Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Eddie Epstein (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are good teams, and there are great teams, and then there are teams that cross into legend where a case can be built for naming them the best team of all time. The Cubs of Tinker to Evers to Chance. The Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig, and later DiMaggio and Dickey, and, later still, Mantle and Maris and Ford, and still later, O'Neill and Jeter and Williams and Cone. The '29 A's, the '55 Dodgers, the '70 Orioles, the Big Red Machine. Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein identify 15 of these powerhouses, assess the overall stats and individual achievements of each, examine the durability of the numbers, and compare and contrast them relative to one another in an attempt to identify the one team that truly lived up to--and exceeded--its potential to stand alone.

It's a fascinating performance, as insightful as it is argumentative. (Neyer, a columnist for ESPN.com, and Epstein, a former baseball exec, don't always see eye to eye, and some of their disagreements are posted as dialogues.) Along the way, they debunk some myths (Mantle's 565-foot home run) and create new stats to test relative performance (one makes Johnny Bench the best catcher of all time--no problem there--with Mickey Cochrane second). Poignantly, they also project some "what-ifs," as in what if Lou Gehrig had stayed healthy for the '39 Yankees.

After parsing and reparsing team after team, Neyer and Epstein arrive at their conclusion, and while they pretty much disagree on places 2 through 15, they manage to present a unified front for No. 1. It's a team in pinstripes, but probably not the first--or second--to come to mind. Given the precision with which way they lay out their case, you'll have to work awfully hard to overturn their verdict. --Jeff Silverman

Review

Baseball teams thrive on arguments. This book will start enough of them to keep the Hot Stove League in session all year long. -- George F. Will

Few athletes are part of one baseball dynasty. I was fortunate enough to be part of two. This book captures the unique characteristics that make great teams great. -- Davey Johnson

It's wonderful to read a book by someone who really knows something about the great teams, knows things that I don't know, knows even important things that I didn't know. This is the book that everybody else who writes about great teams, for the next 30 years, will have to begin by reading, just so they know what they're talking about. -- Bill James

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393048942
• ISBN-13: 978-0393048940
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,571,202 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 15 of the Greatest Teams Ever, July 21, 2001

By	Jason A. Miller (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time (Paperback)

I purchased this book because it was written by Rob Neyer, whose columns I'd been reading on the ESPN website for several years, usually with an equal mixture of fascination, amusement, and frustation. I was interested in seeing his sometimes-technical take on baseball applied to the great teams of the past, whereas co-author Eddie Epstein I knew not at all.

"Baseball Dynasties" is on its face an examination of 15 of the greatest baseball teams ever, ranging from the deadball-era 1906 Cubs, to the "Team of the Century" 1998 Yankees. It's longer and more detailed than most commercially-available "best teams ever" books, and probably the first one I've seen that's not aimed at kids. "Dynasties" is equal part historical research and statistical argument and, depending on where your interests lie, some parts of the book will be more interesting than others.

Neyer's sidebars and sidesteps tend to be the freshest. The historical research shows best in the articles with his name attached. His game recounts are fresh, his player biographies are original. The 1906 and 1912 World Series summaries come to life in a way that makes you believe Roger Angell was actually there and sending back reports. He's the first author I've ever seen detail just who Walter Beall was, beyond the fact that he pitched one inning for the 1927 Yankees.

Neyer, and mostly Epstein, use the Standard Deviation of a team's runs scored and runs allowed, to compare the great teams of different eras. They never tell us how "SD" is calculated, so those of us with adding machines can't play along at home -- I neglected to take statistics in college but love calculating ERAs and Pythagorean theorems as much as the next baseball nut. I won't blame them for my math shortcomings but they did promise to provide the formula at an early point in the book.

Epstein's portions are less interesting. His prose is dry and peevish. His elaborate defenses of Reggie Jackson and Davey Johnson seem unnecessary, his use of the data unoriginal. Boldly proclaiming that a batter with 563 career HRS and 10 different playoff appearances is "productive", strikes of myopia. Worst of all is his discounting of postseason games, and in spite of his saying "Games are not played on paper", he's still trying to reopen the books on the 1969 World Series.

Another of the book's rare missteps is a sidebar castigating a factual error about the 1986 Mets in Doc Gooden's autobiography. Fine, fine, but in the same pages Neyer misreports the scores of two playoff games from that same year.

On the whole "Baseball Dynasties" is a terrific fit on my baseball bookshelf. It's more interested in presenting the facts, anecdotes and numbers -- unindexed, it's not a handy reference tool, and is best consulted during slow games or phone conversations with friends. Their final rankings of the 15 teams seems desultory -- they reach a logical but unsexy result I've seen argued in other books -- but when it comes to teams such as these, any answer is the "right" answer.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So which team is the greatest? Read and decide for yourself, April 1, 2000

By	Chip Millard (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time (Paperback)

Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein's new book, "Baseball Dynasties", is thoroughly interesting examination as to which Major League Baseball teams are the greatest of all time. If you are familiar with Neyer's espn.com baseball columns, you will find the both writing style and content similar to the website. Neyer and Epstein use various statistical measures, such as projected wins, OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage), and standard deviations (better or worse than the league average in a category) to make objective arguments about the quality of various teams. In addition, the authors also present a number of interesting stories about each team that capture the allure baseball has for many people. The book focuses on great 20th century MLB teams, but chapters on 19th century teams, Negro League teams, and the century's worst teams, are also included.

Overall, the book is written in a easy-to-read style, and although the book is loaded with statistics, they only embellish, rather than distract from, the stories about the dynastic teams. This book will refuel the debate as to which team is the greatest of all-time. One other thing, both Neyer and Epstein agree on the overall greatest team of all-time, and it ISN'T the 1927 Yankees. So who is it? Read and find out.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sure to start an arguement, June 21, 2002

By	Michael H. Siegel (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time (Paperback)

Neyer and Epstein's Baseball Dynasties is an entertaining and easy read that is also a thought-provoking book about baseball. Neyer (a regular columnists on ESPN.com) and Epstein (former managment for Orioles and Padres) introduce a method of measuring the dominance of teams -- the SD score. It is a way of estimating whether a team's success was truly a result of being a giant among men -- or whether it was because the talent in the league was so unevenly distributed. They identify 15 of the most dominant teams and break them down -- offense, defense, pitching, bench, how they were built, how the fell, etc. Each chapter is also graced with several small essays discussing fascinating aspects of each team.

The book has its flaws. The attributing of each little section to Rob or Eddie could have been left out and makes the book feel choppy. I think it could have benefited by being written after Bill James' book on Win Shares (then again, so could almost every baseball book). It might even have been preferable for them to talk about lesser-known teams or fewers details but more teams. Do we really need more information on the 1927 Yankees? I didn't think so.

I also think they should have looked at different KIND of dynasties. For example, teams like the 90's Braves, 80's Cards, 60's Reds, 60's-70's Pirates or 70's-80's Royals that weren't particularly dominating in any one year or short span of years, but were consistently good for a long span of time. Interviews with old-timers would have been nice but probably impractical. But I guess these complaints fall under one category -- the book is way too short. This subject deserves a "Historical Abstracts"-like tome that you could really wade into over the course of a few weeks rather than one you can zip through on the weekend.

But the book makes up for these short-comings with the fairness with it treats the topic. You'll realize that the early 50's Yanks weren't that good, despite their five championships. The league was just poorly balanced. You'll realize the early 70's Orioles were truly a great team. It avoids the common trait in "best teams that ever was" arguements of assuming that whatever team dominated the youth of the authors was the best. It's the best book of its type out there.