Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries

by Allen Barra

Allen Barra is back with Brushbacks and Knockdowns, his newest retrospective of baseball history and folklore. Risking barroom riots, his essays question, "Who was a better hitter, Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds?," "Who is the best player not in the Hall of Fame?," "Who was the most valuable team player in baseball history?" ( His name rhymes with "Yogi"), and "Is baseball's talent pool shrinking?"

And for the first time, Allen Barra will make some projections on the greatest players and most innovative new trends in the first half of the twenty-first century. He uses statistics to give decisive answers to "Who's Right, The Owners or The Players?" He also addresses the issue of steroids in baseball---how they undermine statistics and the fan's faith in the integrity of the statistics that have been the game's lifeline for more than a century.

In Brushbacks and Knockdowns, Barra takes on baseball's toughest arguments. Readers will never think about baseball's greatest stars, situations, and matchups in the same way again.

Genres: Baseball

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries and honestly felt like I'd spent a week living in someone else's head, for better and worse. Barra, Allen writes a woman cleaning out her late aunt's apartment, and the scene where she finds a drawer full of unopened birthday cards addressed to her, every year, is so quietly devastating I had to go make tea. The middle gets repetitive, with box after box and memory after memory. Who this is for: readers who like slow, reflective grief stories. Who should pass: anybody who needs a plot to keep moving.

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 3 out of 5]

What got me about Brushbacks and Knockdowns is how Allen Barra shows that power doesn't always crush you outright; sometimes it just conditions you to accept second best.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Barra's writing (used to write for Salon) and he usually has a lot of insight into baseball history. However, this was a miss, paling in comparison to other analyses out there (particularly those from the Bill James school). Even worse, there were numerous typos throughout to the point of distraction.