Title/Author:
“The
Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn and the Pitching Duel
of the Century” by Jim Kaplan
Tags:
Baseball,
history, Giants, Braves
Published:
February
1, 2011
Length:
256
pages
Stars:
3
of 5 stars (okay)
Review:
On
July 2, 1963 two future Hall of Fame pitchers, Juan Marichal of the San
Francisco Giants and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves, took the mound at
Candlestick Park in San Francisco for a regular season matchup that would
become a historic game for many reasons.
Sixteen innings later, the Giants won the game 1-0 on a Willie Mays
homer – hit off of Spahn. He and
Marichal pitched all 16 innings, each throwing over 200 innings. There has not been a pitching duel quite like
this before or after. Given the status
of pitchers in today’s game with relief specialists and pitch counts for
starters, it is very unlikely we will see another game like this again.
Given this synopsis, I was very interested to read about such a historic game. The accounts of the game are woven into a duel biography of both pitchers. The information on Spahn and Marichal, while well-written, was not terribly in-depth as there are more complete biographies for both pitchers, as well as books on Marichal’s famous incident with Dodgers catcher John Roseboro. In this book, Kaplan gives it some attention, but not as much as other books.
Given this synopsis, I was very interested to read about such a historic game. The accounts of the game are woven into a duel biography of both pitchers. The information on Spahn and Marichal, while well-written, was not terribly in-depth as there are more complete biographies for both pitchers, as well as books on Marichal’s famous incident with Dodgers catcher John Roseboro. In this book, Kaplan gives it some attention, but not as much as other books.
There are also stories interwoven throughout the book about other famous games that featured great pitching performances on both teams, including game 7 of the 1991 World Series, a double no-hitter in 1917 and Harvey Haddix throwing 12 perfect innings in 1959 only to lose the game in the 13th inning.
While these and the biographies were interesting and showed good writing and research, I felt they took away from the main theme of the book and that was the terrific game on July 2, 1963. There were times I had to go back to a previous chapter because there were long stretches between mention of the game accounts and what Spahn and Marichal did to get this far. I don’t think it was a totally bad read, but I would have liked to have seen these each have their own section instead of interwoven like they were. Especially the other game accounts – those would have been better listed after the main book in an addendum or appendix. As a result, this book was at best three stars since it wasn’t a nice clean read. It did have good writing and as such, it doesn’t deserve an overall negative rating, but I believe it could have been organized better.
Pace of the book:
Because
of the jumping between the game, biographical information on the pitchers and
the frequent stories of other pitching duels in baseball history, I felt that
it was a slow read. Had these all been
placed in separate sections, I believe the flow of the book would have been
much better.
Do I recommend?
Baseball
fans who want to learn more about this game and its significance might want to
read this. Also those who want to learn
more about the two pitchers, although there are more complete biographies on
both of them available.
Ebook
(Nook)
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