City, Tennessee, a suburb of Knoxville. Graig and his wife Ginger have four children: Michael (deceased), Barrie, Tim, and Jeff. Jeff was selected by the Yankees in the 47th round of the 1998 draft. Nettles managed and played for the St. Lucie Legends of the Senior Professional Baseball Association in 1989. He also played for the league's Bradenton Explorers. Nettles batted .301 and played in a total of 62 games; 10 for St. Lucie and 52 for Bradenton. Nettles managed the Bakersfield Blaze of the California League in 1996 to a 39-101 record. Nettles served as a consultant for The Bronx Is Burning, a television drama that documented the 1977 Yankees. On March 21, 2008, he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in late November 2007 and would undergo surgery at Manhattan's Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center on April 8. His brother had been diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier in 2007. Legacy Tommy John remembered Nettles for his great sense of humor, writing: "Graig Nettles was great with the one-liners, the zingers...He was the team's pressure valve...Every clubhouse needs a guy like that, the guy with the acerbic wit who can take your mind off a bad situation." Nettles wrote a controversial book, Balls, a memoir of his baseball career written in collaboration with Peter Golenbock. In the book, Nettles criticized Steinbrenner and some players as well. When the book's advance promotion came to Steinbrenner's attention in March 1984, Nettles was summarily traded to his hometown San Diego Padres. Baseball writer Bill James noted in his 1984 Baseball Abstract that Nettles is arguably the best position player (i.e., non-pitcher) in major league history whose surname begins with the letter "N." this judgment appears to hold up: the only three players elected to the baseball Hall of Fame with "N" surnames are pitchers Hal Newhouser, Kid Nichols and Phil Niekro. In 1991, Nettles was also inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall of Fame honoring San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface. As of 2010, Nettles holds the single-season major league record for assists by a third baseman, and is tied with Brooks Robinson for second-most all-time. His 412 assists in 1971 broke the record of 405 shared by Harlond Clift in 1937 and Robinson in 1967. In 1973, his first year as a New York Yankee, he recorded 410