Customer Reviews

Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember

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Sports writers tend to specialize in one sport or another, but John Feinstein writes about different sports, and does every one equally well. However, his latest book, Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember, is definitely for readers who are more than just casual baseball fans. It's for those readers who are passionate enough to want to read about the 2007 season, following each pitch made by Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina. I'm one of those baseball fanatics.

When Feinstein picked Tom Glavine of the New York Mets and Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees, he selected two experienced pitchers who were very different. He knew if one was injured during the year, he still had another pitcher to follow. Glavine, a lefty, who never went to college, is a future Hall of Famer who spent his career in the National League. Mike Mussina, a righty, went to Stanford, and pitches in the American League. By selecting these two men, Feinstein could also examine the culture of the two New York baseball teams.

Feinstein sets the scene for his book by telling about the careers for these two masterful pitchers. Since Glavine and Mussina both cooperated with the author, it makes for a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the lives and careers of the two players. And, then 2007 proved to be an interesting year. Tom Glavine went for his 300th win, and the Mets went down to the wire in their Division. Mike Mussina struggled to find his pitches after spending time on the Disabled List, and the Yankees' woes jeopardized Joe Torre's career. Feinstein's writing is so good that even those of us who remember how 2007 turned out are left hanging on every pitch.

John Feinstein's Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember is one book for baseball fans to savor, and remember.

John Feinstein is a very good sports author. I love most of his books. I thought this was an interesting concept for a book. I enjoy both pitchers, Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine, that he chose to follow. Mr. Feinstein showed a different side of both pitchers. He had a great season to follow with the New York Mets collapse and the New York Yankees fighting to make the playoffs. I really enjoyed Mike Mussina's breaking down of what a pitcher truly is and what they do.

Now the bad, I hated that Mr. Feinstein went through game by game giving the highlights that someone could have gotten from the boxscores. He left me asking questions as I read about what the two pitchers thought or how it effected them that I wish he would have answered. The first part of the book where Mr. Feinstein goes through each of their careers to date was fascinating. However he couldn't sustain that pace and the critical analysis after he started with the 2007 season. I really did enjoy this book but wish he would have had a better editor that would have made the book flow a little tighter.

As someone who has read John Fienstein's books for more than ten years now I can say that I have seen some of his books that are good to great and some that are poor to lousy. This one sadly rates in the second category. Overall it is a weak and overwrought story and essentially a 500 page plus book that could be half that length with a good editor.

The book also contains a number of errors that a good editor would have caught along with the long winded phrases. Plus the fact that he dwells so long on the prep of two pitchers when focusing on either Glavine and the Mets or Mussina and the Yankees would have sufficed. Basically this book is too much information and too little strength. I hope his next work is better!

What I love about John Feinstein is his ability to take the sports fan into a world we don't normally see. In "Living on the Black" he uses his journalistic credibility and his extraordinary story telling powers to create a "behind the scenes" story of two veteran pitchers, Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine. Each pitcher is struggling to eek one more season out of his "ancient" body. Mr. Feinstein approaches his story with the same pacing of the baseball season itself (this may put off some readers). His detailed approach gives us tremendous insight into the art of pitching. This book is a fine addition to your collection of Baseball Literature.

Reading the sports section of the newspaper will give you the results of yesterday's games. There will be some in-depth articles on how the home team fared, and there may even occasionally be a human-interest story on a particular athlete. But to truly understand how a professional athlete thinks or feels, to comprehend the psychology of the game, and to know what separates them from the talented high school or college star - you have to read a sports book.

John Feinstein has made a career following teams and athletes in various sports through a typical season, so that the reader can experience vicariously the life of a professional athlete. In Living on the Black, he follows two great pitchers in the twilight of their careers as they both play in the media-crazy hothouse of New York, albeit for different teams.

In this insightful book Feinstein follows Tom Glavine of the New York Mets as he struggles to reach 300 wins, which all but ensures his eventual election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Simultaneously, the author traces the key events in the 2007 season of Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees as he approaches 250 career wins, a stellar accomplishment for any pitcher. These men struggle with injuries - physical and psychological - as they deal with both personal and team expectations.

The book is appropriately titled Living on the Black. The black refers to the inside and outside edges of the plate where control or finesse pitchers must throw to be successful in this most demanding game. Glavine had always been a control rather than a power pitcher, and Messina having been forced to become one due to age and the decreasing speed of his once dominant fastball.

Although these two share many common experiences of having had a highly successful and lengthy career in baseball, they come from decidedly different backgrounds and exhibit very different personalities. What they do share in common is a strong belief in themselves and their ability to constantly fine-tune their mechanics, as well as their thought processes, which allows them to stay at the top of their game.

I have read most of John Feinstein's works, and believe he is the best sports writer out there today. Living on the Black is classic Feinstein. This is not a study into how pitchers approach a game, though there is some of that in here. This is the story of two great pitchers, and how their year went, the up and downs, and the good and bad bounces. It shows how just a couple of bad pitches, or lucky bounces (and calls), can have a dramatic effect on both the outcome of the game, and the pitchers outlook on how they pitched.

Feinstein I believe does better work covering both college sports, where he is less likely to take cheap shots against others, and golf (where I don't think he really believes there are any "bad" guys). That is my only real criticism of the book, though he probably should consult a thesaurus, using the "immortal" pejorative many times to describe multiple opponents.

Still, if you like Feinstein, there is nothing to not like about Living on the Black. He takes you through the Mets and Yankees 2007 season, with all their trials and tribulations. This is not a deep book, but an interesting look at a season in which one New York team came from struggling for half the season to make the playoffs, while the other had a dramatic collapse to just miss out. Overall, a good read.

I listen to a lot of audio books on my trips to and from work and generally enjoy most of them. I esp. like how the audio "performance" can greatly enhance the book. And that, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with this book.

But to begin with, this story, itself, is not a strong one. There is little drama, too much background (2/3's of the book talk about seasons past for both pitchers) and not a lot of inside detail about the "season to remember," especially in Mussina's case. OK, you get a little insight into Joe Torre, almost none into the Mets management, some into Will Nieves, Paul LoDuca and precious little about the other players. Lasting Milledge does gets blasted by Glavine, as do a couple of umpires. But that's it for "tell all." Mussina doesn't even go that far.

And teh author goes off on tangents into backgrounds of other players that have nothing to do with the Season to Remember, and may have only briefly crossed Mussina's or Glavine's path. It's almost like filler. It is filler.

You get the picture. The worst of this book is the audio recording. The narrator doesn't know baseball and apparently no one who knew baseball was involved in the making of it. He pronounces many, many names of player incorrectly, mostly hispanic players names, but not all. Steve "Trays-skell) This is terrifically aggravating to a real baseball fan and its hard to believe that a narrator, recording engineer, a tape editor, and proofers could simply miss all the names. Obviously, Glavine, Mussina or even the author never listened to it. That,in itself, says a lot about it.

If not mispronouncing, the narrator makes some major gaffs such as introducing Milledge, an outfielder, as a "pitcher who can hit, run, throw, and cover the outfield." Quite a pitcher indeed. No one picked this up?

And if not gaffing, the narrator voices the book like he is reading to a 5 year old.

I could go on and on. I would have quit listening to this book early on but 2007 was a unique year for the Mets and Yanks and I continued onward just because of that. I think this might have been a good story because the author has turned out some decent books, but I think he didn't get a lot to work with from either of the two players, esp Mussina.

A terrible book - one of Feinstein's worst. Limited insight - no real analysis. Basically just a game by game rehashing of the season with no new information for a fan that follows baseball and the Mets and Yankees, specifically. Mr. Feinstein presented nothing beyond what already exists in boxscores and game recaps. Its almost as if he spent a year following Mussina and Glavine and then he realized that there really wasnt an interesting book in their respective seasons; but, after spending all that time, he needed to produce something. In addition to the subpar effort from Mr. Feinstein, there were too many typos to count.

This was an excellent book, with the notable exception of a few errors - typos on last names, mistaking the Trenton Thunder as the AAA Yankees affiliate (it's the AA team), and biggest of all, stating that the Mets and Nationals (it was the Phils) were in a first place tie on the last day of the season.

Other than those things, this book was fantastic, giving timely insight into what goes on in the pitchers' minds throughout the season. I highly recommend it for any fan of Moose, Glavine, the Mets or Yanks, or any baseball fan in general.

I bought this book with great optimism. I'm a fan of baseball non-fiction and thought the concept was great. Unfortunately it has proven to be a tedious read. There is very little real insight into the mind of the pitcher and is basically a re-hashing of two teams' seasons.
Nice idea but could have been accomplished in about 75 pages. I learned more about Tom Glavine's divorce and re-marriage than about the perspective of a starting pitcher.