Peter Golenbock, author of 7, the controversial Mickey Mantle book due this week which along with O.J.‘s If I Did It got Judith Regan canned, says he was surprised by the firestorm the book created and thinks that the decision not to publish both his and O.J.’s book was “un-American.”

Golenbock who says Mantle was “funnier than Chris Rock,” tells the “Mr. Media” podcast he doesn’t understand all the fuss. Some excerpts:

ANDELMAN: Did you ever anticipate the negative storm that has come up around this book?

GOLENBOCK: Well, I didn’t anticipate that Judith Regan would get fired. I knew when I wrote it that some people would really love it, some people would like it, and there would be a small majority and probably a vocal majority who would resent it, “Oh, how can you say such things about Mickey, my idol, Mickey?” So I knew it wasn’t going to come into the world quietly. On the other hand, I had no idea that the Daily News was going to spend three days telling people that my book should be thrown in the garbage can and spending three days trying to get Judith Regan fired. That was a surprise.

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