You get an insider’s view of baseball management written by a West Virginia legend. You also learn about a life of purpose, authenticity, and fulfillment.
Jim Holland has written a terrific baseball book, especially for those who love minor-league baseball. Holland draws on his three-decade career in baseball management to give readers a crisp and entertaining view of front-office baseball management in roles he played across West Virginia, starting in Huntington, then Princeton, and finally in Beckley.
What Jim Holland told me about “My Fortunate Detour”: It’s a book about where life took me after a chance meeting changed my life drastically and resulted in my moving away from the Kanawha Valley (WV) in 1991 for the first of many “fortunate detours” until my retirement in 2020. The book begins with my Dunbar, WV days, leading into my 30-year career in baseball administration. I had 84 MLB players during my 24-season tenure as General Manager of the Princeton, WV, club in the Appalachian League. The book is as much about the stories I tell about the fans, stadium staff, and players I saw along the way.
Jim Holland had an award-winning career, especially in conjunction with his work as General Manager of the Princeton, WV, franchise in the Appalachian League. Holland won multiple honors for his work there, including being named the league’s Executive of the Year. Holland also earned Hall of Fame honors and was inducted into the Appalachian League’s Hall of Fame and the West Virginia Sports Legends/Artie Museum.
Reading the book reminded me of my youth when I spent Lord knows how many nights at Dwyer Stadium in Batavia, NY, watching my hometown Batavia Pirates play in the old New York-Pennsylvania League. But I also believe the book is about more than baseball–a lot more.
Autobiographies are self-referential accounts that require readers to make sense of what they are reading based on what authors write about themselves (the personal text) and the circumstances associated with their lives (the context). That’s a straightforward task, at least most of the time, but sometimes the text and context take a back seat to the book’s subtext, which happened as I read My Fortunate Detour.
It wasn’t long into reading the book that I realized Holland’s narrative was about more than his career in baseball management–the “what he did.” Other reviews cover that storyline handsomely (e.g., Gary Fauber’s review in the Register-Herald). This review focuses on another storyline, “who he is,” Jim Holland the person.
What did I learn? My Fortunate Detour is about his character, unrelenting commitment, dedication and leadership, and—perhaps most importantly—what it means to live a life of purpose, authenticity, and fulfillment. I believe anybody would love to have Jim Holland as a relative, neighbor, friend, or colleague.
As soon as I started framing the book that way, I began thinking differently about its title, “My Fortunate Detour.” Holland labels it that way because he transitioned, quite unexpectedly, from a successful product sales/marketing career to working in executive baseball management. A detour is one way of looking at it. Another way is interpreting it as a calling. I believe baseball management was Jim Holland’s vocation, My Fortunate Detour is his testimony, and lurking behind and across all the baseball stories is something that has nothing to do with baseball. Baseball, so to speak, is Holland’s playing field. The center of gravity is Jim Holland’s ethos.
By ethos, I mean a values-driven, thematic way of viewing the world and one’s place in it; and then living one’s life accordingly. It’s important to note that personal ethos is not the same as personal traits—although personal traits are manifest in an ethos. In Holland’s case, a solid work ethic, commitment to detail, and “making every minute count” are three of many such traits.
So, what about this thing, personal ethos? Here’s what I mean.
A Life Worth Living Is a Life of Connections: Throughout the book—not just in the acknowledgments section positioned at the beginning or end—Holland writes extensively about those with whom he has crossed paths over the years. “Every last one of them means so much to me,” Holland writes on p. 106. He elaborates by naming and offering vignettes about people who graced his life. It’s a very long list.
Below, I present the names listed and described in one of the book’s 34 chapters, Chapter 10.
| Raymond “Lefty” Guard | Eddie Semones | Eric Meadows |
| Junior Billings | Harry Greco | Jim Lilly |
| Roy & Ruby Beasley | Bo Bowman | Larry Pruett |
| Greg Carter | Samantha Craig | Wayne, Phyllis, & Samantha Billings |
| Paul Lambert | Greg Barnett | Chuck Hicks |
| Bill Duncan | Steve Jessee | Mullen “Moon” & Bev Miller |
| Jim Hughes | Jamie Estep | David & Christian Workman |
| Don Marshall | Bob Spencer | Lisa Dalton |
| Frank Lewis | Christine Cook-Meadows | Courtney Longworth |
| Ronnie Dowell | Don Cook | Jim, Debbie, & Terri Thompson, and Mike & Anita Eades |
That list is meaningless to readers unfamiliar with the names. I share it because it illustrates Holland’s habit of specifying how and why people bring meaning and joy to his life. He does so in a detailed fashion, often drawing from years past, describing the impact of friends, co-workers, players, and others who are no longer with us. I’m used to reading autobiographies slathered with me-references. My Fortunate Detour is different: it is loaded with we-references.
Photo courtesy Amazon.com
“My Greatest Reward was Seeing People Glow”: My favorite vignette in the book is about brothers Mark (“Marky”) and Jaimie Morehead, who lived close to the Princeton ballpark. “About February every year,” Holland writes,” they would start the countdown, day by day. until our players arrived to start the season. They participated in our Adopt-a-Player program and treated their player like gold.” Both brothers were afflicted with Muscular Dystrophy, so they had limited mobility and got around in powered wheelchairs. Holland then tells the rest of the story. “After their mother died and government financial assistance was reduced,” Holland relates, “several people in the community stepped up to stay with them one overnight a week (my spouse, Judy, was one, making a home-cooked meal every time her night came around). I think about them often when I drive by where they once lived. Both passed away in their 50s, Mark in 2013 and Jamie in 2015” (pp. 141-243). The memorable thing about the vignette is that it is not just about the Morehead brothers but also about how a community came together to serve others in their time of need.
Mentoring the Next Generation of Professionals: Running a baseball club requires the involvement of numerous staff members, including 11-15 interns—mostly college-age staff—many of whom aspire to make this work their career. Holland took his mentoring role seriously, writing that “my goal was to give each student hands-on experience with as many different aspects of the organization as possible” (p. 254). Holland rotated the interns through diverse responsibility areas, including working in the ticket office, tending to field maintenance, and serving as the on-field emcee. Overall, intern experiences were guided by Holland’s three-pronged philosophy—focus on your assignment, don’t be preoccupied with what other interns are doing, and always remember that fans (our customers) are #1. He would say, “They are there to E.T.G.” (Enjoy the Game). Holland viewed his mentoring role as a way of paying it forward.
Jim and Judy Holland met on a blind date (photo from Facebook)
Family Comes First: After his mother’s health declined, Holland moved back to where she lives, his hometown of Dunbar, WV, so that he could look after her. For a year (March 2016-2017), he “would see that she ate her breakfast every morning before I made my 67-mile drive to Beckley (where he was an executive with the West Virginia Miners), then work all day before coming home late at night to start the routine over again early the next morning” (p. 324). Despite being dedicated to her care, her physical and mental health declined. For example, she often would not eat during the day and began exhibiting behaviors associated with living in fear when Holland was not there. Finally, he enrolled his mother in an assisted living facility where she would get round-the-clock care. “As a son,” Holland writes, “I wonder what else I could have done,” and even though he and Judy visited her frequently after she moved into the care facility, “it was an extremely tough one (decision) for me” (p. 325).
One of the things I like best about Jim Holland’s narrative is that he achieved professional success but didn’t obsess about it or make success the primary goal in his life. But who could fault him if he had? Chasing success is often the norm in our uber-competitive and spotlight-focused world.
But as we all know, that chase can lead to unfortunate detours that tarnish reputations, if not careers. We see that in business, sports, politics, and more. There’s the rise, then the fall, and then bigger-than-life personalities vanish from view.
That’s not Jim Holland, though. He’s here. He’s writing. He’s active these days on Facebook, acknowledging former players with remembrance posts on their birthdays. It makes sense he’d do that. It’s another example of his ethos.
Jim Holland says it’s the outcome of “a fortunate detour.” Well, Mr. Holland, I experienced a fortunate detour, too … reading your book.
__________
Released in November 2022 in paperback form, My Fortunate Detour: Making a Right Turn into a Baseball Career Among the Mountains of West Virginia (Holland/WV Publishing) is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle versions. The paperback is also available in local bookstores, including (for WV readers) The Hatter’s Bookshop in Princeton, WV, at 929 Mercer St. and Taylor Books in Charleston, WV, at 226 Capitol St.
