I'm working on a doubleheader of books this week: 3 Nights in August by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
The former is a book ostensibly about a three-game series late in the 2003 season between the most historic division rivals in baseball: the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. But the author uses this unit of baseball time to delve deeper into the backstory of Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, explaining his motivations for his habit of constant tinkering with the team lineup to obtain any possible advantage during a game.
While I'm more of a Moneyball person -- if I were in baseball, I could only grasp it from a distant viewpoint of statistics and finance -- I found this perspective of the manager in the trenches perversely fascinating. This is the tale of a true baseball man, one who lives away from his family for 8 months a year and actually believes that every game in a 162-game season counts. I never could embrace that position, but now I understand it a little more.
Buzz Bissinger also wrote Friday Night Lights and an article that became Shattered Glass, which kind of makes him the Susan Orlean
of sportswriting.
I'll finish my doubleheader later, probably Thursday.
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2 comments:
OF COURSE every game in a 162 season counts! Maybe not in a "I'll sell my soul to win" kind of way but more like how every date in a budding relationship counts. Ok...maybe that's not a good analogy since a third date is more like October ball, but I digress.
The quote goes "No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." So how do you know which third you are playing? You have to give it your all and take advantage of every opportunity.
Next on your reading list should be Stephen King's FAITHFUL...I keep it at work so I can re-live last October whenever I'm having a bad day. Worth the price for the picture cover alone.
Thanks, I'll put Faithful on my library reserve list.
I'm sorry, but the NFL is the only pro sports league where every game counts, because there are so few.
I will admit that the MLB has the most exclusive postseason. But this only reinforces the notion that, for most teams, their chances are shot early on. Teams are emotionally eliminated before they're mathematically eliminated, and when a team (say, KC) trades its star (say, Beltran) before the deadline, it completely shoots down any remaining morale.
And sure, any team will likely win at least 60 games almost by default, but it's not like those wins didn't take some energy.
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