Customer Reviews

Feeding the Green Monster

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rob Neyer, ESPN.com columnist and cutting-edge baseball writer, attended 114 ballgames during the 2000 season. I attended one, and even that was shortened by rain. He sat in Fenway Park for all 81 Boston Red Sox home games. I saw the Red Sox only during their battles with the Yankees that year, and apart from Scott Brosius's killing-blow home run off Pedro Martinez that September, I remember little. But I devoured "Feeding the Green Monster" in just a few days, racing through the Red Sox's also-ran season just to read what Neyer would have to say about it, wishing I had been there in his entourage.

"Green Monster" is a diary, a confessional -- at the end, Rob writes, "I fell in love twice this season, with a ballpark named Fenway and a woman named (spoiler removed)". There are entries covering Opening Day through the offseason, but not each one is as meticulous or documented as his ESPN.com columns. As with Rob's previous work, the book is better when he's in full-on research mode. The entries concerning Gary Gaetti, Johnny Pesky, the 1946 World Series, and the history of the outfield wall now called the Green Monster, are outstanding.

The personal content is also intriguing, although the fact that the author could devote a whole season to buying tickets at Fenway -- and then flying or riding to 35 other games in other cities -- hints that it might be easier for Neyer to be a baseball fan than most of his readers. I always wanted more details on the people he went to games with -- we come to know Fenway's scalpers better than the author's girlfriends. Passages such as "Baseball fans in these parts are about as moody as a pregnant woman who forgot to each lunch" should have been deleted long before publication.

I've only been to Fenway once, and came out just a little bit more enamored of the Red Sox -- not an easy thing to do, as I am a New Yorker. After finishing "Feeding the Green Monster", I found I wanted to be there at Fenway again, rooting for the likes of Tim Wakefield and counting Pedro Martinez's strikeouts. Rob Neyer's diary of the 2000 season is far from perfect, but it's unique in its approach and its refreshing lack of interviews with ballplayers. Rob is Every-Fan, our agent in the bleacher seats, and it would be kind of nice if he could write a book like this again.

I have just read a review posted on Amazon and want to add a few thoughts. I really enjoyed FEEDING THE GREEN MONSTER and I also confess I also enjoyed PLAYER FOR A MOMENT when I read that a few years ago.

Disclaimer: I met Rob while he was working on this book and we went to a game together. Another time we stayed all night in the park after one game. He says some nice things about me in the book.

I enjoyed the book not because of incisive baseball commentary, a feature of Rob's ESPN columns. I enjoyed it for some of the very reasons the other reviewer did not. It may just be a matter of expectation. To me, FEEDING THE GREEN MONSTER is the story of a real person - a real baseball fan who set out to go to every ballgame in one entire home season, and then did it.

I go to about 25 games a season but I don't know if I could make all 81! That is HARD WORK. I put myself in Rob's shoes as I was reading the book. If you can empathize with a fellow fan - a fan with a mission, but a fan who was all too human at the same time (losing his scorebook with a lot of his notes, getting distracted because of an attractive woman in a nearby seat, suffering the elements on the cold April nights) - then you might find this book rewarding.

There's plenty of baseball in the book, both about the play on the field and about a lot of the circumstances around the game.

One can argue that the book is self-absorbed, but I didn't think it ever pretended to be anything other than a very personal account of one very human fan who slogged through this one full season of baseball and I found that to be its charm.

Bill Nowlin

Rob Neyer lived many a fan's dream during the 2000 major league season when he attended all 81 home games of the Boston Red Sox at their historic home, Fenway Park. But that wasn't the full extent of his baseball watching that summer. He managed to push his season total higher still with games in Seattle, New York, Kansas City and Pawtucket. The book that resulted, "Feeding the Green Monster," is Rob's diary of that busy season. We get plenty of baseball between these covers--and also a lot about Rob's life.

Neyer is a columnist for ESPN.com, and his knowledge of, and passion for the game shine throughout the text. He's also quite eloquent and passionate about Fenway itself, and makes a strong case why this historic ballyard, the oldest left in the major leagues, should not be prematurely retired. One of the highlights for me was the story of how Rob and a friend managed to stay after the end of a game and spend the night in Fenway, exploring every nook, cranny and crevice. It's going to be a long time before anyone can write this way about any of the current crop of "retro" ballparks, and I can never, ever imagine a fan feeling the same way about one of those cookie-cutter stadiums that proliferated in the 60s and 70s.

Sadly, Neyer didn't have much of a season to write about. The BoSox made a promising start that year, remained in contention for their division title for most of the summer, and were in the hunt for the wild card slot almost to the end, but once again fell short against the Yankees. A classic pennant race instead of a sad fade would have made for a more gripping text.

Some of the other reviewers seemed to find the book a bit too self-involved, but such is the nature of a dairy. I had a different take...I found myself thinking of Rob as something of a kindred spirit, and wishing I could go to a game with him sometime. Anyone who laments over the fact that too many great books are published to keep up with in a year, let alone a lifetime; and who had such a passionate love for this great American sport is going to rate very highly in my personal book.--William C. Hall

To me Rob Neyer is the perfect combination of experienced baseball columnist, SABRmetric genius, gee-whiz fan, and a regular guy I'd want to watch a ballgame with. FtGM fully, and I mean fully, explores his fascination with Fenway Pahhk, the Red Sox, and their fans.

Not only did he attend every one of the Red Sox (alas only) 81 home games in 2000 (the basis for the book), but he managed to 'squeeze' in another 20 or so MLB games of the Mariners, Royals and yes, the Red Sox, when they were away from Fenway. Suffice it to say that Rob enjoys going to MLB baseball games of the "Junior circuit" sort.

Since I've been reading Rob's column on espn.com for years, I knew I'd like the writing and the way he balances dispassionate modern baseball analysis (If you think RBIs are important, think some more) with a fan's innocent love of his Royals, Mariners and now, 'his' RedSox.

Along the way, he mixes in enough personal information about why he decided on this project and his observations and experiences about living in Boston, misplacing his computer and scorebook, dating women, that it's clear that Rob Neyer is a regular guy with a slightly wacky lifestyle who has the best job in the world.

I really enjoyed how, in this book, he shares his life, and ultimately makes his job helping us love baseball more. (My only criticism -- too bad he never made it down to Cape Cod and saw the purest baseball there is!)

By the way, "Baseball Dynasties" is just as interesting and a must-have for any student of the game.

I've been reading Rob Neyer's baseball columns on ESPN.com ever since he started writing for them, and also enjoyed the "Baseball Dynasties" book he co-authored. Both include statistical analyses of players and teams, interesting stories from baseball history, and a lot of "debunking" as Rob refutes conventional wisdom or debateable quotes from those in the game. "Feeding the Green Monster" has these elements in some places but really is just a diary of Rob's summer of 2000, in which he attended every Red Sox home game as well as lots of other games when Boston was travelling.

The stadium itself is a frequent subject of the book. There is a good amount of prose about his intense love affair with Fenway Park and opposition to the local support for a new park. He waxed poetically enough about it at the time to induce me to make a pilgrimage to see my first game at Fenway that same summer, a Monday night loss to the Twins. (I suppose I could have/should have tried to meet and talk to Rob at that game (and maybe made it in the book!) but I was intimidated, plus he's a vegetarian and probably would have been repelled by my rampant sausage consumption.)

In keeping with the "diary" aspect of the book, there is also a fair amount about Rob's personal life, which I was somewhat interested in since I've been following his columns for so many years, but isn't very spicy. I'm happy for him that he seems to have found the love of his life, but you would think in the interest of book sales he would have gotten involved with a heroin-addicted stripper or investigated the Boston transgender scene in his spare time or something. Maybe all that will come out in the underground bootleg version of the book, where the title turns out to be a double-entendre for acts which I won't dare to speculate about here.

There are some funny bits to the book, usually stories from and about permanently aggrieved Red Sox fans, but also resulting from Rob's repeated problems with losing tickets, getting tickets for the wrong dates, etc. His logistical snafus seem improbably numerous, although if I was going to 100+ games a year I'm sure I'd probably do the same things, so kudos to Rob for not hiding his embarrassing moments.

Overall I thought "Feeding the Green Monster" was a nice read ... definitely a good book to take on vacation like I did, because you can pick it up and read either a little bit or a lot as time allows. It's not as packed with information and insight as his columns or previous book, but if you want to learn about Fenway Park, the 2000 Red Sox, and what it's like to have the best job in the world, it's the book to check out.

I am a devoted reader of Rob Neyer's ESPN.com column, and I enjoyed reading this book a great deal. Everything that makes Neyer's column worth reading is here: the wit, the cogent analysis, and the puncturing of doofy conventional wisdom.

Ultimately, though, the book fell flat. Part of the problem, of course, was the (inevitable?) crash and burn of the Red Sox's 2000 season that Neyer followed. Part of it was the digressionary nature of the narrative. The baseball season is long, and it's hard to maintain intensity over all those months -- and Neyer doesn't manage it. As a result, the book starts to bog down in irrelevancies.

There's also a certain amount of repetition of themes. I suspect this book would have worked better if it had been published in the serial format in which it was written. Not only would it have cut down on the obviousness of the repetition, it would have alleviated the lack of suspense inherent in seeing Neyer speculate about things of which the reader already knows the outcome.

Despite all this, I'd recommend the book for any serious baseball fan, as there are some true gems in it (especially the night Neyer and a friend spend in Fenway and the ins and outs of scalper etiquette, and the bizarre letter from the Red Sox front office printed in the final chapter).

Rob Neyer maintains ties to his Sabermetric roots in Feeding the Green Monster, but it is the diary-like nature of his season at Fenway that hooked me.

Having never been fortunate enough to attend an entire season of home games for any team, Neyer's journey through 81 games at Fenway Park plus several more on the road, allowed me to live vicariously through him.

For those who enjoy Neyer's column at ESPN.com, he still dives into the stat zone every so often to drive home key points.

Do yourself a favor and order a copy of Feeding the Green Monster. Your baseball season will be that much better for it.

There have almost certainly been more books written about Fenway Park than any other sports facility in North America, most of them missing the point. Many Fenway books are pictorials, filled with glossy photos of grass and walls and empty seats. Fenway Park is not a building that you take pictures of, it is a place in which you have experiences. A picture is not always worth 1000 words, or 200 minutes.

The person in the next seat might be a friend or a stranger, you might be sitting in the fourth row on a star-filled 75 degree night or in a cramped blue seat in a cold steady rain. Rob opens up his scorebook, and allows the park and the people and the game to control what happens next. What happens next is much more likely to be a surprise than it is in a modern mallpark.

I appreciate Rob's book because I recognize what he writes about. Fenway Park is a wonderful place to spend three hours, and Rob reminds me that some of the best times of my life have been spent there in a way that a picture of the famous left field wall does not. I have not been there in five years, and I can't wait to get back.

On ESPN.com Neyer does a decent job with thought provoking, statistically inspired commentary on current baseball events. This is not that. In this book Neyer spends a season in the stands of Fenway Park thinking not so deep thoughts, not so much about baseball, but about Rob Neyer, who just isn't that interesting. Had he sat in the Metrodome watching the Twins he would have written much the same book. The result is a self-indulgent letter to oneself which read like like sitting next someone in the stands who just won't stop talking about stuff you just don't care about. The format just isn't his forte. Without the numbers fueling his ideas, he is an empty vessel. Neyer awkwardly tries to adopt all the qualities he imagines Red Sox fans to have, and he does. All the annoying ones, without providing any insight whatsoever. As a chronicle of one of the more forgettable seasons in recent Red Sox history, the book is adequate, because in between the "Song of Himself" is the basic story of a season (2000). Unfortunately there is little in this season that is particularly notable, and that part of the book is already badly dated. Personal memoirs like this aspire to uncover something universal in the particular, but the only universe revealed here is that of someone who incorrectly thinks his every thought is worthy of preservation; they are not. Easily the most vapid Sox book since "Player for a Moment," and that's saying something.

Rob Neyer maintains ties to his Sabermetric roots in Feeding the Green Monster, but it is the diary-like nature of his season at Fenway that hooked me.

Having never been fortunate enough to attend an entire season of home games for any team, Neyer's journey through 81 games at Fenway Park plus several more on the road, allowed me to live vicariously through him.

For those who enjoy Neyer's column at ESPN.com, he still dives into the stat zone every so often to drive home key points.

Do yourself a favor and order a copy of Feeding the Green Monster. Your baseball season will be that much better for it.