The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues [Hardcover]

Joseph A. Bosco (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1988 the Chicago Cubs had seven minor league teams; about halfway down in the hierarchy were the Peoria Chiefs of the Midwest League. Freelance writer Bosco, who spent that season with the Chiefs, here presents a lineup of the lower minors. We meet the players, one as young as 18 and most in their early 20s, all with the dream of playing in Wrigley Field but some without the drive to make it. There is the owner, flamboyant Pete Vonachen, who set an attendance record for the year, assaulted an umpire and sold the team at year's end. But above all there is manager Jim Tracy, who seems perfect in his job as father-confessor, psychologist, sociologist and teacher and who sheds tears of joy when his boys reach their season's goal. It's all here: playing in northern Wisconsin in April in 30 temperature and in Peoria in August when it hits 100, living on burgers and fries, suffering seemingly endless bus trips, dealing with groupies. This is an impressive slice of baseball life. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Spending the 1988 season with the Peoria Chiefs, a Chicago farm team in the Midwest League, Bosco covers their early failures and later resurgence. He captures the flavor of minor league life, with ambitious rookies and struggling veterans. He also portrays the concerned effort of manager Jim Tracy to be leader, teacher, and proxy parent to his young charges. Meanwhile, owner Peter Vonachen seeks a winning club to help win a new attendance record. Bosco adds an epilog that tells the fate of the teams's players, manager, and ownership in 1989. Comparable to Roger Kahn's Good Enough To Dream (Doubleday, 1985; NAL, 1986. pap.), this should play in most baseball collections, especially in the Midwest.
- Morey Berger, formerly with Monmouth Cty.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (July 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688082610
• ISBN-13: 978-0688082611
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,347,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the love of the game, April 17, 2005

By 

Maandig "maandig" (College Park, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues (Hardcover)

This book, as the summaries imply, is principally a story for the baseball fanatic. The subject of the book is hardly compelling on its face: the 1988 season of the Peoria Chiefs, the Chicago Cubs single A affiliate at the time. In that year, the Chiefs finished a robust 70 and 70 and featured eventual major leaguers Rick Wilkins and Frank Castillo. On the basic factual foundation of the text there is, therefore, little to commend it.

Nevertheless, the book is well worth a read. While nearly two decades have passed since the events took place, the skipper of the Chiefs in 1988 -- who is the central character of the story -- is now the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers and, as all those who frequent minor league ballparks in this country can attest, the dreams of minor league baseball players and the obstacles they confront in trying to achieve those dreams hasn't changed. Bosco's book has been generally characterized as controversial, as it provides an unflinching and non-judgmental report of the adolescent antics of minor celebrities whose libidos have been set loose on small towns throughout the real Midwest. Like most candid books about baseball which have followed the publication of Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," Bosco's book is rife with stories of the sexual escapades of ballplayers, except instead of focusing on what Bouton identified as "beaver shooting," Bosco catalogues the players use and misuse of "groupies" and the Chiefs' own "Spirit Girls." The controversy over the admissions of Bosco's reporting, however, focuses on the tale's margins. The central point of the book is to relay the story of young men who each believe that they could play in the major leagues. And when the story is told by Bosco, it is a compelling one.

The book is remarkable in that it is not just a dry reporting of the events of the 1988 season. Bosco imbues the book with a down-home southern style of storytelling, with the narrative in the first-person and presented as if it were just one long yarn. In terms of the thousands of book on baseball, this approach is unique and effective. Bosco's storytelling requires the attention of the reader, his portrayal of the protagonists evokes the sympathy of the reader, and his refusal to follow a strict linear timeline for presenting the story should keep the reader's attention.

Bosco's book is particularly impressive given that his focus has generally been on "true crime" (although there is clearly few limits on his interests). Reviews for his other books have been largely unfavorable and little can be found on baseball on the blog he currently maintains (http://josephbosco.com/weblog.html). One would therefore not expect that Bosco could craft good baseball reporting given his resume, but, regardless of expectations, this is one of the best baseball books I've read.

One note of caution: this is not an appropriate book for the young. The language is caustic and the themes adult.