Mike Cameron's Public Bonehead, Private Hero is a sympathetic homage to baseball's Fred Merkle, an fine player who was unfairly ridiculed for a costly baserunning "boner" which contributed to the New York Giants losing the 1908 National League pennant to the Chicago Cubs. The book begins in a rocky manner, as the author's attempt to place early 20th century baseball within the context of the American history of that era falls flat: a mere pastiche of unrelated historical facts that never add up and never meaningfully relate to the state of the game. But then Cameron finds his footing with a good flowing narrative of the exciting 1908 pennant races, the account of the infamous play and its aftermath, the heavy burden Merkle carried for decades, and the ultimate displays of public exhoneration just a few years prior to his death in 1956. This is a good human interest story of a player who unjustly suffered a lifetime of public shame as a result of an unfortunate confluence of events and circumstances. ( )