My guess is that he was influenced by Hunter S. Thompson who was becoming very popular by then. It's understandable since he was a young guy and probably wanted to emulate HST. That notwithstanding, there was a lot of good stuff in that book. Another book like that was "Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere" by Lucas Mann. It's not as blatant as Shropshire's book was but this guy is on the beat of the Clinton (IA) Lumberjacks. It's good but he also inserts himself in the story frequently.