Sandy Alderson is among the most interesting people I’ve met and covered. He is cool, hot, calm, excitable, very smart, funny and serious. Steve Kettmann, my former colleague at the Chronicle, just came out with “Baseball Maverick,” a book which captures all of Sandy’s complexity. It is a rollicking, fascinating read. It tells how Sandy was a Marine in Viet Nam. Hey, he even was pictured in a Marine poster.  It tells how Sandy got into baseball with the A’s and how he stood up to Billy Martin which led to Martin destroying his bathroom at the Coliseum. It tells how Sandy learned about mathematical analysis in baseball and how he got Mark McGwire and Dennis Eckersley and Tony LaRussa and gave Billy Beane his break as an executive. This book is a great read which brings Sandy up to the present in New York.