The Perfect Season: Why 1998 Was Baseball's Greatest Year

by Tim McCarver, Danny Peary

Nineteen Ninety-Eight was the greatest season in baseball history. While Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in an epic duel for baseball's most coveted individual record -- Roger Maris's 61 home runs, the New York Yankees set new standards for team excellence and established themselves as one of the greatest clubs in the history of the game.
        
Tim McCarver broadcast the climax of each of these extraordinary achievements and is uniquely positioned as a former player, a commentator, and writer to put 1998 into its proper perspective. McCarver is baseball's best analyst and, as he showed with Tim McCarver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans, he is as eloquent and witty on the page as he is behind the microphone. In The Perfect Season, McCarver revels in the homer race and the Yankees but shows that the season contained so much more, ensuring it will stand out as the best there has been. Star players performing to the height of their powers broke records set by true legends of baseball, linking today's players with those who exist somewhere between myth and Ruth and Cobb; Gehrig and Mays. The Perfect Season describes the accomplishments of veterans like Juan Gonzalez, Roger Clemens, Ken Griffey, Jr., Mike Piazza, and Barry Bonds, and of the exceptional young players who hold the future of the game in their Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, and Kerry Wood. Tim McCarver also laments the passing of some friends and Richie Ashburn, Harry Caray, and Dan Quisenberry, and celebrates the careers of some stars who retired after the 1998 season.
        
The Perfect Season is a comprehensive account of 1998 and the perfect souvenir of baseball's greatest year. With it, fans can remember the season in which they got back into the habit of watching the game and reestablished baseball as America's Pastime.  

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 1999

Reviews

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's get this out before baseball and World Series ver. 2017 concludes.

I like sportscaster Tim McCarver.
I enjoy learning about new records, oddities and connections.
There was a lot of interesting stuff about the 1998 season. But it merits no more than 3 stars and that is being generous.

McCarver devotes space to a number of great and/or infamous players including: Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey, Jr. Randy Johnson, Cal Ripken, Jr., Mike Piazza, Paul Molitor, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, etc. He also recognizes the recently departed Richie Ashburn and Harry Carry. (I was at Carry's induction to the Hall of Fame).

Written in 1999, when baseball was trying to get back its mojo (and before the tsunami of disclosures on performance enhancing drugs), McCarver casts himself in the role of booster of MLB.
That he doesn't succeed completely is less the fault of his co-writer Danny Perry than the fact that, though neither is a great writer, there is little reason to believe that 1998 was "baseball's greatest year." It was a very interesting year....something that isn't diminished in hindsight. But, it has plenty of competition in terms of records, great players and team efforts.

If you want to see what I mean, pick up a book by Roger Angell or Roger Kahn. Read a column (or collection of them) by Jim Murray or Jerome Holzman. Or, read a one-off like October, 1964 by David Halberstam. Now that's what I call baseball writing!

[Skip · Rating 2 out of 5]

so this book is written just like the standard form of commentary that you find in televised professional sports...lots of superlatives that don't really mean anything...it talks about the 98 season and how it was much more than just the Sosa/McGuire homerun race...so I was expecting a lot of statistical analysis and insightful commentary, yet it was more just "______ is the best 2nd baseman of his era bullshit". Read this if you consider yourself a typical American sports fan.

[Scott Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Audiobook) (2.5 stars) This book was written in 1999, one year after 1998. At the time of publication, you could certainly forgive McCarver for thinking that 1998 could take its place as one of the greatest seasons of all time. I can recall watching McGuire hit home 62 on a line-drive shot in St. Louis in my college dorm room. I also remember the pain of the Astros not being able to get it done against the Padres, even with the Big Unit (if you didn't guess, I am a 'Stros fan). Also, the inevitability of the Yankees winning the World Series, what would be the 2nd of 4 they would claim in a 5 year period.

Unfortunately, I ended up reading this book in 2021. This book did not age well at ALL. That stupendous home run chase that seeming brought baseball back fully from the dead after the idiotic strike of 1994...yeah, that was a devil's bargain. After the revelations of the Mitchell Report, McGuire and Sosa are now all but confirmed to have used steroids to power themselves up and by extension, the home run balls. Many of the non-Yankee players McCarver mentions in this work did not go on to spectacular careers (Kerry Wood among those whose star shone bright in 1998, but by 2004, he was all but spent). Even some of the Yankees, like Darryl Strawberry, who were inspirational heroes that year...didn't quite end up that way. Clements and Bonds made noise that year, and continued to excel, but they were "juicing" as well. Throw in Canseco and Alex Rodriguez as well, and the Greatest Season might just have to change into the Greatest Con (and yes, that could trump the sign-stealing of the 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox).

McCarver was a top analyst in his prime, and he brings some engaging stories into this narrative. However, time has not helped this work, and unfortunately, a reader is going to need to take this work, even with the facts, with a juiced-up-homer from McGuire-sized grain of salt.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun to peak back 23 years and relive some of the great moments in this season. As a lifelong Cardinals fan, I like McCarver despite all his idiosyncrasies and baggage. That being said, much in this book did not age well and any book/analysis proclaiming something to be the best ever (or any analysis of recent events for that matter - looking at you all political tell-alls after a big election or term in office) would benefit from a little perspective and distance. Top of the critiques in this book is the praise given to the homerun race between McGwire and Sosa. As with Bonds and Clemens who each receive callout chapters in this book, those two sluggers are forever asterisked with steroids. Impossible to think about 1998 and that era more broadly without that key context.
Of course, this book is not meant to be a serious historical claim and was more looking to take advantage of that fun year in baseball to earn some extra bucks for a TV announcer. For the nostalgia alone, I enjoyed reading this book and reliving some of these fun moments from when I was a kid.

[Frank Murtaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

With a quarter-century of hindsight, we know the 1998 baseball season was far from perfect, the peak of what's now recognized as "the steroid era." It makes McCarver's celebrations of Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Mark McGwire awkward reading, if not uncomfortable. But I actually enjoyed the book. McCarver (a native Memphian) was like family, an uncle I never actually met, but one who knew me well. He wrote this book in the voice of a man who loves baseball, who marveled (well into middle age) at the feats of those who play a hard game with expertise. And the extraordinary champions of 1998 (the New York Yankees) remain free of any PED smudges in the history books. For that reason alone, this book has a place on the baseball shelf.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished reading this but didn’t finish the book. I loved reading things about some of my childhood baseball heroes (McGwire, Sosa, Randy Johnson, etc.), but the way he writes it is just not appealing. Since he knew a lot of the players personally, it kind of feels like hearing someone talk about their friend who is so cool but with leaving a lot unsaid and assumed which makes you just smile and nod. This is a solid piece of 90s baseball nostalgia but beyond that it’s very meh.

[Matt Layman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read but a lot of it doesn’t age very well. Many of the heroes celebrated in the book have come to be known for steroids or other transgressions. It is an interesting look back on baseball history in the late 90s but that’s about it. A pretty easy read; not bad if you’re a big fan of baseball.

[Joshschillim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very segmented without much flow. Overall, it was a good depiction of the 1998 baseball season, but finding a flow without repeating parts of the season would have been better

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors have taken 39 chapters to explain why 1998 was the perfect baseball season. Each chapter is dedicated to a player, manager, team, or event that made this a special season. Most of us just remember the Sosa/McGwire home run race but this book shows us the other outstanding events that were taking place during this year.

[Ronald · Rating 5 out of 5]

read SOMETIME in 2004