Title/Author:
“Blue Mondays: The Long
Goodbye of the Montreal Expos” by Jeff Stuart
Tags:
Baseball, history, Expos
Publish date:
November 10, 2010
Length:
134 pages
Rating:
2 of 5 stars
(disappointing)
Review:
While I waited a long
time between purchasing this book and actually reading it, I should have waited
or better yet, I should have looked for a different book on reading about the
demise of the Montreal Expos. This fairly short book will not only take
the reader game-by-game into the last season the franchise was in Montreal
(2004), but also gives a brief history of the entire history of the team,
including some pictures of the old Jarry Park.
For having been
published for awhile, I found the book fraught with editing errors and a few
factual ones as well, such as stating that Josh Beckett was the 2002 World
Series MVP for the Florida Marlins (it was actually 2003, as the Marlins were
not in the 2002 World Series). Often
scores of games would be stated without a hyphen (“54” instead of “5-4”) and
whenever a monetary figure was stated, there was no dollar sign or the word “dollars”
in the statement, just a numeral like “two million.” These took away from the reading experience.
Also, the recap of the
2004 season itself was a disappointment to me.
I wanted to read about anecdotes, stories, how fans and players felt
about the team leaving Canada, and other such writing. Instead, it was mostly a recap of every game
played written in a manner that is like the one or two paragraph game recaps
printed in the morning newspaper. That
was certainly not the type of book I expected.
One positive, though,
was the story of the last game ever played in Montreal (the longest story in
the book) and also the recap of their final three games played in New
York. While those were the types of
chapters I was hoping to read, they came far too late and there were far too
few of them.
For all these reasons, I would recommend to readers that are looking for books on the Montreal Expos to search elsewhere.
Did I skim?
No
Pace of the book:
Fortunately, this one
was pretty quick. Even though I wasn’t
enjoying the book, I did want to read the entire book so I could give a
complete review – and hopefully find a golden nugget or two along the way. The last sections were okay and that is the
closest to good reading I found..
Do I recommend?
If readers want to learn
about the Montreal Expos, both the entire team history and their final years,
it is best to skip this book and look elsewhere
Book Format Read:
E-book (Nook)
Buying links:
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