Customer Reviews

Watching Baseball, 4th: Discovering the Game within the Game

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It's difficult to go through a day without a baseball analogy and almost impossible to review a baseball book without one. That disclaimer aside, here's my take on Rem-Dawg's latest edition.

The affable 1978 Bo-Sox all-star may have hung up the cleats, but he has not lost his ability to get a good read or produce a hit. Although he tends to play better at home, his talent can be appreciated outside of Boston as well. Remy may not have been quite a five-tool player, but he certainly excelled in several facets of the game. His passion, his powers of analysis, his leadership sprinkled with self-deprecating humor (check the included early career photos of Remy with his mouth open) and approachable style make him a great contributor.

Remy was never a power hitter, but this has to be one of his home runs.

I was hoping this book would be as insightful as George Will's Men at Work or Keith Hernandez's book (forget the title). However, while it was a quick read, it was not as advanced as I had hoped it would be.

I would recommend it for anybody relatively new to the game, though.

I was a guy who has loved going to games all my life, I always had a good time but I was more interested in the sunshine, hot dogs and beer. I always loved the game but never really dug into it, then something happened a few years ago and I started digging into it. I read everything I could get my hands on. There are a lot of really bad baseball books out there, the worst ones by far are written by well known authors. There are lots of baseball books supposedly written to educate the fan but most of them are simple collections of personel acecdotes about such and such Yankee game blah blah blah. The worst are the authors who are endlessly impressed with their own writting ability or how much more they know than you and by the way you will never understand the game as well as they do so don't even try.

Jerry includes anecdotes however he uses them to describe or teach what is going on and what to watch for when similar situations arise in the game you are watching. This was one of the first books I read when I wanted to learn more and I still consider it one of the best books written for the fan. I re-read it every winter and I discover something new every time. This is a great book for any level of fan, I have given it to lots of people who come to games with me, who like me never studied the game and are now ready to explore and learn....it sure makes the games more fun to watch. I wish there were more books like this out there.

"Watching Baseball" offers food on the inside for the baseball aficionado but a title misleading just the same.

It is not so much a text that offers insight for the "game-watching" fan, than an escapade into the ball player's psyche, thought patterns and broad tactical-strategic processes, that by definition go on very much hidden from the ball fan's purview.

The 2008 edition seems to address a number of concerns levelled in previous reader reviews, particularly those alleging the author's reticence to criticize rather than praise his colleague's on field performance.

However, where this book falls short, is its extensive position by position foray throughout the baseball diamond, smattered with un-nuanced slang, yet, without the assistance of a single diagram that to the fan, could have been so much more useful than the many quotes, praises of the author and reminisces offered as "features" found on every other page.

Most glaringly, the book finally strays completely off-topic with practically 1/3 of the text to go: Whilst it makes interesting reading, the author spends fully 104 pages giving his take on the Red Sox wins of 2004 and 2007 - what's worse, followed by 11 pages of his own biography, complete with stats!

Now, the buyer of this book seems quite justified to question the relevance of this extensive detour regarding what to "watch for", when sitting at a ball park or seated comfortably in arm chair and wishing to outcall the announcers, managers and coaching staff. Does an autobiography really help in this regard?

"Watching Baseball" is indeed a "real baseball book" as one of its endorsements reads - so far as "real" can be defined, as being written by an insider, with a command of the insider's nomenclature. Yet at this point the issue arises; written for whom?

The true baseball grognard will find little new to augment years of time counting stats and "living" the game season by post season. The newbie will be off put by the text's lack of instruction by way of illustration and definition of the esoteric throughout.

So who indeed should buy this book? The answer it seems, would be those attracted by its truer title:

"Insights Into Baseball by Jerry Remy, His Career and Breaking the Red Sox Curse".

As said, this is still an interesting book but not one with much relevance into "watching the game".