I wanted to love this book - I love baseball, I grew up in DC, the 1924 season is the story of Washington's only World Series win, and the greatest pitcher of all time, Walter Johnson, figures prominently in the story.
Until the last chapter, though (which is the World Series itself), the book felt too much like a telegraphic retelling of the season. Each sentence was a new event - maybe a small event - like Kiki Cuyler had 4 hits in a game - but it felt like reading snippets from 154 daily sports roundups. Intersticed between the chapters that laid out the season were chapters that weren't chronological in nature at all (a chapter called 'The Business of Baseball,' a chapter called 'The Players,' etc.), as an attempt to break up the action - but it never gelled.
Still, the end of the season and World Series chapters were compelling and a great read, and brought together disparate sources of the 7-game series (the 7th game went 12 innings, too!) to make a cohesive whole of that part of the book.
By the way - I waited more than two years to get this book - and I was literally ten pages from the end, with the book riding in my travel bag - when a grape soda I had in a plastic bag in my bag somehow got a tiny hole and leaked out of the plastic bag and onto the bottom corner of the book for all of its 157 pages. Now it's NOT SWAPPABLE. Stupid grape soda. Stupid book for lying in the grape soda.
Until the last chapter, though (which is the World Series itself), the book felt too much like a telegraphic retelling of the season. Each sentence was a new event - maybe a small event - like Kiki Cuyler had 4 hits in a game - but it felt like reading snippets from 154 daily sports roundups. Intersticed between the chapters that laid out the season were chapters that weren't chronological in nature at all (a chapter called 'The Business of Baseball,' a chapter called 'The Players,' etc.), as an attempt to break up the action - but it never gelled.
Still, the end of the season and World Series chapters were compelling and a great read, and brought together disparate sources of the 7-game series (the 7th game went 12 innings, too!) to make a cohesive whole of that part of the book.
By the way - I waited more than two years to get this book - and I was literally ten pages from the end, with the book riding in my travel bag - when a grape soda I had in a plastic bag in my bag somehow got a tiny hole and leaked out of the plastic bag and onto the bottom corner of the book for all of its 157 pages. Now it's NOT SWAPPABLE. Stupid grape soda. Stupid book for lying in the grape soda.
