BenBella Books

When I got to the end, like when I, when the publishers...

I s- I got a publisher, this place, BenBella.

Simon & Schuster, is that who you're with?

The, yeah, Simon & Schuster's distributing it.

Okay.

The, the publisher's a company called BenBella out of Texas.

Really nice people.

And when I started working with them and they were going through the book and the editorial part, they, they said it was kind of curious that it, I say, "The end," 'cause it's like a Grimm's Fairy Tale.

I've written, uh, short stories and things that have sputtered out.

When I got to the end, like when I, when the publishers, I s- I got a publisher, this place, BenBella.

Simon & Schuster, is that who you're with?

The, yeah, Simon & Schuster's distributing it.

Okay.

But the publisher is a company called BenBella out of Texas.

Really nice people.

And when I started working with them and they were going through the book and the editorial part, they, they said it was kind of curious that it, I say the end, 'cause it's like a Grimm's Fairy Tale.

Joining me now... is a best-selling cookbook author, actor, comedian, and the woman behind Eat Happy Kitchen.

Her latest book, which is being published by Simon & Schuster's Ben Bella Books imprint.

Some serious imprint there, Ben Bella Books.

It brings the whole eat happy philosophy to one of my favorite pastimes, imbibing.

It's called Eat Happy Cocktail Hour.

In the hour ahead, we'll be talking to journalist and collaborator Alan Maimon, who's just out with a book he helped to write for Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield.

That book, Touching All The Bases: A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx, from BenBella Books, is a raw, honest account of Winfield's fraught tenure with the New York Yankees.

It's a book about baseball at bottom from the only athlete to have been drafted by four professional sports leagues, but it's also about resilience, loyalty, and speaking truth to power.

The reason I say the timing is fortuitous is because we're dropping this episode during the Major League Baseball playoffs, a postseason scrum that this year includes two of Dave Winfield's former teams, the San Diego Padres, where he began his career, and the New York Yankees, where he made headlines when he signed with the team as a free agent in 1980 to a record-setting 10-year, $23 million deal that was the richest contract in professional sports history at the time.

Uh, our producer Daniel Ford, who is a diehard, hardcore Yankee fan, said, "Hey, there's this Winfield book coming out.

Maybe you should call the ghostwriter there and see if he wants to be on the show." And I'm so glad he did, because I read your book, which comes out, uh, this month.

It's fr- it's called Touching All The Bases: A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx with Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, published by Matt Holt Books, which is an imprint of BenBella Books.

Congratulations to you.

Okay.

So if you read my book, you can get it on Amazon, Benbella Books, at your local bookstore.

If you're not a reader and you like audiobooks, I read the book.

That's lovely.

And has become our tradition, a fine tradition, in recent months, we've been, uh, reading a few pages from one of the books, uh, in discussion in our primary episode.

Uh, in our current episode, at the top of the pile at the pod shop, we're featuring a book called I Will Follow You Anywhere: The True Story of the 9/11 Responders Who Took on Congress by John Feal with Charles Daly, published by BenBella Books.

And we're joined for this segment by John's co-author, Charlie, who is going to, uh, favor us with a passage from this book that struck me.

Charlie, thanks for joining us for this little bit.