The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series

by Tyler Kepner

From the New York Times bestselling author of A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches comes the ultimate history of the World Series—a vivid portrait of baseball at its finest and most intense, filled with humor, lore, analysis, and fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from 117 years of the Fall Classic.

The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K , was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday .

In seven scintillating chapters, Kepner delivers an indelible portrait of baseball’s signature event. He digs deep for essential tales dating back to the beginning in 1903, adding insights from Hall of Famers like Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Jim Palmer, Dennis Eckersley and many others who have thrived – and failed – when it mattered most.

Why do some players, like Madison Bumgarner, Derek Jeter and David Ortiz, crave the pressure? How do players handle a dream that comes up short? What’s it like to manage in the World Series, and what are the secrets of building a champion? Kepner celebrates unexpected heroes like Bill Wambsganss, who pulled off an unassisted triple play in 1920, probes the mysteries behind magic moments (Did Babe Ruth call his shot in 1932? How could Eckersley walk Mike Davis to get to Kirk Gibson in 1988?) and busts some long-time myths (the 1919 Reds were much better than the Black Sox, anyway).

The Grandest Stage is the ultimate history of the World Series, the perfect gift for all the fans who feel their hearts pounding in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Seven.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2022

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tyler Kepner, author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches and national baseball writer for the New York Times hits a home run with The Grandest Stage. Kepner's seven chapter book, referencing the seven possible games of the world series, is well researched and presented in an engaging way. His stories include moments often not remembered by baseball fans, as well as stories many fans already know about. For example he tells about the forgotten moments in world series history that led up to the moments that have been passed down through generations of baseball fans.

He also talks about the pressures of playing in the games that all players and fans dreamed of playing in as a kid. There is a chapter on managing in the world series, as well as what its like as a general manager to build a world series winning team. One of the more interesting chapters is dispelling the myths in world series lore, such as whether or not Babe Ruth really called his shot, or if the 1919 Chicago White Sox would've been able to beat the Cincinnati Reds if they hadn't been paid by gamblers to throw the series. My other favorite chapter was about the forgotten moments and players in world series history.

I think this book is for the new and long time baseball fan. This makes for perfect off season reading while we wait for February to come around and spring training to begin or in season if you just can't get enough of this great game. My appreciation to Doubleday, author Tyler Kepner, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

[Olive Fellows (abookolive)]

For baseball fans, “the most wonderful time of year” happens long before Christmas. It’s the end of October, when the nearly 120-year-old World Series, Major League Baseball’s championship showdown, takes place. Just in time for its return, Tyler Kepner, baseball columnist for The New York Times and author of “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches,” has penned a fresh take on the event, “The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series.” He tells fascinating stories of notable and overlooked moments that helped make this contest a North American institution.

Click here to keep reading my review in the Christian Science Monitor!

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as I thought I would. There is a lot of information that is rather enlightening but I couldn't seem to stay interested. The author does a fine job of covering the World Series from the beginning but not necessarily in order .which I would have preferred. Most of the events are known to the baseball fan but a few were rather unknown (or at least to me).

Don't get me wrong.............it is well worth reading. Maybe I was just having a bad day!!

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starting at the time young children dream of hitting a home run to win it all, the World Series is the ultimate destination for anyone involved in baseball. Since it started in 1903, it has a rich history filled with unique people, teams and moments – just like the game. Tyler Kepner, the national baseball writer for the New York Times, has captured the history of this championship series in a compelling book.

Kepner divides the book into seven chapters, representing the seven possible games in the World Series. Each chapter is filled with interesting stories about the particular topic. For example, he talks about moments that are forgotten because of one that occurred later that was considered even more important for that particular game or series. Take the 1960 World Series in which the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees when Bill Mazeroski ended game 7 with a home run. Kepner makes the case that Hal Smith’s home run in the 8th inning was just as important as it gave the Pirates the lead and without that, despite the fact the Yankees tied the game in the top of the 9th, Mazeroski’s home run doesn’t happen.

The book doesn’t just describe moments or games like that. There are plenty of interviews with players, managers, general managers. Tom Kelly, who guided the Minnesota Twins to two titles in five years; Theo Epstein, who was the GM for two teams who ended long droughts without a World Series titles, and (before his recent passing), former Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully. Scully’s story of how he and his wife celebrated the championship for the 1981 Dodgers with a bottle of champagne and potato chips in their hotel room was one of the more memorable passages from these interviews.

This is just a small sample of the type of material that baseball readers will encounter in this book. While it certainly cannot and does not have items about every World Series played, it does contain good material from the Series during every era and has something for every reader who enjoys the game, especially once that final best-of-seven series begins in October.

I wish to thank Doubleday Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Random thoughts about The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series:

- I cannot believe that I am giving a sports book (and a Baseball book at that!) only two stars. I love sports, and I love baseball, and I love books. So, what happened?

- What makes baseball books (and the sport) beautiful, are the stories. And Kepner, it turns out, is a terrible storyteller.

- The second chapter, in particular, is a disappointment. The premise of the chapter is that behind some of the most famous World Series moments are smaller moments that made the big one possible. What happened that allowed Kirk Gibson to come to the plate in game 1 in 1988? Was there a pitcher other than Mitch Williams that the Phillies could have used? This had the potential to be really, really interesting. Instead, Kepner falls flat, relating the events in a very news-like fashion that is just... boring.

- Rather than relating what I disliked in each chapter, let me just say that I think Kepner tries to cover too much ground and ends up sucking all the passion, romance, and life out of these stories. Baseball is a beautiful game and in the hands of a master storyteller - Joe Posnanski comes to mind - reading about it can be as emotional as watching it live. In fact, if you want a book about the beauty and majesty of baseball, I'd recommend Posnanski's The Baseball 100 instead of this.

[Rob Neyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a lot of thoughts, but upon finishing it seems the only thing missing is another few hundred pages, because I wasn't ready for this book to end.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a hot mess. I came very close to DNF-ing it. It is not at all what it claims to be. The only reason it gets three stars is because I did like some bits in the book.

Let's begin with the subtitle. It claims to be "a history of the world series." Regarding the word "history," I feel much like Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." In my opinion, this is most definitely not a "history," not the way I understand the word.

A "history" of the World Series would begin at the beginning and trace the World Series through its various incarnation to the present day. Kepner's book does not do that. Not even close. Just to make sure it wasn't just me, I read some other reviews of the book. Sure, there were those who loved it and gave it five stars. My favorite one, though, described it as "piles of stuff." And that's exactly how I saw it.

It is almost a random meandering of trivia and facts about the World Series. There is a lot of information in this book. But it is not presented in any kind of orderly fashion. Even within chapters (seven chapter, because there could be seven games in the WS), the information was pretty much random, almost as though the author were writing in "stream of consciousness" style.

Oh, and lest I forget, he almost lost me on the first page of the Introduction, when he said that the Boston "Pilgrims" won the first World Series. That's a mistake that a sports writer for the New York Times should never make. There is no official evidence that there was ever a team called the Pilgrims. Yes, they have been referred to as Pilgrims, but it was never the official name. In fact, the Boston American League team never had an official name until they were called Red Sox. Also, Kepner calls them Boston American in a later chapter, in reference to that same 1903 World Series. So, which is it, Tyler?

So what did I like about the book? Chapter 2 chronicled some lesser known facts about a select group of WS, things that contributed more to the outcome than what is best known about those particular series. And, in contrast to the rest of the chapters, they were actually in chronological order, not seemingly random thoughts.

Chapter 7 was mostly a bunch of various lists, including a list of "Ten Things We Still Haven't Seen" in World Series. For example, we have never seen someone thrown out at home plate to end a World Series. We haven't seen a position player pitching in relief in a World Series. We've seen that plenty in regular season, especially in a blow-out situation, but never in a WS. And, oddly enough, the Philadelphia Phillies have never played a Game 7.

There's also a list of slogans that various teams had inscribed in their WS rings, which was very interesting. From this I learned the origins of the "Do Damage" phrase that was being said among the Red Sox during the 2018 WS.

And the book concludes with this author's opinion of what are the ten greatest World Series of all time. And, while I do think the 1991 series (number 1 on his list) was epic, with the Twins winning a 0-0 tie in ten innings to end game 7, I still think that the 1975 Reds/Red Sox series was the best one ever. Game 6 was possibly the most epic World Series game ever played. But I'm biased, as a Red Sox fan. That is number 2 on Kepner's list.

In short, a very disappointing book, considering how excited I was to find it at the library, last week. If it hadn't billed itself as a "history," my reaction might be better, but probably not, because of the "piles of stuff" nature of the whole thing.

[Mark Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book. I felt like it was written for me.

A really well-organized and creatively thought out book. All the bases are covered (pun intended) - from stories about the biggest stars to the unlikely heroes.

You can tell Tyler's enthusiasm for it as you read it.

It's kind of like "Is This a Great Game or What?" (Tim Kurkjian's book) except that it's entirely centered around the World Series.

Highly recommend.

[John Yingling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the book, but I wish the author would have told more stories about the earlier decades of the World Series. Frankly, I have little interest in the history of the Series after 1980, perhaps because, with all the additional media exposure in these past few decades, I have seen too many highlights and read too much analysis of these games. Another reason is the monstrous amount of money that is out there for players and for teams. I prefer reading about players who had to have a second job in the off-season just to make ends meet and to provide for a future for themselves and their families.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

What really makes a book like this for me are the stories and facts I've never heard before:
- Game 3 of the 2018 World Series lasted longer than the entire 1939 World Series
- Curt Schilling in 2004 on the Yankees' Mystique and Aura: "Mystique and Aura are dancers in a nightclub." I never thought I'd enjoy a Curt Schilling quote so much.
- Kershaw's middle start of 2017 World Series 51 sliders & curveballs and Houston didn't swing and miss once (sign-stealing)
- The sprint to the mound that took decades (2020 Clayton Kershaw coming in from the bullpen); importance of routine to Kershaw
- Charlie Root, Jr. hit his wife with wiffle ball when she mimicked Babe Ruth calling his shot (of his Dad) in a family game
- Joe Black cueing Bobby Bonilla on what to expect from Jared Wright in 1997 World Series based on his own experience with Mickey Mantle in the 1952 World Series (backing off the plate to deal with a high, hard inside fastball)
- Bob Uecker telling Johnny Keane in the 1964 season that he'd steal bases after the Cardinals traded Ernie Broglio to get Lou Brock
- Kepner is very good at transitioning from one series or event to another based on similarities; he also effectively uses many different prisms to examine world series history
- Kepner mentions the Dr. Seuss names from the 1946 World Series: Harry "The Hat" Walker and Harry "The Cat" Brecheen
- There's a great segment on Bill Buckner and makes the point that physical mistakes are nothing to be sorry for; he also does justice to Buckner's magnificent career that's often overshadowed by Mookie Wilson's ground ball
- Fred Snodgrass was born before the invention of the pitcher's mound and died three days before Henry Aaron broke Ruth's all-time home run record
- Joe Oeschger was on the 1915 Phillies, but didn't pitch in the loss to the Red Sox...he threw out the first pitch in the 1983 World Series
- Paul and Dizzy Dean each had 2 CG wins to beat the Tigers in the 1934 WS

[Trace Fountain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book 5 stars because it was a good to understand really easily for me. This deserves the 5 stars I gave it because of how much the author goes into detail about almost every world series ever. The audience could be around 12 to 20 or it could go either way I feel that more adults would like this book than kids. Baseball fans would really enjoy this book because you learn facts not only about players but franchises and world series. This book was very entertaining so if you like baseball I would definitely recommend this book. The author did really well on stating what he is talking about, there were many different topics talked about and he made sure to clearly state each one. This is one of the interesting books and really gets your more into the book. The author does a really good job on being catchy and getting the readers attention.

[Kristine R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I thought it was going to be a history of the creation of the World Series. While there was a tiny bit of that, it was actually about the history of things that have happened over the years either during the World Series. Interesting read, with a bunch of stories centered around 7 themes (based on the max number of games played in a World Series).

[Ed Dorsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best baseball book I've read in a long time. Covers World Series from start to 2022. All kinds of interesting nuggets.

[Traveling Cloak · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Normally, in an eight-team playoff, you have a 12.5% chance of winning the World Series if all teams are equal. We had an 18 percent chance, and acquiring Aroldis Chapman would move us to 23%."

The above quote from Theo Epstein is one example of what makes this book so great. Kepner has managed to combine and encyclopedic knowledge of the World Series with a narrative that somehow manages to link more than a
centuries worth of quotes and anecdotes together into one cohesive storyline.

From the salad days to why Lamar Rhodes' bat had Willie Mays' spike marks on it, to outlining golden pitch scenarios, Kepner manages to expertly weave stories through time and space as only a veteran writer can.

Definite recommend for baseball fans.

[Dad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an audio book and it was fantastic. I listened to it as I went for my daily exercise and for the time I did, I wanted to keep exercising so I could hear more trivia, facts and stories about the greatest games in sport. One after another, I kept learning more and more about games I lived through,studied, or heard about from fans. One of the most enjoyable books I have ever listened to.

[Tyler Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kepner does a phenomenal job curating the content-rich history of the Fall Classic. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel from cover to cover.

[Alfonso Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good read with the exception of the author’s obvious love of the Yankees and his hatred of the Astros. Go Stros!!!!

[Matt DiBari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any collection of baseball stories is going to be at least pretty good.

This book is definitely better than pretty good, but maybe not as good as it could be. I like Kepner as a writer and TV personality, so I was really kind of looking forward to this one, and its...good? Really good at points, for sure, but not really for any sustained period.

The "seven chapter, seven topic, seven games" gimmick really prevents the book from achieving any flow or momentum. I kind of think you could even take every word he wrote in this book and rearrange them chronologically and you'd have a much better, more coherent book. Trying to bunch all these random moments into categories that are only similar in the broadest sense just doesn't work as well as Kepner hoped, and too many of the separate chapters are just kind of the same thing with different names. And chapter seven just kind of feels like the stuff that got cut out of earlier chapters and weird lists that feel like padding that you'd put in a book report to meet the word count requirement.

But again, any collection of baseball stories is gonna be fun, and this has a lot> of fun baseball stories, and its quick and pleasant enough that I would definitely recommend it for baseball fans.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

At its best, the book brought out the magic and wonder of the World Series.

After finishing the book, I re-watched the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and Mets. When Dave Henderson snatched a catch for the 2nd out in the bottom half of the inning, you could see the glee emanating from him as the Red Sox were just one out away from being World Series Champions. With the Red Sox having a 2-run lead, with one out to go and no one on base, everyone thought the game was as good as over (according to Baseball-Reference, the Mets Win Probability was 1%). The narratives were already written: Marty Barrett would be World Series MVP, Dave Henderson would have the game winning Home Run that Red Sox fans would remember forever, and Ray Knight would be a goat, thanks to a costly error in the 7th inning. As it turned out, Ray Knight would be World Series MVP thanks to a key hit that inning to keep the Mets alive, scoring the game-winning run moments later, and 3 hits the next day in Game 7 when the Mets won the series. And of course, Bill Buckner replaced Ray Knight as the goat. In fact, he would be the goat-iest goat of all-time.

At the beginning of any Series, no one knows what’s going to happen. What team will win and have a flag flying over their stadium forever? What team will have memories that will last a lifetime for many of their fans? Who will be the hero? Who will be the goat?

Not every World Series is exciting and memorable. But there is that chance, that you’ll see something incredible. You just might see Kirk Gibson hitting a game winning home run against the seemingly inevitable Oakland A’s powerhouse, off the seemingly unhittable Dennis Eckersley (my favorite side-bar to that story: Eck improbably walking the bad-hitter and infrequent-walker Mike Davis to set up Gibson for his moment).

The style of the book was to have a high quantity of stories, but not go in any depth for any particular story. It made it fast paced and never got boring. But the stories ran together in my mind and not much really stuck out as something I’ll remember a couple months from now. Also, too much of the book is quotes from players involved in memorable World Series plays, where they would give some sort of post-hoc explanation for why they succeeded. There were a lot of cliches. It felt repetitive at times.

The most intriguing part of the book for me were the stories about the goats, like Bill Buckner. There, it felt like the discussion was more than just superficial, and there were some genuine insights. Everyone dreams about being a World Series hero, but what would it be like to be a goat? To have your entire life seemingly guided towards this one moment, and to feel like you are prepared for it, but to fail?

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I'd give Kepner another try after finding myself slightly bewildered by his book on pitches. Full disclosure - I'm a big baseball fan, one of whose formative moments was as a 10-yr old watching my beloved Red Sox fall to the Big Red Machine in the epic world series of 1975. I had high hopes for this one, but ended up underwhelmed.

Strengths: Kepner has done a lot of research. A lot! He is able to recreate at-bats, base-running plays, etc. from every era of modern baseball (1903 to the present). It's impressive on many levels. He also regularly notes that he has had conversations (if not quite oral interviews) with a lot of ex-players, coaches, and so forth. So all of the material for a great book is here!

Weaknesses: I just don't think that Kepner is very good at organizing all of his material, and at providing a persuasive linear framework within which to analyze them. The chapter have loose frameworks (one is about managers who won or didn't win, another about guys who bombed in the series), but within that framework the anecdotes seem more stream of consciousness than planned. I often found myself wondering 'why is THIS anecdote here'? And then ... to my shock ... I found myself skimming over some parts of c hapter because it seemed like just another anecdote. What I mean is that the chapters lack any real framing - that is, analysis. Because of this, I am left at a loss about what I have learned. Is there a take-away? not really. Do a couple of the hundreds of stories stand out? I guess so, but they largely are ones I already knew about from my own fandom or from other books I've read (I just read Frank DeFord on Christy Matthewson and John McGraw, which made a far deeper impression than this one). The last 'chapter' is sort of emblematic of the whole, albeit in a more obvious way - it is a collection of random lists of stuff about the world series ("One-and-Done Hall of Famers", or "Three who played without playing", and, as the last word of the book 'The ten greatest world series ever'). This is bar-room or coffee-break fodder, not really the material for a book that you read all the way through. And, while the earlier chapters are not organized into specific lists with subtitles as is the last one, they might as well have been - in fact, it might have given them more coherence.

All in all, pretty disappointing. 2.5 stars for me rounded up to 3 because I love baseball.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

The good thing about having your team eliminated from postseason contention early on is that it gives you more time to read. And what more appropriate material than something about the Fall Classic?

Tyler Kepner, a baseball columnist for the New York Times, offers the latest look with THE GRANDEST STAGE: A History of the World Series. Much as in his previous book, K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, he tells his tales in gimmicky titled chapters, in this case aligning them into one for each game of the Series’s maximum seven.

Kepner’s opener looks at how players handle the pressures of competition of the world’s championship, followed by “sidebar stories to the greatest moments in World Series history”; unlikely heroes (my favorite); the responsibilities of managers; the role of team executives in putting their clubs together; and those unfortunate athletes who found themselves on “the other side of World Series glory” (or “goats” before this became an acronym for “greatest of all time”).

In the final chapter, which should be the most dramatic, Kepner winds up with what he calls “The Ultimate World Series Lists.” The lack of the usual chronology usually found in a history book makes this one a bit uneven as he jumps back and forth between eras and issues.

Since the most recent round of expansion, playoff rounds have been added as a way to generate more interest, since more teams mean a wider swath of fans staying tuned (but let’s face it, it’s a money grab; more fans in attendance plus more in TV income). It also means a lot more players I’ve never heard of. Once upon a time, the final face-off was ostensibly between the best teams in the American and National Leagues. Now, you can get hot (or cold) at a propitious moment. Case in point: the New York Mets won 101 regular season games but picked a poor time to falter, losing to a “lesser” opponent in the wild card round.

For an old-timer like me (i.e., anyone born after the last), the extra games are a blessing and a curse. The good: more games. The bad: more teams increase the possibility of undeserved clubs enjoying a run of luck and squeaking through. But as long as the World Series continues, there always will be new opportunities to break into the history books.

Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. I enjoyed his previous book, which artfully uses the the history-of-x-in-y-items format to explain changing notions of how to attack hitters and literally how to throw the ball. But this, which sounded like it might do the same for the World Series--one theme per inning--is instead one of those Tim Kurkjian-style books that mostly reflects the depth and quality of the reporter's contact list. If you read the whole book together, it makes no sense as an argument, since the point is to follow whatever anecdote a former player or manager is recounting at the moment and not to weigh it vs what someone else told you earlier. You should absolutely be arrogant (he ends the first chapter crediting Madison Bumgarner's dominant run to a self-confidence that he likens to Walter White's boasting about being the one who knocks), except also not (why didn't the late-80s A's win three straight World Series? Because Tony LaRussa neglected to strike enough fear into a team that thought it could just toss its bats on the field and win). You should ride your big-name starter in game 7 as deep as he can go (why didn't the Yankees win the 1960 series? Because their best pitcher, Whitey Ford, didn't start game 1 and thus pitched only twice), except when you should go to the bullpen or try an opener. Let your best hitter play the field, even if he's mostly DH'd all year, because he'll probably pull it off and get enough hits to make up for whatever he botched, except when you should have pulled him for defense.

My favorite chapter is the second, which points out untold aspects of famous stories--such as that the 1919 Reds absolutely should have been expected to win, whether or not their opponents were cheating. That bit also explores how frequently such accusations were leveled, mostly correctly, at the time, and how much former Reds manager Christy Mathewson had called out endemic player dishonesty even before 1919. But overall, I found this just a bunch of disconnected and frequently contradictory anecdotes.

Best anecdote, by far: Charlie Root's son's wife called her shot in a wiffle-ball game, so he plunked her.

[Julian Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series written by Tyler Kepner, New York Times Best Selling Author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. Tyler Kepner In The Grandest Stage Gives a Very Detailed review of the Seven Possible Games Of the World Series. This Seven Chapter Book includes Many Stories and moments That Very often are not remembered by most baseball fans. Aside from these Forgotten moments he tells Many stories about moments that are actually remembered. He also Tells Many forgotten smaller stories that lead up to bigger moments in baseball history which are passed down through Many generations of baseball fans.

In the book There is a Chapter where Tyler kepner talks all about the managing of the world series. In This Chapter He explains what its like for a General Manager to build a World Series Winning team. In another Chapter he explains and talks about the pressures of playing in the games that many baseball fans, players, and kids dream of playing in. In one of the More Interesting chapters Author Tyler kepner speaks about many of the myths held within The world of baseball, for EX. would the 1919 Chicago White Sox have been able to beat the Cincinnati Reds If Gamblers were not paid to throw the series, or Did babe ruth really call his own shot?
Last but not least in one of the better Chapters the Author talks And reminds people of all the forgotten players and moments in the History of baseball.

In my opinion, Being a baseball fan and being have played the sport, i Can say that this book Was a very Recommendable book. This book thoroughly went through the history of the world series in good detail. This book is more appointed to those longtime baseball fans who know the complete history of baseball, although many new baseball fans will find it enjoyable.
In the time that i have read this book it has made a perfect pastime while i wait for training and the new season to start.

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kepner previosly wrote a nice book on baseball pitching, with each chapter highlighting a different pitch. It was a thematic look at the topic. He tries something similar here, with seven chapters - each highlighting a different facet of the World Series experience. There are chapters on handling pressure, on managing a World Series, on building a World Series winner, on being the goat in a World Series, on unlikely heroes, on sidebar moments, and a final chapter on a book of lists.

And ..... it just doesn't really come together. It just reads like piles of stuff. Take the first chapter, on handling World Series pressure. You just get a bunch of stories of people handling - or not handling - the pressure in the book moment. Some fail in one occassion but then do great in another. You get lots of stories - but no real point. Each chapter reads like that. You just get piles of stuff, without any real sense of a greater purpose or perspective. There are some nice stories, sure - but also some I already knew about. Not terrible, but not really worth it. I shifted more to skim mode as I went along and didn't feel like I was missing much.

His book on pitches also featured piles of stories - but there each chapter felt like it had a point (like how screwballers seem to really not like their own pitch very much).

This is like if someone wanted to make dinner by assemling the ingrediants, and then - just didn't cook them - just put the raw ingrediants on a plate and called it a meal.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The World Series is arguably the most historic sporting event in American history (even if the Super Bowl has come to overshadow it much like how football has come to overshadow baseball). A straight-ahead, year-by-year linear history of the event would take forever, weigh a ton, and be fun nonetheless for diehard baseball fans. But Tyler Kepner, a veteran sportswriter, has a knack for finding different ways to tell the history of baseball, and he's at it again with "The Grandest Stage."

Chronicling well-known and obscure stories from the century of its existence, "The Grandest Stage" uses a non-linear technique to convey the ups and downs of baseball's annual "best of the best showdown." Writing about events as disparate as Bill Buckner's missed ground ball to the only perfect game in World Series history, Kepner shows (as he did in his previous book, "K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches") that he is a master storyteller. There's plenty on every page to entice baseball fans with some new snippet of information that they might not have been aware of previously, or had written off as a given when evidence shows that conventional wisdom might be wrong (for example, Kepner makes the case that the 1919 "Black Sox" might've lost to the Reds anyway even if they hadn't been cheating, as Cincinnati had a great team that year). So many of the anecdotes in here are new to me, but some are familiar but cast in a new light. This is an engaging, entertaining look at America's past-time.

[Stuart]

I got through 127 pages and I am giving up. I love baseball, but this book's format and focus on statistics is not for me.

I'm not rating it, because I am choosing not to finish it based purely on subjectivity. This seems to be a good book for someone interested in putting the time in; in fact, I am reading my father's copy, which he handed off to me because he enjoyed it so much.

But my appreciation of baseball is not as enmeshed in the history books, in the names and numbers. I am more of a sentimentalist about the concept of the game itself than a curator of all its previous iterations. This book is structured into nine themed chapters, each one highlighting World Series performances of a certain type, rather than being a linear telling. It jumps around a lot, and is packed to the brim with names of players I had never heard of, but it seems to expect the reader to know or at least be able to relate to something they know. I simply was a bit at sea, and would not recommend this to someone who did not already have a decent knowledge of baseball history.

Kepner clearly loves his subject matter; at one point he mentions offhand making up a dice game based on the baseball encyclopedia he had when he was 13 or 14, in an attempt to recreate the statistical matchups he found in the book. He's a complete baseball nerd, and it shows, and that is great! But for me, at least, wading through the aspects of the game he so enjoys is not how I want to spend my time.

[Brant Entrekin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot, but I have to agree with some of the criticisms that others have mentioned. The book is not exactly a “history” of the World Series in the sense that it is not an account of how the World Series came to be nor a chronological account of how the World Series changed over the years and some of the major events along the way. Rather, the book is divided into several different “topics,” which are really just frames for the author to provide some interesting stories, tidbits, trivia, and quotations around some of the most important/interesting games and moments in the history of the World Series. As a newer fan to the game (especially to the history of the sport), it was nice to read more detail about some of the moments I’ve heard of in passing or have seen clips of on social media. I can tell, however, that anyone with a bit more knowledge of the history of the game won’t find much here that they didn’t already know. They also probably won’t be very entertained either, considering that the delivery comes off more like someone rattling off a stats sheet or an encyclopedia article than a fully dressed up narrative of these big moments. For me, it was an entertaining and educational romp through some important moments in the history of the game, but I don’t think the book offers much to anyone besides a rookie at the history of baseball.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

For baseball fans, October is a special month. The World Series, played in all but two Octobers starting in 1903, feels special no matter how much changes about the game or society. The Fall Classic serves as the game's ultimate showcase and an occasion for debates about its great players and teams. It is for these fans, the ones who compare Babe Ruth to Reggie Jackson, Don Larsen to Sandy Koufax, or the 1927 Yankees to the '98 Bronx Bombers, that Kepner wrote this book. Rather than a direct chronological history, he chose a thematic approach. This allows him to consider the concept of clutchness and the players who exhibited it. He also looks at unexpected heroes, managing in the Series, building a winning team and how the less successful handled their losses. Since a baseball book must have a list to stir up debate, Kepner offers one of the greatest players never to play in a Series. He loads the book with the kind of behind-the-scenes anecdotes that make it a delight for the baseball fan (for instance, Vin Scully's celebratory meal after the Dodgers defeated the Yankees in New York in 1981). As I said, this book's natural audience will be fans of the game; others may find these stories a bit uninteresting. For those of us who love the (one-time) National Pastime, this book is a great read.

[Josh Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the World Series in seven chapters (one for each game). Told differently than any other chronological history.

The Good: The author breaks the series' down to individual stories about great individual Series games , like the Reggie Jackson three homer game in '77, Game seven in 1991 (Jack Morris 10 shutout innings) and 2011 game six (the Josh Hamilton/David Freese game). World Series one hit wonders, questionable managerial decisions that worked and some that didn't and players whose names were defined by a simple error (Fred Merkle, Bill Buckner, Johnny Pesky) he also lists two all-time World Series teams, one just Yankees and one with all the other teams.

The Bad: This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, but, this writer covers the Yankees full time, and he does lean a little Yankee heavy. Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are mentioned more than any other player in this book, which makes sense because of the Yankees number of rings, but, he could have mentioned other teams. That's a small complaint from a Red Sox fan though....

There is no such thing as too many books about baseball. I have read over 100 with so many more to go.

A-

A great read for any World Series history fan.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there’s a sport that lends itself perfectly to narrative writing, it’s baseball. It also tends to attract some of the best narrative nonfiction writers to muse on it as a subject. Such is the case with Tyler Kepner, who wrote the excellent K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. He returns here with The Grandest Stage, a dynamic narrative history of the World Series.

Baseball and its disciples love to tell stories about the good old days, and at times that has made for some dry and subject-indulgent content on the topic.

What Kepner does here is inject a freshness to baseball history, polishing up the sport’s best-loved moments to a shine and supplementing them with lesser-known World Series lore.

I also really loved the structure of this book, the balance of first-person accounts to narration, and the tone, which achieves the symbiosis of nostalgia and subtle humor that defines baseball.

In all, a delight to read and an exceptional companion to the baseball season or to tide the reader over during the seemingly interminable offseason.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*