Jim Kaplan

Being a book about playing defense on the diamond, told chiefly through interviews with ballplayers of the 1980's. when the book was released. The book's premise, now happily outdated, is that defense in baseball is undervalued and difficult to measure. With the emergence of sabermetrics, there are now all manner of interesting metrics on fielding, and almost all front offices now value the art very highly indeed. The players' comments are by far the most interesting part of the book, with interesting tidbits on their defensive techniques, particularly positioning and communication. The author was probably a beat writer; thus the book understandably suffers badly from presentism--there is undoubtedly more material on the early 1980's than the rest of baseball history combined. When the author himself speaks, the book becomes more pedestrian, as well as burdened with his shoot-from-the-hip opinions, which he tosses out haphazardly and without support or any apparent consideration of alternative points of view.… (meer)

This book was a huge disappointment. Of course I expected some background pages to dovetail nicely with descriptions of the game. Perhaps some background of the pitchers, the extent to which starters were used in the 60's compared to the few complete games pitched today, and maybe a quick overview of their career stats including the season they each having in 1963. Perhaps one quarter background, 3/4 game detail. Instead, what this 202 and 1/2 page book offers (along with an appendix of stats and more stats) is something that felt a good deal closer to the flip side, i.e., 1/4 game, 3/4 background. And too often the background felt too much like filler. As one example, there is about one page dedicated to descriptions of eight charities supported by a golf tournament that Juan Marichal hosts. Other background includes a brief history of Latin American baseball, Marichal's and Spahn's early days growing up, the Buffalo economy over the years, the shocking discovery that Spahn never graduated from South Park High School, language difficulties for Marichal, Spahn's war record, Jackie Robinson and the racial barrier, origin of "Spahn and Sain and pray....". Well you get the point, and most of these appear before page 70. The details about the game were not that interesting. While the author gripes about many things modern, e.g., cell phones, tweets, youtube, etc., many of those devices and technologies will lead to much greater insights and preservation of detail of historical events, something that is sorely missing in the author's title subject here. It seemed that the author had very few resources from which he could draw elements of a good story - it was too long ago and most of the participants and witnesses were deceased or forgetful. Unfortunately for the author, the event at the time did not draw huge coverage in its aftermath, perhaps in part because extra inning games with starters still pitching, while somewhat unusual, was not the rarity it would be today. So, I found the retelling of The Game rather dull and anti-climactic. I think it could be made into a very good magazine article, e.g. a 50 year anniversary retrospective in Sports Illustrated this July, but as a book, perhaps there just wasn't enough material to tell a good story in the first place.… (meer)

Clearly written and tells a great story; not just that of the game the title references, but that of the lives of the two seemingly antithetical yet legendary protagonist pitchers: Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn. Some reviewers (at least on GoodReads) were expecting the game itself to figure in more prominently, which I think is fair given the title, but I also think the game can be viewed as the serendipitous intersection of two great characters of baseball yore; i.e. merely the jumping-off point of the real story. And is baseball really merely about the game, or is it about the players that play them?

Took off a star since the prose is pretty plain and at one point, Kaplan starts editorializing on one of baseball's unwritten rules.… (meer)

I enjoyed the book even though the title is horribly misleading. There's actually very little about the game itself; nothing about pitch selection, what the hitters were thinking, pretty much just a written narrative of the box score. What makes the book worthwhile is the biographical information concerning Spahn and Marichal and the franchise histories of the Braves and Giants. We find out why the Giants were always coming up short and how the Braves came close to being one of the dominant teams of their time. Kaplan writes well and spices the narrative with comparatives to the modern day game that are not flattering towards the current state of the sport. Some people will find that distracting and irrelevant, but once I realized that the book was not simply a story of the game, I allowed Kaplan some latitude.… (meer)