Amazon.com Review
Baseball lends itself to still photography. Photos freeze baseball's rhythm, allowing the viewer to examine details: Derek Jeter's agility as he leaps in the air to turn a double play, Ted Williams's beautiful follow-through after connecting with another hit, the bone-jarring crunch of a collision at home plate between Ray Durham and Scott Servais.
Major League Baseball's Best Shots celebrates these great moments. Some of these images offer glimpses of lost practices, such as Burleigh Grimes, last of the legal spitballers, greasing up a ball, or Joe DiMaggio "boning" his bat to compress the wood. Others allow for a comparison of styles--such as El Duque's knee-to-ear wind-up vs. Warren Spahn's straight-legged sprawl, or Hideo Nomo's twisting delivery vs. Dennis Eckersley's sidearm. Best of all, however, are the photos of superstars at supreme moments--Rickey Henderson evading an attempted tag, Ken Griffey Jr. robbing Detroit of an obvious home run by leaping well above the fence, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire chatting in the final week of that magical 1998 season. With a foreword by Johnny Bench (himself captured in full swing),
Major League Baseball's Best Shots is a wonderful look at the history of the national pastime.
--M. Stein
About the Author
Johnny Bench, Cincinnati's Number 5 is the benchmark against which other catchers are compared. Rookie of the Year in 1968, he controlled the game on both sides of the plate with his hitting (.267 with 389 home runs and a then-record 327 as a catcher), throwing out opposing base runners, calling pitches and blocking home plate. He won two MVP awards and 10 Gold Gloves during his 17 seasons as one of the leaders of the Big Red Machine.
