Sunday, March 17, 2019

Review of "The Four Home Runs Club"

Every now and then I will receive a book from an author or publisher from out of the blue.  That was the case with this book, as I didn't know there was a book about the 18 players who have hit four homers in a game.  Here is my review of that book, "The Four Home Runs Club"



Title/Author:
“The Four Home Runs Club: Sluggers Who Achieved Baseball’s Rarest Feat” by Steven K. Wagner

Tags:
Baseball, professional, history

Publish date:
June 28, 2018

Length:
224 pages

Rating: 
3 of 5 stars (okay)

Review:
Only 18 players in the history of Major League Baseball have been able to hit four home runs in a single game. These players have had various amounts of success in their careers. Some are known by people who are not baseball fans, such as Willie Mays and Lou Gehrig; while others may only be known by hard-core fans, such as Scooter Gennet and Pat Seery.  The stories of all eighteen of them are told in this book.

The book follows the same format for each man – a brief biography of his life and baseball career before the big game.  Then a description of each of the slugger’s at-bats during the game with four home runs, whether or not that resulted in one of the home runs, was next.  This would include the opposing pitcher and the game situation, i.e the home run extended his team’s lead.  Then the chapter would conclude by chronicling the player’s career following the historic game and his life after baseball.  The only exception to this format was that there are three players who are still active as of the date of publication (Gennet, Josh Hamilton and J.D. Martinez) and as a result, their chapters are slightly shorter.

Like any other collection of stories, some of them are fascinating more so than others, but for this collection, each one of them shared one thing in common – a historic game and offensive show that anyone who saw it, whether player, fan or the hitter himself, will remember. That is evident with the numerous quotes from other players, especially pitchers who gave up some of the historic home runs.  Those were the best parts of the stories – especially quotes from those pitchers whose pain faded with time and are looking back fondly at the show put on by those hitters.

The book doesn’t dig deep into the lives of any of the players and there are many sources of more complete information on many of them, especially stars like Mays, Gehrig and Mike Schmidt.  But if a reader wants to learn a little bit more about these historic games and hitters, this is a good starting point.

I wish to thank Rowman and Littlefield for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Format Read:
Hardcover

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