The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues

by Joseph Bosco

Looks at how minor league baseball teams are run, explains how players progress to the majors, and follows a group of minor leaguers during the 1988 season

Genres: Sports, Baseball

351 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1990

Reviews

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of the Peoria Chiefs, Single A minor league ball club affiliated with the Chicago Cubs, during their 1988 season. Most minor league stories follow the same basic arc of the season for the players – hope and understanding their new organization at the beginning, with divergent stories as time goes on and some players rise, some fall, some falter, but all (or most) learn. This was the wrong season and the wrong team for this kind of story. In this season, the team’s record was demolished early on. So for the second half of the season, roughly the last third of the book, we do have a team working their way back to a .500 record. So in effect, they have to be great for a half season to average out to a middling team. And there are ups and downs for the players along the way, and they are well documented. But the author chose instead to really focus on the organization and the coaches. Much of what is told is described through the eyes of the coaches, the “adults” on the team. Bosco travelled with the team for most of the season, and had access to literally everyone, but the most fleshed out person was the coach. There are the typical small market baseball stories – sneaking out of the hotel to meet waitresses, bus rides, news stories and rumors, flings with rich divorcees, crazy owners, tearjerking family stories, dealing with Spanish speaking players in the not-so-diverse Midwest, and more. If you are looking for baseball stories, they are here.

When you read a book about the minor leagues, especially one this old, it is easy to check and see how the players on the team fared. You spend a lot of time with them on these pages, you want to know how things turned out for them and if they reached their goals of playing in the bigs. This was one of the most disappointing things I have experienced because of a book – of the many prospects, and many “suspects” that played on this team, and of the high hopes expressed throughout, only one position player and two pitchers ever made it to the big leagues, and even then for not that long. I think most others topped out at AA. That is probably about the expected percentage for that kind of success in the minors, but it stings at the end of a story like this.

The writing, though, was difficult. Bosco will write a half a page to say it is raining. He uses the overly flowery language I’ve typically seen in the South, and that is where he is from. Reading this was an experience, but getting mad at an author is not what I like to have happen when I read. Four stars for the subject, two stars for the writing.

Peoria, the one in Illinois, plays in the Midwest league. There are few books I know of about this league. One other I’ve read, “Waterloo Diamonds”, is about the Waterloo, Iowa team. There’s an odd coincidence about the writers of these two books. These baseball books were both writers’ first books, as far as I can tell. And then both went on to some notoriety for writings elsewhere, Bosco for writing about the OJ Simpson trial and the author of "Waterloo Diamonds", Richard Panek, went on to win awards for his science writings. No more baseball books. Maybe the Midwest League just takes it out of you. I’m looking forward to reading the only other book I know about focusing on a Midwest League team, the 2013 “Class A” by Lucas Mann.

[Bill · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a snooze of a book. I can get past all the deep misunderstandings of baseball, after all when this book was written it was still the predominant thought that a batter who worked the count and took a lot of pitches wasn't a good hitter. What I can't get past is the almost impenetrable writing style of Bosco. Run on sentence after run on sentence, repeating the same phrases as nauseum, and writing in a way where everything is a cumulative sentence. Then there's the jargon and the inserting himself into the story and acting like that's normal. A truly abysmal book.

[Steve Kluger · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Not only was this baseball, it was professional baseball. While almost all of those who possess the talent to play this game of dreams for pay had played it—and would have continued to do so—for free at a level far past the point when most must give up bats, balls, and glove for shovel, computer, or order pad, and are therefore the subject of both envy and ridicule by those who were not so gifted or free of spirit, it is nonetheless the source by which they now pay the rent, the light bill, the orthodontist, and the grocer. It is a living, for however long it may last, and at whatever scale. From a million dollars a year with five thousand square feet of rock-and-adobe mansion in Scottsdale to $3,200 and a one-bedroom efficiency for four that most self-respecting hippies from the '60s would've turned up their noses at. For two and a half summers of the working poor, or twenty-two years of fortune and fame. They are, all of them, professional baseball players. It is their job. Rah-rah is for amateurs, football players, and salesmen."

'Nuff said. This book is a treasure.