Customer Reviews

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball

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In Joe Posnanski's 2007 book about baseball ambassador Buck O'Neil, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, Posnanski watches O'Neil, who is watching the steroid hearings:

"... he had known players to bend the rules to win-- they corked bats, spit on the ball, popped amphetimines, stole signals, and even loaded up on coffee for the caffeine. They wanted to win. "The only reason players in my time didn't use steroids," he would say sometimes, "is because we didn't have them.""

As Derek Zumsteg illustrates in 'The cheater's guide to baseball', O'Neil's sanguine sentiment towards winning at any cost goes back to the earliest days of the game's history.

Zumsteg's very first chapter looks at the effect the 1890s Orioles teams had on baseball as it is played today, and goes forward through time from there. He looks at both the practical and the theoretical aspects of cheating, and how cheating as an art form has colored the national pastime. Well-researched history mixes with flights of fancy, how-to diagrams sit next to game photos, and the whole is a tremendously entertaining read. Zumsteg may not paint the Elysian Fields image of baseball, but it is a portrait that Buck O'Neil would both recognize and appreciate.

Lot's of interesting anecdotes and research. A few edit errors--a story with several names in it is recounted, then wrong name referred to in discussing the event afterwards, for example. And a sometimes full throttle "buncha beer buddies yuk-yukking it" tone that was for me distracting and annoying in the context of an otherwise educating read.

As enjoyable as "Ball Four", and easily as eye-opening, this book doesn't get caught up in the glorified, rose-colored-glasses view of the past to which many baseball books fall victim. It is painstakingly researched, and covers some very sensitive, serious subject matter, yet manages to keep a humorous tone throughout. I'm glad Derek didn't shy away from talking about steroids in a candid light, given the hysteria and concern (some of it legitimate, some of it over-blown) surrounding this subject.

Highly recommended for both the casual baseball fan, and the serious aficionado.

"Charlton's mid-90's heat comes from grabbing little Norm, which he does a major-league-leading 3.1 times per pitch thrown. This makes him [...] families with kids as well as on opposing batters." It was this bit of bathroom-humor dry wit in the 2002 Baseball Prospectus that made me want to know who the writer was. It was Derek Zumsteg, and he is a lot of fun to read.

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball is a more enjoyable book than Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America's National Pastime, the last book on baseball's cheaters and [....] that I read. But where Scheinin seems to have a grudge against baseball, a sort of urgent, unsympathetic need to pop the balloon of myth surrounding baseball, Zumsteg's love of baseball comes through, with that wit he once displayed at Baseball Prospectus and currently at USS Mariner.

This book isn't about condemning the game's meanest men, or its rosy, false self-image, it's about enjoying what the game is, which was deeply informed by these men and their bad behavior. It's about understanding the whole continuum of "cheating", from the legal lie of the hidden ball, to the illegal lie of doctored balls and corked bats. It's an adult look at what the game is, not the naive attitude most have when a scandal breaks out. The hand-wringing of the media over these issues befits ten-year-olds, not adults capable of nuanced undertanding. Derek Zumsteg knows from nuance, enough to crack wise while seriously discussing it. I definitely recommend this.

Timing is everything, in Baseball as in Comedy. What a perfect accompaniment to the beginning of Baseball Season. Mr. Zumsteg takes the reader on an in-depth, and deeply amusing journey through the history of ne'er-do-wells in baseball. And some of them actually did quite well! How many widely accepted practices are absolutely against the rules? Why are some of these implicitly accepted and some cause for histrionic hysteria? Is one kind of cheating worse than another? And what are some ways that you, the modern fan, can observe and identify cheating as it happens on the field in front of you? If you'd like to make baseball even more fun to watch this year or any year, order a copy and keep it handy.

While I'm sure Zumsteg knows a lot about baseball, the sloppiness of this book makes me question its accuracy. A couple of quick examples:

* At one point he talks about the Red Sox glory days early in the century and says the Sox "would not return to the World Series for another 84 years." Of course, they were in the series numerous times in those 84 years -- they just never won it.

* He also refers to former Orioles "Bobby Grinch" and "Doug DeCines."

Now, those are basic things I know off the top of my head. While I realize his editors deserve some blame, I can't help but think much of the book is hogwash.

While the writing is relatively entertaining, this is basically something that should have been a magazine article that he stretched into a book. The heckling chapter is basically filler and has virtually nothing to do with cheating. Other chapters, while related to cheating (in some form), are similarly overblown.

I get to begin this by telling you that I am in fact the perfect guy to review a book about baseball. In the past 6 weeks I have read no fewer than 6 books on the subject. The list includes: Management by Baseball (real good book), Fantasyland (compelling for the addicted), Clemente (thanks Mike), Philosophy and Baseball (really not a good book), Juiced (I still hate Jose Canseco) and The Baseball Economist (absolute must read for geeks).

However, the best one I read is clearly The Cheaters Guide to Baseball.

I'll paint the scenery under which I read the book. I had just finished reading a book called "Good Economy" on the flight from Milwaukee to Cabo San Lucas. The book was very good, but frankly it was more of a work thing. Travelling is always tiring so day one of vacation was to be spent reading, drinking and sunning on the beach. The book I chose to read was the Cheaters Guide to Baseball.

The book is simply fascinating. I literally could not put the thing down. I watch a lot of baseball. Hell I played baseball at pretty competitve levels. I can assure you after reading this book, the game has changed for me entirely. Cheating in baseball is in fact strategy. Hell cheating is a strategy.

I won't cover it chapter to chapter (because you should have already purchased it and started reading it). I will cover a few key points that clearly illustrate how important an addition to your baseball library the "guide" will become.

Consider the playing field. in general we all assume that other than the HR distance from the dish to the fence all ballparks are created equal right? Wrong. In fact I had no idea what an important piece of equipment the blowtorch was in baseball. The variety of dirt manipulations and lawn alterings that are employd by baseball executives are astounding. Have you ever wondered why the home teams 3b doesn't charge a weak bunt that goes foul and the away team sprints after it? The home team guy probably knows where the field slopes optimally to suit his team. Watch the visiting pitcher scrape the mound with his shoe trying to unearth some "softer" soil to get some pushoff and find the ground so hard it breaks his cleats. How exactly did that ground get so hard? The section in the book that cover this kind of stuff will render your game watching experience changed forever.

The spitball is a lost art. The section onthe evolution of the rule changes and the impacts the rule change had on the game are fascinating. Gaylord Perry somehow circumvented the very rules he helped create. Also well covered in the book.

We all know how the sign stealing scenario works right? The section of the book that covers the shere chicanery is quite entertaining. Placement of strategic fans, scouts, players, etc. The effort is unreal. The a realization that it may do little or no good? The book covers it in grave detail.

I have always enjoyed Billy Martin. Now I idolize him. John McGraw lasting impact on the game goes well beyond his managing skills. Barry Bonds? I still love him, but I can at least comprehend the argument provided by Derek.

The book is charmingly written and you can clearly hear the author's sarcastic flare. The research is impeccable and frankly I have no idea how he came across some of it with such detail.

Derek lives up to his well deserved reputation for being one of the funniest baseball writers on the web (Baseball Prospectus and USS Mariner) yet also delivers a fascinating book on baseball's well earned, infamous reputation as the cheating game. And it's out first in paperback, to boot! What more do you want? Why are you still reading? Go buy this now!

First thing I did when I finished reading this book was take it two cubes over to an avid baseball fan at work, set it on his desk, and told him he had to read the book. The second was send notice out to friends and family that they need to read this book.

As a baseball fan myself that is not enveloped in the history of the game, I have heard the stories and read the articles without much of the meaning behind the words. In today's world, it is hard to get a balanced argument capturing both sides of the issue. This book does just that.

This book provided the intricacies of the historical questions surrounding our national pastime without making the reader read multiple volumes to capture the crux of issue at hand. It is truly an enjoyable read that is fun while very informative.

I highly recommend this book to any person interested in baseball or the intrigue of cheating in today's society.

I'll be honest with you, I dislike the game of baseball. Going to a game, watching it? Doesn't intrigue me in the slightest, and I played 3 years of softball growing up. But my husband loves it and he wants to share this fun with me by including me in the season ticket package he bought into with others. So I bring magazines to games or puzzle books so I'm not completely bored. But this season? I brought Derek's book with me and I tell ya - it actually got me watching the game for the first time in a long time. I started looking out for a lot of what he describes in the book while the game was going on - from the history of the pitcher's mound to trying to figure out the signs the base coaches where giving. I even pointed stuff out to my husband that he didn't know. This book helped make my trips to the ballpark more enjoyable AND helped my husband have even more fun with me.

My honest to goodness recommendation is to buy this for the baseball haters that you baseball fans take to games and get frustrated with when they don't pay attention or understand what you're so excited about. This book gives them a level of interest that they may never have known about before - it certainly has for me.