Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For Baseball Statheads Only, December 3, 1999
While I agree with many of the critical comments, I like the book a lot. Considering the number of pages and the tiny font sizes, the book is enormous, so even if you don't like some of the material, there's plenty here to enjoy.It's definitely pitched to a pretty narrow audience though. You've got to have patience to wade through pages of explanations of their unique statistics. If all you want to do is read comments on players because you're in a Rotisserie league, this isn't the book for you.
|
|
|
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too Much Self-indulgent Tripe, September 11, 1999
By A Customer
There's some really good material in this book, but you have to plow through an awful--and I mean awful--load of self-indulgent tripe to find the occasional gem. When the chief authors aren't patting each other on the back and trashing the competition, they're staging made-up interviews with each other or writing about their dreams or other nonsense. The Montreal team essay is a rarity in that it looks in depth at something that actually happened on the field,an incident where a player loafed and cost the Expos a game and then was probably wisely traded. But there is just way too little of that. What there is instead is way too many stats that are difficult to understand or to read and too much from some writers who aren't all that impressive. Tom Austin is truly lame and his comments on what he thinks are the game's worst pitching seasons are sometimes almost laughable.
|
|
|
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Ultimately Disappointing, May 8, 1999
By A Customer
A book that I was very much looking forward to, that ended up being a big letdown. Besides the near impossibility of the book to read(miniscule fonts, numerous typos, unmarked charts that are sometimes near the text they are supposed to illuminate), a great deal of the information was just plain not useful and/or not entertaining. "Crossing the Rubicon" and "The Old GM and the Sea" add absolutely nothing to the book. And come on... A whole section on a moderately funny r.s.b. poster? "Jeff Drummond's Greatest Hits" would have been snipped by any thinking editor. I did enjoy some of the historical studies in the first part of the book, especially "Empire Building...". The team essays weren't overly enlightening, though I always enjoy Sean Forman's work. The player comments were brief and didn't add much. I expect these comments to be mostly based on statistics, but the lack of any description of what was physically happening on the field to accumulate those statistics is a big weakness of the player comments. It is fine to know that pitcher X's "S" score improved tremendously in 1998, but could you give me some insight as to why? Lastly, the tone of this book was a bit curious. It seems the authors are very interested in tearing down others(James, BP, Neyer). This is also to the book's detriment, as it makes the authors look petty, and given the obvious weaknesses of their effort, not very credible.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
