Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball's Minor Leagues

by David Lamb

An inside study of minor league baseball provides a portrait of the small cities and towns that house the teams and the colorful people--players, owners, coaches, and fans--who contribute to the baseball legend

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Travel

283 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

David Lamb's work has appeared in numbers publications, from National Geographic to Sports Illustrated. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, an Alicia Patterson Fellow and a wrier-in-residence at the University of Southern California. Lamb is the author of six books on subjects as diverse as Africa and minor league baseball. His most recent book is "Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns". He is a member of the Maine Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should make one thing clear before anyone reads this review: I am an unconditional, unabashed and unrepentant baseball fan. When I lived in New York, I used to go to about half the home games per year for each local club. (To root for the Yankees and against the Mets, to be clear – no divided allegiance here!) As a kid, I used to fall asleep with the radio under my pillow, which resulted in a lot of dead 9-volt batteries, and hid the radio in my desk at World Series time; there are some who won’t understand this but others who will know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. I was semi-divorced from live baseball when I lived in San Francisco because I had no interest in the local teams so attending the games was more diversion than passion. (Added to that, the Giants played in Candlestick Park which was in a bad neighborhood and a pain to travel to, but Oakland Coliseum was not only a bigger pain, but it was easily the worst stadium in baseball and the transportation system closed at 10 PM, ruling out night games. Finally, thanks to a new telephone with an internet connection, I was recently reunited with my favorite sport. My wife didn’t understand at first, seeing me checking scores and play-by-play when I was sitting in bed reading (“ok, after this chapter, I’ll check… but wait, here’s a page break…”) or eating dinner. I accidentally woke her when I was following Domingo German’s perfect game in 2024 but how could I make her understand? I haven’t attended a game in person in more than 30 years and only watched one but my love continues. I’m a baseball junkie.

Which brings me to this book, which documents a war correspondent who takes a one-year sabbatical traveling around the country watching and getting to know minor league baseball teams. Although I’ve been to a lot of minor league hockey games, and even games in leagues that no longer exist, I’ve never been to a minor league baseball game. For those who don’t understand the difference, when you watch minor-league or university sports, these are mostly athletes who are paid little (minor leagues) or nothing (university) and have almost no possibility to cash in in any success but play for the love of the game as well as that glimmer of hope that they make it big one day. They play HARD, something slightly different from many professional sports where some players have guaranteed multi-year contracts where they’ll earn millions of dollars every year, even if their skills diminish to the point they’re no longer wanted, or they’re injured, and never play again. (One player recently signed a 15-year contract for $760 million.) This book was written in 1989 and foresaw this possibly happening. It also criticized the lack of racial integration and minority representation in managerial and front-office positions, something which persists to this day. The truth is that it’s a business based largely on contacts so ex-players or executives tend to be hired by other ex-players or executives who already know them, a tough barrier to crack, but it’s starting to happen more. However, on another note, the author asked one white fan why there were hardly any blacks at the game even though there was a significant black population and the answer was so blatantly racist that it spoke for itself; nevertheless, I’d have liked the writer to ask the opinion of some of the black players on this.

Another point in the book is that it’s one of the few businesses where the owner doesn’t control “stock” in that almost all minor league teams are affiliated with a major-league team which supplies them with players or can deprive them of players if the major-league team need reinforcements. (For a good look at how this works, there’s the film “Bull Durham”, based on a real North Carolina team, the Durham Bulls.) Players are moved around constantly as they are moves up or down from Rookie, A, AA and AA teams, or their contracts are sold to another club. This places a great strain on the families, particularly the wives, as they have to resettle in another place on low salaries. A bit like the military but then again one base doesn’t trade a lieutenant, two colonels and a sergeant for three corporals and a two-star general to be named later! Plus, you can make a career of the military and draw a generous pension while minor-league baseball comes with no such guarantees.

What this book especially captures is that feeling her you enter from below the stands in the stadium and see the field before you, green and waiting for a story to unfold, something magical and unpredictable because any team can beat any other team on any given day, and there’s no clock so the game is never truly over until all outs have been recorded. There’s no such thing as a safe lead or quantity of runs; there’s always time for a team to come back. Despite its faults, that’s what this book captures, the timeless magic of a game that’s remained mostly unchanged for over 100 years.

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read a lot of on the road looking for that elusive slice of Americana books lately, but Lamb's memoir pinpoints this perfectly. This book is half travelogue and half Boys of Summer. I just now noticed that the book description on this site says the same so I guess I am on to something. Small town baseball as a focal point that brings a community together is America. We see the story play out similarly in communities as diverse as Elmira, Durham, El Paso, and Stockton, California. Twenty plus years after publication none of these towns is close to having a major league team, but the minors are still thriving there, giving these communities a sense of both oneness and civic pride.
Meanwhile, Lamb also weaves in his reunions of sorts with his childhood heroes, the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. All are still a part of the game in some capacity as none are willing to give up that part of themselves. So as Lamb moves on from his stolen season of adulthood back to reality, dreams fade, but baseball moves on to the rhythm of the seasons, only a few months from another summer of boyish dreams played out by men.

[M. Apple · Rating 3 out of 5]

The descriptions of the author's trip wander deliberately into nostalgia as we are given a modern day "On the Road" version of a season in the minor leagues. The interviews are open, honest, and insightful if occasionally crude. The overall sense is that of a baby boomer journalist midlife crisis diary -- hence the "lost season" of the title refers not to the minor league baseball season but to the "adult year" of work life lost. But even that implies that professional players are still not adults; they are innocent children playing games and avoiding the harsh reality that almost none of them will join the majors. The author repeatedly compares the childish minor leaguers and spoiled major leaguers to the aged stars of yesterday: Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews, and Chuck Tanner, who he knows personally, having been fortunate enough to be a "kid reporter" for the Braves in the 1950s. The then-current MLB stars are ridiculed as being spoiled millionaires, and those who work in the minors are held up as working class heroes.

There is a certain charm to the details of the trip through (mostly) rural America. But it is a false nostalgia. Baseball was not originally a rural sport. It came from the cities of the East. This book is perhaps exemplary of the wave of baseball's returning popularity in the 1980s as the boomers hit middle age and found a deep unanswered longing for pre-Vietnam US culture. But this gives a one-sided story of the past of the author's memory, populated by hard-drinking honest white men.

The book dates poorly...a rising star in the Brewers system, Greg Vaughn, has been retired for over a decade already...and there are many sections that I felt tempted to skip entirely. Endless descriptions and complaints about the RV and past experiences in Vietnam and Lebanon quite frankly had nothing to add to what ought to have been the focus of the narrative, the ballplayers. But that's the nature, and danger, of travelogues. Only a day or two in each place, only a player or manager or two and suddenly we are given an opinion about everybody in the system. This book is filled with plenty of characters and material for a writer, but little deep substance and comes across as a gripe against the youth of the 90s by my father's generation.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book, which was written in the late 1980s. In some ways it's prescient about the changes in baseball and society that were happening at the time, and it's timed to capture both the past (good and bad) and the emerging future (good and bad as well). On the other hand, a lot of it had been said in many other books already, and some of the observations are wrong, and others have not stood the test of time at all.

How much you like this book probably depends on how much you know about baseball -- the less, the better -- how much you like road trip stories, and whether you can overlook a deep undercurrent of racism on the part of the author. Perhaps it's unfair to call the author's commentary racist, given that I'm writing during a more woke era, but I don't think so. I think the book exemplifies exactly the "soft" racism that has plagued this country and is unacknowledged by wealthy White men who have benefited from it -- i.e., the author. And therefore an accounting of this book has to take a look at that.

But before that analysis, here's a brief overview. David Lamb, a veteran reporter, has a bit of a midlife crisis in the late 1980s. His wife, who must have been the most understanding woman in the world, said he could take an unpaid leave of absence from the "Los Angeles Times" newspaper, buy a used RV, and spend the summer of 1989 driving around the country to watch minor league baseball games and speak with players, coaches, owners, and fans. It would be his Kerouc-like exploration of America at a pivotal inflection point by a man who could nostalgically remember his youth in the 1950s, his dangerous life in the 1960s-70s as a foreign war correspondent, and his decision to somewhat settle down with his wife into more conventional reporting in the 1980s. In other words, his life mirrored the country's, in a very general sense.

So, David Lamb takes us on a journey through the minors. He's got a little bit of insider cred in a fascinating way. As a teen, he lived in Boston, and he was crushed when his hometown team, the Braves, moved to Milwaukee in 1953. He followed them so devoutly, and he was already a school journalist and regular writer of letters to famous people, so he wrote to the Milwaukee Braves sports page editor and offered to do a series on how a kid in Boston felt as a now-distant observer of the team. The sports editor said yes, and Lamb wrote a column during the season. Near the end of the year, the team (or was it the newspaper?) flew him out to visit with the team and write a couple more pieces. So, he actually met his heroes, who first treated him with the distance that all outsiders deserve, and then accepted him when Eddie Mathews, one of their stars, vouched for him.

With that episode in his youth, Lamb became permanently hooked on baseball nostalgia, especially as the Braves were one of the best teams in the majors during his teenage years.

While the Braves had long since moved to Atlanta and retained the name, and the Milwaukee Brewers had arisen to take their place, Lamb used that old Milwaukee Braves affiliation as the keystone for his trip. He visited numerous Brewers minor league affiliates, though also other teams that were conveniently along the route. He also visited several of his Braves heroes: Mathews, Warren Spahn, and Johnny Logan. They each had their baseball stories to tell, and their pleasant afterlife -- with Spahn earning good money as a celebrity, Logan being a tongue-tied salesman, failed sheriff candidate, and then minor league broadcaster. Mathews drank too much, with Lamb retailing an evening they spent together than ended with Mathews driving over a highway median; this is the 1980s, so the near-death moment is played mostly for laughs.

Each of the ballparks and (mostly) small towns where minor league baseball is played is lovingly described by Lamb. He's really good at describing the quirky layouts, outfield signage, the local fans who come to dozens of games a year because it's the only thing of significance that happens each year in their communities. And Lamb obviously loves that part of America.

At the same time, as a war-hardened reporter, he's well aware that baseball is just a game, and that the men who do it are delaying their adolescence by years (minor league players) or decades (coaches and managers). He reminds us of how rarely the players talked about anything other than baseball or "families," which I assume is a euphemism for women of any type. Few of the players were married, and only some had girlfriends who could afford to stay with them during the minor league season, given the paltry income the players received.

The book does a workman-like job -- nothing that hasn't been done before -- of explaining how hard it is to move up from the minors to the majors, the astounding skill sets of players even at Double A, the anxieties about reaching the next level after having been the star of teams since the age of 6. There's a lot about long bus rides, inadequate food, the limbo of living this strange life for a few months in an unfamiliar city. He gets in a little information about how coaches try to help players improve and get to that next level, even as the coaches know that the player just doesn't have enough skills to ever get to the majors. And Lamb finds a couple of twinkles of the jealousy that is inevitable when a highly-paid up-and-comer joins a team of guys who've been toiling in the minors for years. For anyone who hasn't read about the minors, this book is a good primer. It even has some of the history of the minors, from Branch Rickey's development of coordinated approaches under major league management, to the decades in which the Pacific Coast League was almost a major league equivalent in which a player could have a happy and lucrative career without needing to move east of the Mississippi.

But ... there are flaws in this book. For one, Lamb gets some baseball things wrong. This is inexcusable, given the information available to him in print in 1989 and through his contacts during his months on the road. For example, he criticizes major league teams for spending millions on guaranteed contracts "for guys who only hit .264 last season," as if the teams could have predicted what the guys would hit. More importantly, the guys he lists were not paid millions because of their batting averages. On the list were Jim Rice and Mike Schmidt, power hitters who were paid for homers, and Ozzie Smith, the greatest fielding shortstop of his era, and perhaps in baseball history. To complain because their batting averages were average shows a total misunderstanding of what matters in baseball.

As another example, Lamb repeatedly compares the charming Brewers of the 1980s with the soul-less, corporate Atlanta Braves. Those Brewers knew how to do everything right, brought up their players through the system, and were heirs to a great tradition of in a baseball-loving town. And Lamb had no interest in those Atlanta guys, playing in an Astroturf field in a parking lot. But those Braves a year later (1991) began a run of dominance that stretched through the 2005 season in which they made the playoffs almost every year and, with a little luck, would have had more than the single World Series win. A more savvy baseball writer would have seen and heard about what was going on in Atlanta's minor league system, where Ron Gant, David Justice, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and others had been tearing up the minors during Lamb's tour of duty.

Let's stick with David Justice for a moment. Lamb does run into him, and he's not impressed. He's an aloof guy who was bored with Lamb's questions to him (though Lamb credits him with at least being courteous enough to let Lamb ask). Justice is portrayed as arrogant not having the love of the game of the guys of Lamb's youth. Oh, and by the way, Justice is Black, and all the guys who Lamb reveres are White. But Justice went on to an All-Star career, unlike the hustling White guys who hang out with Lamb for a longer time.

Am I exaggerating? I don't think so. Henry Aaron, an all-time great, is described by Lamb as so lazy in his job as minor league overseer for the Braves that he's AWOL most of the time. Lamb makes this point twice, once claiming it's because Aaron said he wasn't being paid enough to work harder. Hmm, maybe, just maybe, he was being underpaid because he was Black. Or maybe he didn't say it, since this was hearsay related by Lamb. Or maybe Aaron knew what he was doing, given that the Braves rose to 15 years of prominence under his watch.

This kind of "soft" racism continues. In a discussion about the complexity of baseball signals, Lamb pivots to talk about a Black first baseman in the majors who allegedly (more hearsay) said that he couldn't keep track of the signals, and he just wanted "a wink" when he was supposed to try to steal. But the White guys seems to understand the signals.

And when an aging White batting coach says that the Black players don't listen to him, that they can't learn or don't seem to want to learn how to improve, Lamb doesn't stop to ask if maybe the problem is the 70-year-old White guy.

Or, here's one more. In a league in the Rocky Mountains, the northernmost team is in Medicine Hat in Canada. It's a Toronto Blue Jays affiliate. Lamb jokes that the team is the worst in the minors -- and you know why -- "all of its players" are from Mexico and Latin America, and they can't adjust to the cold temperatures or playing games under lights for the first time. But guess what? Those pathetic Latin American players were the core of a team that had won at least 89 games for 6 of the prior 7 seasons at the time, and they would lead the team to two World Series Championships in a couple of years. Had Lamb bothered to visit the team in Medicine Hat or even to write down the names of its players, he might have mentioned that George Bell, one of the better hitters in the league at that time, came through Medicine Hat. Or Tony Fernandez. Or others on the Blue Jays major league roster. The point is this was a talented team of extremely young kids -- younger than any other team in the league -- and they were learning how to win. Again, a savvier writer with more of an open mind might have figured that out.

Some of the racism is worse. I can't repeat what a graduate student who was studying baseball fan attendance in the South said to Lamb about why the Louisville team doesn't draw Black fans. Lamb retails the statement without comment -- I'm guessing in this case to show that he disagrees with the statement and that its hideousness stands on its own. This is why I call Lamb's book full of "soft" racism. Lamb clearly doesn't think he's a racist. In fact, he'd argue that he's as sensitive as a guy could be. He lived overseas, he wrote about deeply oppressed people (people literally facing war and genocide), and so on.

But actually, he's so deeply imbued in his own privilege that he doesn't see it. Here's an example. At age 18 or 19, he and a friend hitchhiked across the country for a few months. This was the late 1950s. They had a great time, despite lots of hunger, nights sleeping in the open, a menial jobs to earn a meal. Lamb says with wonder that they could do this and always find someone who would give them a meal, a chance, a break. When they popped into Milwaukee on their way home, he called up old contacts from his Braves reporting days and got several nights of hot meals and free tickets to the games. And then, a plane flight home on the jet owned by the Braves owner, who still lived primarily in Boston. Gee, what a wonderful experience, and how could anyone be so lucky to do this, he wonders? Well, it would happen only if you're White. And did the fact that Lamb was a prep-school kid, son of wealthy Boston parents mean that he, perhaps, had a backup in case things went terribly wrong that a poor Black kid doesn't have? Lamb doesn't think about that either.

I could go on and on. But here's one more. He references the breakdown of families in inner cities as the collapse of civilization, and that baseball might be the only part of the culture that survives -- because, wait for this, it represents the true strength of our country, the Midwest farm and small town. Anyone who's paid attention during the Trump years knows that there's no part of the country worse for inequality for minorities of any type, worse for healthcare, more prone to ignorance about basic science, and so on. Indiana, Ohio, Montana, North Dakota -- these are our problem states, the ones that those of us on the coasts have to prop up. And those states are overwhelmingly White, except for the handful of immigrants they accept to do jobs they don't want to do.

I should add that Lamb's tin ear and incorrect information includes White players as well. In a chapter about Steve Dalkowski, the reputed fastest pitcher in baseball history, Lamb spells the player's name wrong, repeats as fact anecdotes that are legend, and entirely misses a wonderful essay that had been written before his book in which Bill James, baseball historian and statistics innovator, speculated that Dalkowski suffered from serious, untreated mental illness as a young man. The one year he had a manager who gave him proper structure (Earl Weaver), he prospered. The point is that Dalkowski shouldn't just be remembered for being a wild pitcher and a wild man, a drunk who bottomed out, but also a man who was let down by a culture and a system that ignored his obvious needs. But Lamb doesn't go there -- he goes for the easy lesson about a wasted career.

Sorry for this long rant at the end of the article, but parts of this book really leave a sour taste. I'd be interested in reaching out to Lamb to find out if he regrets some of the characterizations in his book, if he realizes they were blind spots. But he died in 2016.

For anyone reading the book today, a lot of the themes will be familiar. A closeness with the players at the minor league level that's impossible at the major league level. Life on the free American rode. Adult responsibility vs. the freedom and timelessness of games. And an undercurrent of racism.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, this is a journey I’d love to take - an RV trip across the country, visiting minor-league ballparks along the way. On the other, it’s a book written 30 years ago that is longing for the America of 30 years prior, when things may have seemed simpler, but was far less equal for all Americans. The author (who passed away in 2017) came across at times as bitter and disrespectful over progress that we have made as a society. Looking back fondly at the days of your youth is fun, but longing for those days again is an exercise in futility.

The parts of the book where Mr. Lamb talked about the teams and players with whom he came in contact were extremely fascinating to me. I found myself often referring to baseball-reference.com to look up the stats of these low-level minor leaguers and teams to see how they panned out. And one quote stood out regarding his observations of baseball players, about 1/3 into the book: “its participants are men of ordinary physical bearing, not steroid monsters padded with armor.” My how the times have indeed changed.

[Austin Gisriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stolen Season is a Huck Finn-like story of author David Lamb, drifting not down the Mississippi, but through America and the towns that host minor league baseball teams. It's the ideal summer for any baseball fan, and I enjoyed the vicarious vacation. Lamb offers the most interesting details of the ballplayers, ballparks, and people he meets along the way, allowing us to reflect on our own, rather then telling us what we should feel.

The only reason this is not a 5-star read for me is the chapter on Steve Dalkowski. It is full of mistakes and makes me wonder what other facts may have suffered. First, Dalkowski's name is misspelled as Lamb employes a "y" rather than an "i" at the end of the fire-balling legend's name. Secondly, several myths concerning Dalkowski are passed along as facts, including the story that one of his fastballs had torn off a batter's ear. Such stories are better presented as the myths they are for they explain the attraction of the minor leagues: That in some little town somewhere on some dusty diamond a legend might be born on this very night.

[Jim Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lamb, author of books on Arabs and on Africans, bought a Winnebago RV, named it Forty Niner, and set out one spring from Los Angeles across the country to chronicle his tour of the minor leagues. The minors and its employees are not part of the major league pension system, are generally poorly paid and work in obscurity. If you walk around wearing clothing from a minor-league team, you're a REAL baseball fan. In the book, my copy of which I got in a downtown Philadelphia used bookstore called The Book Trader, Lamb first tells of his childhood and family, his love of baseball and of the Milwaukee Braves. As a baseball fan, I found it mildly interesting, but also a bit boring as well because I was eager to get to the story of his road trip. And what a trip: from west to east and back again, the author tells his experiences with the people and places of America and the minor leagues. I loved it.

[Alexander Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book on small town America, baseball, and the characters that populate both worlds.

If you're not a lover of these topics David Lamb is not going to convert you, but if you love your summer road trips through Nowhere, USA then this will be a joy to read.

[JonnyThumper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when it was published - I was about 24 and was falling back in love with baseball. The way Lamb describes the flavor of the small town game and the people who played the game really spoke to me.
I should find and read this one again.

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes what I’ve wanted to do for years, travel around the country in an RV, attending minor league baseball games. That’s just what the author does one summer, many years ago. You can feel the age of the book in a few ways. One, the author was a “kid journalist” with the Milwaukee Braves when younger, and from his time there he got to know many players and coaches. During this trip he meets with quite a few people he knew from the past, and those names are certainly “of the time”. The author also uses some labels for the disabled that we don’t look upon as kind nowadays. And while most of the places visited were smaller towns that came off as quite friendly, I’m not sure that high level of friendliness still exists in this country.

This has the prerequisite minor league baseball stories you expect. But Lamb really relished reconnecting with the older guys, the coaches and the baseball retirees. Those interviews tended to take away from the minor league focus, but they were interesting in their own right.

I most enjoy stories I have some kind of personal connection to. And sometimes that connection is tenuous, but I enjoy those too. Here, he does spend some time with the Peoria Chiefs, a Midwest League low A team in the area I grew up. He was there during the Pete Vonachen era, and there have been plenty of stories of that team owner and his stunts, a few of which were repeated here. Also, one of the “old timers” he visits on his journey was Chuck Tanner. Ends up Tanner was the first year coach of the Quad City Angels when I was born in a hospital across the Mississippi from their stadium in the early 60s.

Overall, I enjoyed the stories of the travel in the RV. Lamb covers the ups, like being able to invite players back to his rv for drinks, and downs, including expensive repairs on the road. The baseball stories were about the kinds of stories I expected, well told, but nothing I hadn’t read about before. The backstory of Lamb’s work with the Braves and meeting the players of that time during his trip was the best aspect of the book.

[Alan Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid book. A good read for anyone who grew up loving baseball and still wishing for what used to be. Whispers of Terrance Mann can be heard in the words "America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time."

Sidenote: There are occasional notes of cynicism I needed to set aside and comments that would not now be acceptable in today's world but understandable in relation to when the book was written.

[Fred Daly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given to me 32 years ago by the Columbia prep track team, and I finally read it. I'm glad I waited, actually, because it was fun to know which of the players he encountered ended up having major league careers. (He describes Gary Sheffield as a "light-hitting shortstop.") He's an actual writer -- a well-traveled journalist -- so the writing is very strong, unlike what one usually gets in a baseball-road-trip book like this. I liked it, but there's a little too much of the old trope that people in the Midwest are somehow better than those on the coasts.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chronicle of a summer long road trip around the country attending minor league baseball games. It captures very well that moment in baseball history (1989); though he overdoes it with the salt of the earth stuff, it really was more of a small town phenomenon than it would be even ten years later. His chapter on the wacky world of Dudley Field in El Paso was spot on.

[Clifford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book a long time ago. I must have liked it enough to keep it, but not enough to remember how good it was.

[Marc Efron · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you miss baseball and “the good ole days,” the author’s road trip through minor league cities and towns will give you some solace.

[Tolkien InMySleep · Rating 4 out of 5]

A minor league baseball travelogue, of major league quality. Written with great spirit and empathy, a journey to savour

[Shawna Prather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun read with a lot of interesting takes on actual players!

[Tom Shrimplin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love baseball and want to read a book about traveling around the US going to minor league towns and watching and talking to minor leaguers, this book is for you.

[Tim Basuino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahh, the minor league baseball road trip. Sort of by definition it’s going to be a good read. Sheesh, any book which centers around travelling to baseball parks, major or/and minor, is going to be a quality read.

But most books of this ilk center around the quirks of the parks themselves, focusing on stadium design, food, scoreboards, and general atmosphere (i.e. “Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks”). The late David Lamb’s adventure focuses more on the small cities that host minor league franchises, with an emphasis on those with affiliations to the Milwaukee Brewers. And he is able to interview various members of the 1950’s Braves, ranging from stars like Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn to bit characters such as Bob Hazle.

By and large this 1989 adventure moves smoothly. I was concerned that the RV would have taken a bigger role than it did (invariably these stories at some point spend too much time on the details of an inanimate bit role), and the book also benefits from the lack of the all-too-often-present wacky sidekick. It was interesting to get his perspectives on such second tier cities as Stockton, El Paso and Elmira… even though those municipalities have their various ups and downs, there are reasons they do not become extinct – almost all cities of size arose from some sense of purpose.

It is also interesting that Lamb’s comments on the then-present day player sound exactly like what one writes in 2017 – that today’s players are too damn spoiled. Of course, they also wrote that in 1960.

[Don Gorman · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are a slightly aging baseball nut (like me), this book is at least 3 stars. If you are not, it is probably only 1 star. That is why I ended up at 2. Lamb is a very good writer. His form is short, understandable since he is a newspaper guy. Taking off a summer to travel all over the United States to see minor league baseball in an RV is quite an adventure and this book chronicles it well. Written in 1989 and 90, it feels very dated. Times have changed greatly in baseball, even in the minors. But his vivid portraits of America's towns and small cities are brilliant. His accounts of old ball parks and their inhabitants; athletes, owners workers and fans are a joy. His visits with the hometown heroes of his childhood (the Boston Braves-moving to Milwaukee) are great stuff. A wonderful example of baseball being America's pastime.

[Tom Gase · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really well written good book on David Lamb's (the author) trip around the United States with an RV going to minor league ballparks in the 1989 season. Lamb starts in Stockton and then goes to Arizona, Texas, the deep south including Alabama, Florida and Georgia, up to Maryland, upstate New York and then to Milwaukee, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Washington state, Oregon and back to California and San Mateo. The trip lasts the entire minor league season and along the way there are some great stories on Warren Spahn, the Durham Bulls, a place once in Florida called Boardwalk and Baseball that I went to as a kid (whatever happened to that place?) and many others on minor leaguers trying to make it to the majors. Anyone who likes books on baseball or just road trips in general will enjoy this book. A little dated now, but otherwise a solid book.

[thegradualday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone else once said owning a minor league baseball team means covering the debts. David Lamb's summer sojourn across America in his "...small aluminum world on wheels" reveals other truths beyond financial reality, into the lives of the owners, managers, players, sportswriters, PA announcers and fans, into places where the game exists in perhaps its purest form, beyond the money, fame and glitz of the major leagues. So compelling was my experience with Lamb's account that I set out on my own small tour of minor league teams in the Pacific Northwest.

Stolen Season earned a permanent place on my shelves with just one read. It is a delicious vicarious experience and an unforgettable read.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1990, LA Times war correspondent David Lamb took six months off to noodle around the back roads of America visiting minor league baseball teams. At each stop, he'd park his RV near the ballpark and spend a few days hanging out with players, managers, coaches, management, fans, tavern owners, and others in the orbit of minor league baseball. The result is a charming portrait of small-town life and mostly minor talents either pursuing their dreams or coming to grips with the impossibility of it all. Lamb does well to play down the pathos and nostalgia - and in fact there's not much call for it, as most people in this world were pretty clear eyed and comfortable with their lot in life.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stolen Season is a very enjoyable read that chronicles a Summer of writer David Lamb's life. Badly needing a break from his job as a foreign journalist, Lamb decides to fulfill a life long dream of driving accross the country visiting as many minor league baseball parks as he can. Although baseball games are the intended stops, his encounters with the people around the country are just as important, making this an enjoyable read whether you are a baseball fan or not. This book has inspired me to make an effort to visit more minor league parks where the game is still just a game. Make it a point to check this book out. (originally posted on Amazon.com)

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice travel/baseball book that seems like a love affair between the author and his favorite franchise(s), the Boston/Milwaukee Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers! Lots of fun reading as the author takes his RV and travels around the U.S. to many of the Brewers minor league team sites and finds several of his former baseball heroes, including Eddie Matthews, Warren Spahn, and Bob Hazel! From the Stockton Ports to the Durham Bulls, Lamb shows us his America and his game, and it feels like we are in "Forty-niner" (his RV) with him. A nice read during the summer season for sure!

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written meditation on baseball. David Lamb took a year off and traveled the country in a Winnebago to observe minor league baseball at all levels. I think he gets closer to the American love for this game than writers who cover the major leagues because the people Lamb writes about are not encumbered with the massive egos and other impediments associated with the money and hype of pro ball.

[Edwin Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fan of minor league baseball books and I enjoy all of the unique moments I read about in the minors. Stolen Season had some fun stories and I like reading about the history of warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, and Bob Hazle.
The two things I struggled with this book, though, was some inaccuracies the threw me off(like describing Hilton Head being in NC). Also, between the good minor league moments and the baseball history moments, the book, in my opinion, dragged.

[Chris Chase · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had been recommended to me 10 years ago. I finally read it and was good. Taking a writer who covered foreign affairs and war and allowing him 5 months of wandering across America in an RV was great. The authors connection to Milwaukee and the Braves was a great under story. Definitely would recommend

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty good - it was clear the author was trying to achieve Steinbeck's Travels with Charley (a must-read lighthearted, refreshing detour from the typical melancholy Steinbeck) but in baseball form. It worked in a lot of ways - loved the reference to my hometown and our Single-A team (Peoria Chiefs). A fun read, but definitely meandering (which was the point).

[John McGuinness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feast or famine

Having played college basketball, I am glad that I was too slow to be recruited. If I was I would probably still be chasing that carrot. I have friends who had similar careers as those in this book and the author portrayed these trials from a different perspective with the same results. Very interesting read!