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Title: Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Steve Kettmann, Roger Angell ISBN: 0-15-100824-8 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Masterful, moving: One of the best sports books ever
Comment: I picked this up about a week ago, and finished it just this afternoon. Inbetween that time, and between the covers of this great book, I found myself caught up in the exhiliration of victory, the agony of defeat, and a variety of emotions inbetween. Roger Angell is to baseball what Shakespeare was to theatre: he captures the wide spectrum of players and coaches, fans and managers, rookies and old pros, that have made baseball a fascinating sport to follow.
Individual pieces that stick out for me are the David Cone profile, the scout, Smokey Joe Wood, and many others that make this book a wonderous journey. This is for the diehard fans, to be sure, but baseball novices will also enjoy some of the many thoughtful and well-written pieces contained here. You will finish this with a deeper appreciation of baseball itself (despite its bloated state now, Angell makes no apologies for his continued interest long after other, more traditional fans have thrown up their hands in disgust. There is just as much joy in describing the Angels-Giants match-up in '02 as there is in memorializing Teddy Ballgame Williams), and Angell's work here is truly some of the finest sports reporting I've ever read. As stated in the introduction essay, Angell's work appeared mainly in the "New Yorker", where he could have time to construct his thoughts without the threat of a nearer deadline. Thus, his writing here does service to the majesty of the events described.
For the baseball fan in all of us, Roger Angell's work is truly a gift and a joy to read. I highly recommend this work. However cynical you may be about the more recent baseball world, you will enjoy this book.
Rating: 4
Summary: A literate baseball treat
Comment: Pound for pound Roger Angell is the best baseball writer living today. Sure, you can follow the stat geeks and daily columnists (and I do), but Angell uses the stats as only part of the story. Writing for the New Yorker has afforded him the luxury of telling the stories behind the game, and it was in the pages of the New Yorker that I first discovered his penchant for weaving great yarns out of the game of baseball, in particular David Cone's disastrous 2000 season with the Yankees which is recounted in GAME TIME.
Whether it is tracking down Bob Gibson, attending a College World Series match up between Frank Viola and Ron Darling with a nonagenarian Smoky Joe Wood, following a major league scout, or sitting with the owner of the San Francisco Giants to simply watch and talk about a game, Angell finds the humanity of the people that make the game so great. He even comes close to making me like Tim McCarver, but, alas, McCarver is still the worst broadcaster in sports.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Lovely Reintroduction
Comment: The only reason I took off a star is because...well, I have bathed in the warm waters of Roger Angell's baseball chronicling since the publication of his first such anthology, "The Summer Game," and I have bought every last one of the successor books ("Five Seasons," "Late Innings," "Season Ticket," and "Once More Around The Park"), and I really didn't need to see a lot of the essays contained in this volume all over again. Even if I think "Distance" is the absolute best and most humane essay you'll ever read about Bob Gibson, please: A third anthologising (it debuted in "Late Innings" and was recycled in "Once More Around The Park") was as excessive as some would consider a stolen base in the eighth inning when the thief's team was on the winning side of a 12-1 blowout.
But if you have never before approached even the edge of those waters, this is the book with which you want to begin; the editing and arranging of the material, appropriately enough into seasonal sections, is even better than "Once More Around The Park's" had been. Don't let my harrumphing about over-repetition of some choice essays deter you (I certainly didn't let it keep me from adding this to my library). If you are a newcomer to Mr. Angell's virtuosity (and if you are a newcomer, you should probably ask yourself where you've been all your life), from the loveliest book of baseball letters of the year. Peter Golenbock, in his oral history of the Boston Red Sox, called Mr. Angell "baseball's Homer," but Golenbock has it backward. With apologies to no one, Homer shall have to settle for having been ancient Greece's Roger Angell.
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Title: The Teammates by David Halberstam ISBN: 140130057X Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 14 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish in 1978 by Roger Kahn ISBN: 0151006288 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0393057658 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 10 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball by Stephen Jay Gould, David Halberstam ISBN: 0393057550 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together by Michael Shapiro ISBN: 0385501528 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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