 1962.

Clearly, Dierker didn't want to write a tell-all book, like his old teammate Jim Bouton did in "Ball Four."

Even so, he could not resist one target -- play-by-play announcer Milo Hamilton, his broadcast partner for many years.

Right off the bat Dierker establishes that his pairing with Hall Of Fame broadcaster Hamilton was a baseball version of The Odd Couple. Dierker gives Milo his due near the end of the book, praising him for his tireless work ethic, but before that he tweaks his partner's many idiosyncracies, mostly notably his vanity.

The funniest anecdote, it turns out, is in the introduction of the book.

Dierker, known by Astros fans for his fondness of Hawaiian shirts, began wearing the colorful garb after suggesting in a baseball broadcast that the sad sack Astros didn't seem to be having any fun.

"Not enough Hawaiian shirts," Dierker told his TV audience, promising that he would be wearing his the next night.

Dierker quickly replaced his usual coat and tie, then asked his brother in California to send him more Hawaiian apparel, as the selection in Houston was lacking. When the new shirts arrived, one was decorated with depictions of the old woodie station wagons that became popular with surfers back in the 1940s.

This gave Dierker an idea.

He figured that Hamilton, who's considerably older, likely had no idea that "woodie" is a slang term sometimes used to described the male sex organ during the, ahem, state of arousal.

Before the two went on the air with the game broadcast, Dierker pointed to one of the station wagons on his shirt and asked, "Hey, Milo. You know what that is?"

"Uh, a station wagon."

"No," said Dierker, "this is a woodie, man. You should know that. It comes from your era. These things were the rage when I was in high school in California. They were surfer cars."

"I didn't know they called them that," Hamilton replied.

After the game was underway, Dierker asked his partner on the air how he liked his new Hawaiian shirt.

"You mean the one with all the woodies on it?" Hamilton replied, while a TV audience of thousands watched and listened.

"Yeah," Dierker said. "When you were a young man, did you ever have a woodie?"

"Oh, no. We were much too poor," Hamilton said.

"Boy, that's really poor," Dierker said, trying to suppress his laughter.

As far as we know, the Federal Communications Commission never received any complaints.

And Milo Hamilton, a former broadcast partner of Harry Cary's and who later gave the play-by-play description of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home run record, never was let in on the joke.

Everyone else associated with the team eventually heard about it, but not Milo.

Several more times that summer, as the broadcasters described another dismal Astros loss in another dreary Astros season, Dierker asked Milo what he thought about his cool Hawaaian shirt with the woodies on it.