Take a seat in the bleachers for the 25 most dramatic, legend-making events in baseball history. Covering the Bases is the only collection of sports writing, radio transcripts, and photographs that puts readers right in the ballpark. From Babe Ruth's most famous home run to Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier and Cal Ripken's 2,131st game, here are some of the greatest players in their loftiest moments -- as covered by the writers, announcers, and photographers who were there.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
If journalism is history on deadline, then the sports pages and air waves, at their best, function as the abstracts and brief chronicles of a remarkable corner of our times. Baseball, more than any sport, has hoisted the history component of that equation into an art form. Aptly subtitled The Most Unforgettable Moments in Baseball in the Words of the Writers and Broadcasters Who Were There, Covering the Bases recognizes that art form and builds it a museum. Masterpieces abound between its covers: Grantland Rice on Walter Johnson, Paul Gallico on Babe Ruth's called shot, Shirley Povich on Lou Gehrig's farewell, Russ Hodges's call of Bobby Thompson's shot heard 'round the world, Vin Scully's desciption of Sandy Koufax's perfecto (though its classic last line about the K looming larger than the o-u-f-a-x has been bizarrely omitted), and both Jim Murray and Dave Anderson on Reggie Jackson's three home-run performance in the final game of the 1977 World Series. Covering the Bases is a collection that equally rocks the house and soothes the connoisseur's heart.
From Publishers Weekly
Baseball has been the subject of more literature, films and visual art than any other sport-often to sentimental or romantic effect. But it's sportswriters, photographers and radio broadcaster-those who have done the scut work of documenting the games-who provide the reality checks. Cosgrove (co-editor of Gluttony: Ample Tales of Epicurean Excess) reprints journalistic reports of 25 famous baseball events written under tight deadline or delivered at the event. "With one swift swing of his mighty bat, Bobby Thomson today broke up one of the greatest baseball games ever played," is how Bob Stevens of the San Francisco Chronicle described The Miracle at Coogan's Bluff, when Thomson's homer in the bottom of the ninth gave the New York Giants the pennant, an event best recalled by Giants announcer Russ Hodges frantic "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" "Censurable stupidity" began the New York Times article describing poor Fred Merkle's ignominious 1908 boner, in which he failed to touch second base. While few pieces compete with the baseball prose of John Updike or Bernard Malamud, world-class journalists like Grantland Rice, Paul Gallico, Red Smith and Tom Boswell are represented, as are such announcers as Hodges and Vin Scully. However, compiling a list of the "most unforgettable moments in baseball" is an invitation to argument, no matter how many disclaimers are made. Where is the end of DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak? Where is the purple prose of 19th-century sportswriters? Where are Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle and the Say Hey Kid? Still, having contemporaneous accounts of Ruth's called home run in the 1932 World Series and 24 other unarguably prominent baseball milestones in one volume is a good idea and it is well-executed. Twenty-nine black-and-white photographs provide visual context, but not all depict the events being chronicled. In a nice package, Cosgrove reinforces the symbiotic tie between words and the summer game.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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