You may know him for his creative rhymes on VTN to promote major Viking sports games or his announcements during lunch for the next big South Brunswick High School event. The man in question is the famous Gene Hutmaker, commonly known in the school as Gene the Viking Machine. But Mr. Hutmaker is not just school spirit and witty rhymes. He also is the author of “Banned in the Bronx” a chronicle of Yankee flops throughout the years. The book is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
Gene said, “I have been doing baseball my whole life. Pretty much because in the 50s it was all about baseball. Other sports, NFL and NBA, were nothing.”
As a kid Mr. Hutmaker played America’s favorite pastime constantly and coached in his adulthood for many years. His household was also a baseball-oriented one. “I grew up in a Yankee-hating house because in 1952 the Yankees won 5 world series in a row and it was like rooting for the bully. My family did not like the Yankees because we also had the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants so fans were divided between those three teams so my family were Yankee haters so I grew up to be a Yankee hater.”
His family did not just contribute to his Yankee hating but also to the making of this book, as Mr. Hutmaker recalled. “Well, my son — who is a Yankee fan– agreed to be the contributing author, with some reluctance. My other son, who is also a Yankee fan, edited it.” Growing up in North Jersey, Mr. Hutmaker went to high school with 80% Yankee fans, and the other 20%, Doger and Giant fans. “So my every day was dominated by Yankee fans.”
When the Vibe asked Mr. Hutmaker about the publishing process he said that,“You can’t get a book published unless you have some kind of contact. We had to self-publish it which is a big industry right now and some people say Ha ha! Big deal you had to publish it yourself’. But to that I say on Amazon there are 5 star reviews and the commissioner of Baseball has a copy and the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame put it in the Baseball Hall of Fame. So the proof is in the pudding.”
It is also well known in SB that Mr. Hutmaker is a Vietnam Vet and when asked about that time he also had a few baseball stories to tell.
“I got the winning hit off of Sargent Jelly Belly and I also was the winning pitcher and he wasn’t too happy,” said Mr. Hutmaker.
For Mr. Hutmaker his favorite story from the book is about, of all things, his wedding day. As Gene said, “My wedding was a real joke because I got married during my team being in the world series [the Cardinals in 1968] but my best year was 1964. Being a 19-year-old Cardinal fan, it was the first time they had won the World Series and they beat the evil empire from the Bronx [TheYankees]”
Hutmaker’s writing process was simple. “I used to go to the Rutgers library to get info about games from the 1950s and 60s. That was a lot of fun and I had a lot of time to do it. I also have a lot of stuff in my brain. If you ever open my brain there will probably be a baseball with seams on it inside.”
But motivations were not always high when writing his 400 page magnum opus. “There were so many Yankee books out there that I wanted to get the truth, and I wanted to get the word out about the Yankee’s history compared to my teams. People say the Yankees have won 27 world series well my teams have won all the rest of them!”
The baseball brain himself is a Cardinal’s, Mets, and Red Sox fan, in his words,“because of what that does to Yankees fans.”
The idea for his title came from a conversation with a relative who remarked, when told about the book, “wow that would be Banned in the Bronx.”
When asked if he would change anything about the book 20 years later, Gene simply responded “No… I really couldn’t add anything. Maybe some more stats but the book is over 400 pages. I think that was enough.”
Celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Banned in the Bronx” by checking it out here.