Customer Reviews

The best seat in baseball, but you have to stand: The game as umpires see it

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3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Very few people know what the rigours and stresses of a pro sport official are as well as the personal setbacks and of course the professional flaws. This book has all of the above, excellently written and clearly shows what being a major sports league's messenger (since umpires just enforce the rules) is really like. Just as now, the dealings with overpaid, spoiled players, coaches and managers are well described. One of the best books I've ever read.

For this genre, the book is mediocre. If anything, I would say that the writing style is wrong. It may be "creative writing" but it reads more like a novel than non-fiction. Now, non-fiction does not mean it has to be boring! Certainly, some of the stories are interesting, but it often became a chore to read. Not a bad book, but certainly not the best it could be.

If you are an umpire, regardless of level, you will find portions of this book interesting. The author's literary style is wordy (the book could be half as long without losing any substance) but his overuse of adjectives is easily ignored by the reader. It is a fast read and a book you can put down and pick back up at will. Despite some obvious errors ("One hundred and fifty miles south of San Diego, in Bakersfield, California,"), the author introduces you to the people part of umpires about whom you had, largely, only known their names. What could have been an intimate book about umpires and their unique view of baseball is, instead, an uneven account of the 1974 National League season for one crew of umpires. Part hit piece, part historical chronicle of members of our society rarely written about, the book will hold your interest if you both love baseball and are an umpire. Absent being both and you may not see it to the end.

I recommend with reservations. This book presents the story of umpires warts an all (including NC-17 language), however as other reviews suggest, the author may have pushed the ethical boundries to obtain his information.

If you are an umpire fan you will enjoy this book, but be sure to take it with a grain of salt.

The first thing you should know about this book is it's based on the 1975 season, which means that none of the umpires or players mentioned are contemporary.

Beyond that, this is poorly done and unethically done at that. Late in the book, the author admits that he pretended to be sleeping in order to eavesdrop on the conversation between two umpires in a hotel room. He says he threw away drinks and pretended to be drunk so they'd talk openly in front of him.

If the ethics don't bother you, consider this: how accurate are the conversations he quotes, considering he had no tape recorder and reconstructed them after the fact? Could you relate word-for-word a conversation you had with a co-worker this morning?

Baseball umpires could be the subject for a great book. This isn't it.