Review of "The Texas Rangers and Me"

Keeping up with my personal policy of reading a book relevant to the sporting event I am attending, I read this book while on a bus trip to Yankee Stadium. I gave myself brownie points for not only reading a baseball book, but the subject was one of the teams I was seeing that night, the Texas Rangers.  I won't say the Rangers won that game because I enjoyed the book - but if one wants to believe so, go ahead!  Here is my review. 

Title/Author:

“The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer’s Thirty-Two Years in Arlington” by T. R. Sullivan

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: 

If a reader wants to get the inside scoop for their favorite baseball team, the best source of information would be one of the beat writers who cover the team regularly.  T.R. Sullivan was one of those writers for the Texas Rangers and his career covering the team is a good collection of his time performing that task.

Sullivan’s career covered a lot of ground for the history of the team, through the good times and the bad ones.  Players he highlights in the book could make up a Who’s Who of Texas Rangers history.  There is great information on stars who had great seasons with the Rangers.  These include Nolan Ryan, Michael Young, Adrian Beltre, Josh Hamilton and Alex Rodriguez.  Not only are their exploits on the field covered, but Sullivan also shares personal stories about interactions he had with them and for some, such as Rodriguez, how they ended up becoming Rangers.

The stories are not limited to the players. Sullivan also shares anecdotes on managers and front office leaders as well. The best of the managers during Sullivan’s time covering the team, Ron Washington, gets a great write up.  For front office staff, that honor would go to Jon Daniels.  It probably is no coincidence that these two individuals got this amount of text in the book as they were the field manager and general manager respectively when the Rangers won back-to-back American League pennants in 2010 and 2011.  Sullivan retired after the 2020 World Series (played in Arlington even though the teams were the Dodgers and the Rays) so he did not cover the first championship for Texas in 2023, but he did include his observations on that team as well.

Through these personal stories, Sullivan also takes the reader through the Rangers’ seasons, both good and bad.  He starts with an event where the Rangers were not playing – the 1989 World Series between the Athletics and Giants and the earthquake in San Francisco that interrupted it for ten days.  From there, he works for a Dallas-Fort Worth newspaper covering the Rangers and occasionally will give the reader a peak of life as a beat reporter.

Because of all these interconnected stories about the people and the team, there is repetition of many events in Rangers history.  From that, it appears that Sullivan wrote each chapter without looking back to see if an event had already been addressed.  That is the only true flaw I found in this book and if that’s the worst thing one can find, it’s truly a book worth a reader’s time.  Even if that reader is not a Rangers fan, it’s still fun to read about this team’s personalities and history.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

Link: The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer's Thirty-Two Years in Arlington: Sullivan, T.R.: 9781496246806: Amazon.com: Books

Review of “My Home Team”

 I was interested in this book mainly because of the author and recognition of the name - but it turned out to be something more powerful. Here is my review of “My Home Team.”

Title/Author:

“My Home Team: A Sportswriter’s Life and the Redemptive Power of Small-Town Girls’ Basketball” by Dave Kindred

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: 

Dave Kindred was a well-known and respected sportswriter in the late 20th century with his work in Washington and Atlanta being his most read articles and columns. When he wanted to stop writing and spend more time with his beloved wife Cheryl in their home state of Illinois, that plan was waylaid- sort of. 

That is the main topic of this book - Kindred’s writing about the Morton Potters, a girl’s basketball team that was very successful and often reached the Final Four of their state championship. Kindred was asked to do so to keep the twin’s fans updated - and he would be paid in Milk Duds. This “assignment” turned into a great match as the Kindreds became as much a part of Potters basketball as the players, coaches and parents. 

After the first section of the book that is a recap of Dave Kindred’s writing career - Act I - the story of the Potters and the Kindreds relationship really takes off. This section - Act II - is a basketball junkie’s dream as Kindred writes about many of the Potters games in great detail. This part of the book is far into the minutiae of the games, which felt like it was a little too much. This is true even for a reader like me, who normally loves reading this level of detail on the game. Here is it was good - almost too good. 

Where the book shines, and will tug at the heart of even the most hardened reader, is Dave’s passages about his love for wife Cheryl. It took a tragic event for this to really stand out - Cheryl suffering a debilitating stroke. During this time, which included the worst of the COVID pandemic, Dave did his best work on this book. His devotion to his wife during his visits when Cheryl had good and bad days are clearly evident here. When Cheryl finally passed away, the love expressed by both Dave Kindred and the girls basketball team the Kindreds adopted was quite touching. 

I admit to have been ready to mark this as a DNF early in Act II, but I am glad I stuck with it as it’s a book that is very touching and a different typ of love story, heavy on the basketball.

I wish to thank Public Affairs for providing a review copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own. 

Link:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BRJ633MM/ref=x_gr_bb_kindle?caller=Goodreads&tag=x_gr_bb_kindle-20 

Review of "No Place I Would Rather Be"

Followers of this blog know that one of my favorite authors is Roger Angell.  When I saw this book in the University of Nebraska Press catalog, I was very excited to read it and it is just as good as I had hoped.  Here is my review of "No Place I Would Rather Be"

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Title/Author:

“No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing” by Joe Bonomo

 

Tags:

Baseball, biography, writing

 

Publish date:

May 1, 2019

Length:

232 pages

Rating: 

5 of 5 stars (outstanding)

Review:

One of the most acclaimed writers of baseball literature and essays is Roger Angell, who had a long writing career with the magazine The New Yorker.  When he began to write about baseball for the magazine, it launched a career filled with personal satisfaction, much praise and a litany of baseball writing for readers to devour. Angell’s career and life are portrayed in this excellent book by Joe Bonomo.

 

From the beginning, Bonomo emphasizes that this is NOT a biography. This is correct – while the book starts with a description of Angell’s childhood, early adult life and how he got his job at the magazine, the book is more of a sharing of Angell’s work and his thoughts about the game and his career.

 

Bonomo does a thorough job of covering all the major topics in baseball about which Angell wrote. Readers of this book will learn (if they doesn’t already know) about Angell’s love for both the Boston Red Sox AND the New York Mets.  It makes sense – the Red Sox because he grew up in New England and the Mets as he wrote about them since the franchise began in 1962. 

 

They will also see that Angell may have to adapt to some of the changes that the sport has undergone but he still holds the same opinions today, at age 99, that he did in his youth.  These cover a wide range of topics from televised games to expansion teams to expanded playoffs. However, just as Angell always does with his essays, Bonomo makes sure that the reader understands that at the heart of if all, baseball is still described as the best game in a manner only Angell can communicate.

 

Whether or not one has read any of Angell’s work, this book is one that every baseball fan will want to pick up to learn more about this man who brings to life in words the feelings and memories that fans of the game cherish forever.

 

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

 

Book Format Read:
Hardcover

Buying Links:

https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496213259/

 

https://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Would-Rather-Be/dp/1496213254/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=