ONE LAST STRIKE by Tony La Russa

One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season is a 2012 baseball memoir by former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa with Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Here, La Russa chronicles the Cardinals’ improbable run to victory in the 2011 World Series.

Crucial to the book’s readability, Tony uses a good tone: he’s self-analytical without being self-aggrandizing, quick to give credit to others and to bear the burden of mistakes himself. If you’re familiar with the man at all, you won’t feel like he’s ever really blowing his own horn. However, he’s extremely verbose in this book, and he never meets a tangent he doesn’t like. As a result, the book is at least fifty pages too long, and it doesn’t always flow well.

Several other factors keep the book from feeling well written, which is unexpected given Hummel’s name on the cover. There are a number of verbal tics repeated throughout the book – the most annoying being sentences ending in “…or whatever.” And while a lot of Tony’s insights are quite good (of course), he’s also given to citing something that happened once in a game as “proving” such-and-such baseball principle.

Yet the accounts of the games are frequently dramatic, and there are a lot of fascinating tidbits – for example, the thought process behind Tony’s handling of the Kenny Rogers pine tar incident in the 2006 Series and some of his learning experiences as manager of the White Sox and A’s. Disappointingly, though, there’s nothing new or further on the 2011 World Series Game 5 bullpen fiasco.

Tony always stuck up for his guys, and he earned a lot of respect for it. And whether you’re familiar with Tony’s history or not, it’s pretty clear who he likes and dislikes (he never comes out and says it). His disdain for the likes of Ozzie Smith and Colby Rasmus is fairly obvious, and it’s borderline embarrassing how he covers for folks like Mark McGwire (for cheating) and Ryan Franklin (for sucking). His faithfulness sometimes feels disingenuous, and there’s also the shameless mendacity of calling the 2011 club “better than average” defensively. But really, all of that is just Tony being Tony.

Though bloated and in dire need of an editor, One Last Strike is an interesting look at an important figure in Cardinals (and baseball) history and at one of the most exciting and improbable turnarounds of all time. It should appeal to both hardcore baseball fans and Cardinals fans of the more general type.

RECOMMENDED

INTENTIONAL WALK by Rob Rains

Intentional Walk: An Inside Look at the Faith that Drives the St. Louis Cardinals is a 2013 book by Rob Rains. Here, Rains collects the Christian testimonies of Cardinals players, prospects, and staff.

These mini-biographies and vignettes from a relatively large number of players paint the picture of a surprisingly and impressively deep and extensive camaraderie and Christian fellowship. Many of these players don’t speak publicly about their faith, and in that respect, the accounts in this book are a rare insight into the spirit and mentality of the team.

The vast majority of the testimony in this book concerns Christian faith as it relates to overcoming adversity – toiling in the minors, dealing with injuries, getting traded, and so forth (although Skip Schumaker’s chapter is a notable exception). As such, the book can feel pretty repetitive, and it may be better consumed in small doses.  

The back cover states this book takes “an in-depth look at the role the Christian faith plays” in these people’s lives, but this isn’t always the case. It certainly is in some places – the Matheny and Wainwright sections are particular highlights in this regard – but not in others. The Rip Rowan chapter never explicitly mentions Christianity at all. And in the David Freese chapter, Rains refers to Freese’s 2009 DWI only as an “off-field incident.” To anyone who was following the Cardinals at the time and remembers Freese’s “incidents,” this feels like a dishonest cover-up, one that distracts and detracts from Freese’s testimony.

More impressive than the testimonies themselves is the fact that so many Cardinals are committed Christians that make up such a solid support group. In all, then, Intentional Walk is a worthwhile read that may appeal to Christian Cardinals fans, Christian baseball fans in general, and Christian residents of the St. Louis area.

RECOMMENDED

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

THE NATURAL by Bernard Malamud

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The Natural is a 1952 novel by Bernard Malamud; it inspired the eponymous 1984 Robert Redford film, to which it bears only passing similarity. Here, the talented Roy Hobbs, a thirty-five-year-old rookie, tries to make a name for himself in Major League Baseball after a psychopath’s gunshot nearly killed him when he was nineteen.

The story is loosely based on the true story of Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus, and also heavily includes elements of baseball myths and legends, most notably that of Shoeless Joe Jackson. These elements give the story a fantastical side – it often feels one step away from  a Márquez-esque magical realism.

Malamud’s writing style is unusual, and not in a good way. He will speed through big chunks of dialogue in narration, often in mid-conversation. Malamud keeps the pages turning (this is a short book), but this feels more like a quick fix for boring conversation than good writing. And The Natural features a jarring non-use of contractions in dialogue, but only half the time, which makes many lines feel stiff and unrealistic.

Most of the supporting characters here are cartoons; only Roy and Pop have any real depth, and Roy isn’t sympathetic because he continually allows himself to be distracted from his goals, makes bad choices, and doesn’t learn from his mistakes.

All the elements of a morality tale are here, but it doesn’t feel like one, mostly because Roy doesn’t learn anything throughout the book. There’s too much death and despair and no redemption. The Natural isn’t a great baseball novel, either, because of the way Malamud handles fantastical myth elements and because he gets carried away with his descriptive epic metaphors and glosses over much of the baseball action itself. Plus Roy Hobbs seems to do nothing besides hit home runs and strike out.

In the end, The Natural is a quick read with some tantalizingly interesting elements that don’t often work well together.

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

MONEYBALL by Michael Lewis

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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a 2003 baseball book by Michael Lewis about the Oakland Athletics and general manager Billy Beane. Conventional baseball wisdom is flawed, Lewis says, and many coaches and scouts focus on the wrong statistics. The Oakland A’s, because of severe budget restrictions, sought to find objective ways (like sabermetrics) to evaluate players. In doing so, the A’s were able to find players who were undervalued in the market, which led to a very successful run with a relatively low payroll in the early 2000’s.

Lewis also explores the life and career of Beane, who was a very talented baseball prospect who never panned out as a player because of confidence issues. Lewis also includes lengthy sections on Bill James, the founder of sabermetrics, catcher/first baseman Scott Hatteberg, and pitcher Chad Bradford. Lewis follows, loosely, the A’s’ 2002 season.

Objectively, on-base percentage is typically considered the most important single statistic. The A’s strategy, though, goes beyond finding high-OBP players – they want any player with any quality that the market undervalues (this also explains why they haven’t been very good in recent years and why they don’t have many good OBP guys).

One of Lewis’s themes is how resistant Major League Baseball has been to Beane’s ideas – they took several years to catch on, and there are still many who oppose them. Several of Beane’s underlings (and other Beane disciples) have become general managers recently, but there is still an appalling ignorance among commentators (which is hardly surprising), coaches, and scouts.

Lewis, as in his other works, tends to ramble from time to time (he also likes to throw in the big word here and there seemingly for its own sake). Many sections are longer than they need to be, and become tedious; others are marginally interesting but have little to do with his topics. But Lewis also does a good job portraying the personalities of his characters, and as such, Moneyball is immersive.

Moneyball is important to the history of baseball – it, more than anything else, brought objective statistical analysis of baseball players into the mainstream. Any fan of baseball should find this interesting.

RECOMMENDED