The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound

by Ron Darling

Ron Darling has been beloved by Mets fans since he helped his team win the 1986 World Series. Today he is considered one of the most articulate and insightful broadcasters in baseball, bringing the game to life in ways that few can match. Now he gives us an engaging, sophisticated, practical, and philosophical exploration of the art, strategy, and psychology of pitching.

Darling takes us inside the pitcher’s mind, illuminating the subtler aspects of the game and providing a deeper appreciation of what happens on the field. He explains why the position of pitcher is uniquely strategic and complex and explores the various tactics a pitcher uses in different scenarios, including the countless factors in deciding what to throw and how he bounces back from a tough inning. Throughout, we get a glimpse of what it feels like to stand alone on the mound, the center of attention for tens of thousands of fans.

While there are technical books on pitching, there is no other book that examines the position in such compelling depth as The Complete Game. Filled with captivating, real-life anecdotes, it will do for pitching what Ted Williams’s The Science of Hitting did for batting—and it will be an essential book for every fan and aspiring player.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Adult

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Ron Darling is an Emmy Award-winning baseball analyst for TBS, the MLB Network, SNY, and WPIX-TV, and author of Game 7, 1986 and The Complete Game. He was a starting pitcher for the New York Mets from 1983 to 1991 and the first Mets pitcher to be awarded a Gold Glove.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron Darling was a pretty good pitcher, although you might never know that listening to him work color commentary for the New York Mets. He sustains a level of modesty that would lead one to think he was a mere journeyman. He was not a great pitcher, although he did pitch some great games. He is, however, simply the best color commentator working baseball today. While he may not be a future hall-of-famer as an athlete, I expect he will make it to Cooperstown for his work covering the game.


Ron in his pitching prime - from thehistoryreader.com

In The Complete Game, Darling combines his experience as a player, his factual knowledge of the game and just enough personal, emotional content to give the narrative zest well beyond mere “information.” He lets all us non-pitchers know what it is all about up there on that hill, sixty feet six inches away from home plate, both physically, psychologically, and emotionally. His format is to sequence his chapters into innings, a bit of a cliché for baseball books. He uses specific innings from both his career as a pitcher and as a commentator to illustrate various aspects of pitching. In the chapter “First Inning: Getting Started,” for example, he writes about his first major league start.

There is plenty of information in the book, as one would expect. It was news to me (although, as a baseball fan for over 60 years, I suppose it should not have been) that pitchers were considered non-athletes by baseball people. Darling offers diverse examples of how pitchers prepare for their starts. One in particular naps! It was informative to learn how different baseball organizations go about training their pitchers, some trying to stamp all their mound talent with the same cookie cutter, others allowing for more individuality. It was enlightening to see how one encounter with the right coach could turn a career entirely around. And there is plenty more.


Ron in 2016 - from The New York Daily News

In addition to knowledge and observation, Darling offers some of himself as well. He does a great job of describing the experience of coming up to the majors for the first time, and the not-so-inviting demeanor of some of his teammates. Ron Hodges’ reaction stands out. He offers insight into both the jitters that pitchers must overcome and the experience of getting into a zone where everything works just as desired, and offers excellent examples of how that degree of focus can vanish in an instant. He tells moving personal tales in small doses. I was much taken with a story he relates of encountering his father on the field at the beginning of a crucial game. The best chapter, for me, was of his experience of an epic college game against Saint John’s, one that was immortalized by Roger Angell as perhaps the greatest college game ever played.

I wish Darling would write a true memoir. I would love to hear more about his childhood, his family, how he came to go to Yale, what it was like off the field being a major leaguer. I would like to hear more of his take on teammates, other baseball professionals, sports media, the impact of foreign substances on the game, and what he might have seen of that, how he went from being a player to becoming a top-level commentator. You won’t find that here. Maybe in some future work.

Each chapter ends with a summary of what happened in the focus-inning of that chapter. It seemed gratuitous and uninformative. Some editor must have though it was slick. It was annoying. But that is a very minor quibble.

I believe that Darling’s best written work lies ahead. He is an extraordinarily articulate and knowledgeable pro. That said, this is a good book, with solid, grounded information and insight, mixed with a bit of heart. A must, I would say, for any aspiring pitcher.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron Darling is one of the best color commentators in baseball. He’s at least three books in now, but this was his first.

The idea of the book is to pick nine interesting innings and write about them.

Darling is one of the most famous athletes to graduate from Yale. That is often attributed to his success. A great sports intellectual like George Will, John Feinstein or Michael Lewis. But he also brings the experience of playing at the highest level, as well as just a true love for the game.

The “innings” are generally ones Darling pitched, though some are ones he announced. As a member of the 86 Mets, this book is probably best suited for Mets fans. Still, this would be a good book for any fan of the game.

The payoff of course isn’t necessarily how the innings play out, but the experience and psychology of being a major league pitcher. He does a pretty good job of touching on the aspects that might not readily come to mind.

At the end, Darling shares an epic College World Series game that he pitched in, and even the Afterword is poignant as he talks about retirement.

A lot of neat insight throughout that is presented well, while still being a quick and breezy read. Baseball fans are likely to eat it up.

[Sam Rivere · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another classic look into one of my favorite sports teams. Ron, one of our beloved Mets announcers, really takes you into the mind of an MLB pitcher. The game has changed so much since his days in the 80s but many of his insights and stories hold true even today. Let’s go Mets

[Joyce]

Ron Darling always seemed to embody a unique pivot point in baseball history, perhaps one out of all proportion to his stat line as a pitcher. On the old-school side, he was one of the last complete-game workhorses who had the right to curl a lip at today's "quality-start" thinking. Darling also might have been one of the last pitchers who didn't specialize until almost the point when he turned pro; by all accounts he enjoyed hitting, fielding, and even playing football more than pitching. On the new-school side, he was famously Yale-educated at a time when many baseball people felt that books could only ruin your eyesight and waste your best playing years. Today's younger fans have been raised on a steady stream of heady elite-college stars like Joe Girardi, Mike Mussina, Nomar Garciaparra, and Jason Varitek -- but back when Ron Darling was called up, he didn't even like to admit that he had gone to college. And last but not least, Darling was the first hapa athlete most of us had ever seen -- and with Lenn Sakata, maybe the only two Asian-Americans in the bigs up to that point.

By some straightforward calculus -- introspective + educated + member of champion NY Mets team + TV color commentator = book -- people have expected Ron Darling to write a book for a long time. At first I was quite surprised by the result, particularly in contrast to teammate Keith Hernandez's _Pure Baseball_. Hernandez may come across as energetic and slightly goofy on TV, but as a position player he was literally drilled in baseball lore from childhood and has a machinelike precision or rigidity in his thinking: X + Y must always result in Z or you aren't a baseball person. Darling's book on the other hand is almost entirely focused on the emotional experience of being a starting pitcher, particularly one who is forced to learn on the job while involved in a pennant race... and of course the biggest lesson of pitching is that everything depends on the specific situation. Especially for a pitcher with shaky control like the author, the fluidity of every pitch is where the craft becomes an art instead of a science.

At least one major reviewer was bugged by the elegiac tone of Ron Darling's account, especially when baseball has become a money-grubbing fan-gouging loyalty-testing exercise indeed. That struck me as an unfair critique both because the author has nothing to do with the Mets organization or their ticket prices; but also because no writer truly picks his or her default aesthetic any more than a pitcher picks his or her "out pitch". Beauty lies in what you can't help feeling, and I for one count us all lucky that Ron Darling feels the beauty in that knife-edged pivot between triumph and its inevitable obliteration.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

As Mets fan, and one who lived in Queens in 1986, I really looked forward to reading Darling's book. It was an informative read as I enjoyed learning about the finer points of baseball strategy. I also liked how Darling shows us how players and managers communicate and what they communicate both during games and off the field. It was all fascinating stuff and told in a style that moves quickly with no wasted words.

I had only one complaint about the book. I read a memoir by a world class rower a few years back, The Shell Game, by Stephen Kiesling. In addition to the telling of his experience, the book had a literary/philosophical feel that I thought this Yale author's was missing.

[Drew Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ronnie!!

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

With summer’s dog days and my father’s illness causing a myriad of thoughts and memories of baseball to percolate up from the depths, I reached for Ron Darling’s book to provide a brief break from a recent spate of novels (and to clear my palate a bit for Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic). For some time now it hasn’t been easy being a Mets fan, so, for protection, one’s thoughts do tend to retreat to those dominant, brashly confident (and yet still somehow underachieving) teams of the late 80s. Ron Darling was one of the more likable players from that era, and as a Yale graduate and, currently, a particularly articulate and incisive color commentator on television, it’s no surprise that he has written a well-constructed, smart, and entertaining book (and one needn’t be a Mets fan, of course, to find it compelling, although this reader still savors the memory of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” filling the night air outside the dorms of Boston College—which was celebratory for some of us but cruel to the majority—after the Mets took Games 6 and 7 from the Red Sox in the ’86 World Series). The best baseball books are surely those that see the metaphorical and human drama dimensions of the game, and that understand, as Darling does, the beauty of a game at almost all moments “shot through with nuance and context.” Noting at the outset that his is “not a traditional baseball memoir,” Darling organizes The Complete Game around representative innings from his career (a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th inning etc.): some of them are full of situational import and peril, while others, on the surface at least, until Darling reveals their hidden narrative and interpretive richness, are seemingly mundane and nondescript. The focus throughout is on the ambivalent venue of the pitcher’s mound, at once Darling’s castle and his remote island: “a major league pitching mound,” he writes, can be the loneliest place in all of team sports, and it can be the loftiest.”

[Allison McCague · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read for any baseball fan (especially any Mets fan). As someone who has been listening to Ron Darling's unmatched baseball insight every night on Mets broadcasts for many years, I had high expectations for this book. And it delivered on all of them. Ron gives us an unparalleled glimpse into the mind of a pitcher - how he approaches every start, how he works through both triumph and adversity, and how he internalizes mentorship from many sources along the way. He is able to write about the intricacies of the game in such a readable way - I can hear his voice in my head, narrating as I read. Ron is a scholar of the game and a lover of the game and reading this book reminds me of all of the things I love about the game of baseball.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not exactly an earth-shattering perspective on pitching, I did find Darling's choice to associate an inning from his career (as both a player and an analyst) with each chapter (including a warm-up and extra innings) to be a novel way to approach the topic.

Along the way, he provides insights as to how a pitcher handles certain situations both on the field (dealing with a bad outing) and off (getting told that their time as a player is over).

Baseball fans might enjoy it, but fans of the Mets in general and Darling in particular should definitely give this a read.

[Clem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron Darling was a very good Major League Baseball pitcher during the 1980s and 1990s. He was also known as rather cerebral. When the Yale graduate starting pitching for the New York Mets, he was asked by one reporter what he liked best about New York. Darling’s reply? “New York has great libraries”. He's one of the few fortunate who now has a baseball life now that his playing days are over; he’s been a successful broadcaster for the New York Mets for over ten years. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that such a person would also go on to pen a few books. As I write this review, he’s written three. This one is his first.

In an effort to set this work apart from the plethora of sports books written by ex jocks, Darling goes for a unique approach. Rather than reminisce of the glory years with stories, anecdotes, and comparing the game of yesteryear to today, Darling chooses to focus on what a pitcher is going through during every inning of a baseball game. He wisely doesn’t choose one game, but rather various games throughout his career (including one or two as a broadcaster observing another pitcher). Each of the innings that we read about are mostly interesting, but sometimes Darling gets stuck a tad deep in the weeds. I would guess an average inning for a major league pitcher lasts 7-8 minutes, yet it takes much longer when we actually read about these innings within a book.

Darling covers it all. We read about what the pitcher thinks about before the game, before the inning, the strategy to each batter, what the batter is probably thinking, what his teammates are thinking, what the manager is thinking, and on and on and on. Most of this is good for the faithful fan, but there are times when the reader requires a degree of patience.

In fact, I felt the best parts of the book were the beginning, when he first came up to the Major Leagues, and the end, when he realized that it was time to hang up his cleats. The reason is that these parts require a more human story instead of the ongoing minutia of pitching strategies. This leads me to believe that Darling could probably tell a much more interesting story had he focused on the normal things we read about in baseball retrospectives. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if Darling considered writing a book about the famous (infamous?) New York Mets teams of the 1980s but changed course after he realized that there were already oodles of books out there about 1986. Why add another? That doesn’t seem like Ron Darling’s style.

I should point out that of his two other books, at least one focuses more on people and stories, and I’ll definitely pick that one up at some point as Darling has proved here that he can write good stuff. This book was a good, brief read. But even though it’s aided by brevity, it still felt a bit long at times.

Come to think about it, you could probably say the exact same thing about the majority of Major League Baseball games that you watch.

[Noel P. Roby · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me as a former pitcher and pitching coach in the all important Little Leagues of America, I loved the extensive knowledge on how to get Strike 1 to become a reality. So many youth baseball players and scholastic baseball players are worried about velocity nowadays. One of the most famous players to ever come out of Rhode Island High School baseball was my North Kingstown High School teammate, Sean Maloney. Maloney, upon me asking him how to coach pitches under 12, told me unequivocally that the most important pitch is Strike 1. Sean said that curveballs and junkballs and screwballs can come later on in development, and that getting the ball over the plate as a youth player was Job #1. Darling's book, Darling's advice, Darling's journey as a pitcher is all about Job #1 and I loved every inning of his book (once you read the book you will know what I mean.)

[Jake Chavez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is recommended only to baseball enthusiasts. It's an enjoyable read, but really if you only LOVE the game of baseball. Ron Darling does share a few stories, but this is not a traditional biography by any means. Instead he breaks down a collection of some of his past games. He recalls the situations. What count it was, what pitch types he threw, etc.

Some points can put you into a lull, because you're trying to read book and not watch a baseball game. I still enjoyed however mostly, as it is a good insight look into the game.

[Aidan Mutschler · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who wasn’t alive for Ron Darling’s pitching career, it was fascinating to get an inside perspective on that chapter of his Mets resumé. Possibly the smartest baseball mind in commentary so it is always a pleasure to hear him talk about the game. Darling was able to take an objective (as much as is possible) look at his own time on the mound. 4/5 only because the story telling stalled at certain points and was maybe a bit repetitive in certain details. Overall a great book and definitely re-readable.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not your typical biography, and that's what I liked about it. It's more of the psychology of pitching and baseball in general. Yes, there is some bio stuff but this is more about what a pitcher is going through during a specific inning or game (sometimes him, sometimes another pitcher). I found it very interesting coming from a pitcher who was good, but not great. He's an insightful announcer and that's one of the reasons I thought this would be a fun read.

[alexander robin evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this 5+ stars though. Can’t believe a book about MLB pitching brought me to actual tears…??????

“It was such a powerful, meaningful moment, and as I stepped away from it I felt like an animal being let out of a cage” (p. 72).

That got me.

[Chris Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book. Enjoyed the unique format and style of writing as well as the insight provided.

[George Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read if you like baseball. I remember Ron Darling when he was playing in Major League Baseball, so some of it is nostalgic. Thumbs up.

[Chris Schaffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darling writes very well for an athlete. Yale. His books are great.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Steven Beningo · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, well written baseball book!

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly disappointing, though I like the book format of 9 innings with separate story for each.

[John Kelleher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written easy to read and easy to like for Mets fans

[Greg Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars - one of the better baseball books I've read. Interesting structure, reliving one inning for each chapter, with lots of insights into life in MLB and the approach of a pitcher.

[Zach Koenig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up at my local library for two reasons: 1. I am a junkie for any baseball history book; and 2. I didn't know anything about Ron Darling and wanted to expand my horizons a bit. While the book isn't a bad read in any sense, it just didn't suck me in or give me anything more unique than the many other baseball books I had read before it.

The format of the book is indeed unique, as it allows Darling to discuss the finer arts of pitching in an inning-by-inning format. These were the portions of the book that I enjoyed the most...Darling's insightful analysis of the mind of a big-league pitcher and his ability to make the reader at times feel as if we are out on that "lonely mound" with him. Every baseball player (pitcher or otherwise) has unique thoughts and feelings about the sport, and Darling articulates both of those things very well and in interesting situations/anecdotes.

What really dragged this book down for me, though, was the disorganized nature of the "other stuff" that Darling discusses. During each "inning" (chapter), I was fascinated by Darling's description of that particular MLB inning. However, each inning/chapter also goes off on tangents that, at least to me, felt forced and a bit awkward in light of the book's overall structure. Had the book been organized in a more traditional way (e.g. by topics), those tangents would have been easier to stomach. In the midst of an exciting inning description, however, the backtracking and tangent-wandering got a little tedious (I wanted to get back to the action at hand!).

Overall, though, this is a decent baseball read, especially for fans of the 1980s New York Mets (much of the source material comes from those late-80s Mets ballclubs). Though the organization of the book may provide a bit of tedium for the reader, it is clear that Darling is an excellent communicator and shares insights into the mind of a starting pitcher that I found both original and intriguing.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every year, just like the ball players, I report for spring training..in the form of reading a baseball book or two. As an ardent fan of the New York Mets, this is the perfect fit. This book was written by Ron Darling, a good starting pitcher for the Mets during their heyday of the 1980’s. He is also currently a color commentator in the current Mets telecast booth.

This book in not an autobiography, yet it pulls from Darling’s life, his childhood, his days at Yale and of course his time as a ball player. The chapters are labeled as innings, nine for the duration of a ball game. Each chapter a parallel between that point in a ball game and a certain period of his life.

With plenty of funny, serious and entertaining anecdotes, this book is a must read for Mets fans and baseball fans everywhere.

Recommended!

[Mary Drew]

I like Ron Darling and so I like this book. I thought it read well. The ending was sort of a surprise, but sometimes the truth is surprising.
It also doesn't hurt that I'm a big Mets fan.

[Jim Leffert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ron Darling, the Yale-educated star pitcher turned Mets broadcaster, reflects on memorable games and innings that he’s pitched or witnessed and on his life experiences in baseball. He talks strategy and explicates what it means to pitch, with a full consciousness of what is happening on the field and what needs to be done on the mound, as opposed to merely hurling the ball at the plate. However, what makes the book a bit different from others of its ilk is that Darling mixes in a considerable amount of musing about the psychology of pitching and the trajectory of his major league career. While Darling describes the pitcher’s strategic thought process during specific, memorable game situations, his book focuses on the emotional highs and lows and gut-level intuitions that affect the pitcher’s performance. For example, he talks about the cape of invincibility that the pitcher would like to metaphorically throw over his shoulders when he strides onto the mound, which is at risk of evaporating when the game gets rough. If you’ve ever wondered how a person can stand in front of 30,000 people and maintain confidence when all eyes are on him or what goes through the pitcher’s mind when the manager comes out of the dugout after the pitcher has yielded a hit in the middle of the inning, Darling’s book offers answers.

Although strategy is part of the story, at various points of the book, I thought that Darling offers too much spilling of his feelings and not enough ratiocination. However by the end of the book, as he relives the legendary college game in which he pitched no-hit ball for 11 innings and then, poignantly, recalls the twilight of his career, when he could no longer defeat major league hitters, his combination of reason and emotion, strategy and raw lived experience, fully came together for me.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This came in as a freebie to my office a while ago, and I picked it up because of my past love for baseball books that break down the game from the inside. It is essentially a memoir of Ron Darling's major league career, done in the form of several memorable games he participated in, including a college game still called one of the greatest every played, in which Darling pitched for Yale.

The book is a little blowsy -- it probably could have been cut 20 percent in length -- but I admired Darling's willingness to share the high and low moments of his career. He imparts good inside knowledge of situational baseball, particularly how important the pitcher can be in keeping a base runner off balance and the way that the game has changed for pitchers today with the mania for keeping their pitch counts low, but even more importantly, he describes the emotional elements of the pitcher's life superbly. When Darling makes the case that no other person on a baseball team is so essential to the fortunes of the game, and that no other kind of baseball player can fall so far, so quickly, he speaks a basic truth that resonates.

I found his description of how he was let go by the Oakland Athletics near the end of his career (still just in his 30s) particularly affecting, especially his sense of the surreal when he showed up at his house at the odd moment of late afternoon, and his wife and children were on their way to various activities and barely had time to absorb that he was no longer a major leaguer. He said it without self-pity; just an acknowledgement that because of the player's life, his wife and kids had had to learn to build a life apart from him, and here he was interrupting it with his premature retirement.

This is a good baseball book, and a good book about life.

[Chris Witt · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a word: solid.

In more words: Darling breaks 9 chapters out into "innings" - each chapter covering a different inning from a different game that he either pitched in or for which he was a broadcaster. (There is 1 "extra inning" as well, covering an entire collegiate game that he pitched in.)

Interesting to have read it immediately after Christy Mathewson's "Pitching in a Pinch" which was written exactly one century earlier just as a study in compare/contrast.

Was somewhat disappointed, but only because I seemed to read many reviews saying this was probably the best baseball book that had been put out in the last few years. For me, anyhow, parts of it seemed like they could have been put in "Baseball For Dummies" or something. Just some basic strategy that was presented as though it would be eye-opening to the reader. For me, though, it came across as something that the average knowledgeable baseball fan would already be aware of.

Would I recommend it? Kind of depends. I think if you are a casual fan and/or a Mets fan you may be more inclined to enjoy than if you are already some kind of hard-core baseball strategy nerd.

On the plus side, I would read something else Darling wrote - he's got a skill for writing. And I'll definitely be more apt to tune in to any national games that he is broadcasting in the future based on having read this book.

[Don LaFountaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book, especially if you like anything that has to do with baseball.

Ron Darling was a pitcher for the New York Mets and the Oakland A's during his career. In this book, he discusses a number of games that he pitched in or broadcasted from the pitcher's perspective. He talked about what he was trying to do as a pitcher in certain situations, what he was thinking, and whether he was successful. Ron also discussed how he felt during those situations, what he learned from to make himself a better pitcher, and how the game has changed from the time he pitched to today's pitchers.

This is not a normal "memoir" in the sense that he starts as a youth, works his was up through school and the minor leagues, until finally he was pitching in the big leagues. He bounces around throughout the book; one chapter discussing a start of his in 1984 to the next a game he was broadcasting in 2008. This was an easy and enjoyable read for any baseball fan, regardless of who they root for. I would recommend it to any fan, though admittedly I think it will be a little more meaningful for Mets and A's fans of the 80's and 90's.