Category: Books

Book Excerpt on Dusty Baker's Managerial Career

December 1, 2009 by cubsnet

The Hardball Times is running excerpts from Chris Jaffe's new book Evaluating Baseball Managers. Today's installment discusses Dusty Baker. It's an excellent recap of Baker's managerial career and offers some explanations for Baker's success in San Francisco and relative failure in Chicago.

Among other things, Jaffe discusses the difficulty Baker had in playing younger players in Chicago, something I reviewed in May 2006 here.

Book Review: Entangled in Ivy by George Castle

May 28, 2007 by cubsnet

Subtitled "Inside the Cubs' Quest for October," this is a disappointing book about a disappointing team.

George Castle has served as the Cubs beat reporter for The Times of Northwest Indiana. Entangled in Ivy is less an examination of the disappointment of the Andy MacPhail era as it a autobiography of Castle's coverage of the MacPhail era and his retrospective observations. Which is by no means a bad thing, in and of itself.

Unfortunately, there is little new in this book for longtime followers of the Cubs. Castle does provide a nice overview of the problems of the MacPhail era. He writes of MacPhail's philosophy of trying to be "competitive" rather than trying to win the World Series, the lack of position player development, the lack of hitters' patience at the plate, and a too-small front office team (the Cubs have an assistant general manager -- Randy Bush -- this year for the first time since the Cubs hired MacPhail). In the process, though, Castle puts blame on minor issues. He argues that Wrigley Field is too old to have necessary amenities for the players, and the last few pages of the book are devoted to the supposed perils of day games at Wrigley.

Former Cubs 3B Santo Heads "Reich Top 10" Veteran Candidates for Baseball Hall of Fame

November 16, 2006 by pghpiratesfan

Sam Reich, baseball evaluator, sports law attorney and author, has a mission: making sure only the best veteran candidates are inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He’s argued the case for each candidate on his new website, www.waitingforcooperstown.com , a prelude to his forthcoming book, Waiting for Cooperstown: Baseball’s Veterans (1901-1972) and the Hall of Fame.

Both the website and book include Reich’s unique framework for selecting candidates and the “Reich Top 10,” based on his analysis of who should be inducted in the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. Former Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo is listed No. 1 on Reich's Top 10.

The Chicago Cubs: Memories and Memorabilia of the Wrigley Wonders

September 20, 2006 by diana

The book includes many photos of Cubs memorabilia, including some items like the Ernie Banks Hall of Fame poster. That poster looks very familiar. I wonder if I was at Ernie Banks day and received that poster as a admission gate freebie??? I went to a lot of Cubs games in the 70's and don't remember them all. Ernie played before my time as a Cubs fan, so his ceremony might not have clicked in my memory way back then. I do remember meeting Ernie later on.

If you get a chance to thumb thru this book, what how the image of the bear-cub changed over the years. He went from a more realistic looking young bear to a cartoon image. I wonder if the Cubs will choose to re-design their mascot a bit.

Book: Take me out the the Cubs Game - 35 Former Ballplayers speak of losing at Wrigley

September 20, 2006 by diana

One point I read repeatedly by several former Cubs was that playing all those day games really wears you out.

Former Cubs shortstop Don Kessinger said "I'd lose 10 to 12 pounds playing in Wrigley Field in the summer, and I didn't have that much to lose." (He went from 175 to 155 in the summer of 1969.)

Book Review: The Last Nine Innings by Charles Euchner

August 5, 2006 by cubsnet

<!--webbot bot="HTMLMarkup" startspan --><!--webbot bot="HTMLMarkup" endspan -->There's a danger in breaking something down to smaller and smaller levels. You could lose the beauty of the whole. Wrigley Field is a site to behold; a bolt helping hold down a box seat less so. In baseball, there's something to be said about the simplicity of the batter / pitcher confrontation. As Thomas Boswell remarked some time ago (very loosely paraphrasing here), in football, after a game, when a coach is asked what went wrong, the answer is too often, "We won't know for sure until we check the tape." In baseball, the answer is, "Ryan's curveball was breaking and our knees were buckling," or "We made some bad pitches and they hit the ball out of the park; see you tomorrow."

But it is possible to break down the game of baseball -- to see the physics, the strategy, and the preparation -- and retain the beauty of the whole, because the details themselves are inherently interesting. Charles Euchner does this in his fine book, The Last Nine Innings, a story of the details of baseball told through the lens of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, an instant classic game in an instant classic series.