Chasing Steinbrenner: Pursuing the Pennant in Boston and Toronto

by Rob Bradford

The most storied rivalry in baseball is the Yankees and the Red Sox, despite what often seems like an annual exercise in disappointment in New England. Despite having a comparatively brief and less operatic history of losing to the Bronx Bombers than do the Sox, the Blue Jays were once the team to beat in the American League East. Now Boston and Toronto are again gunning for the top, led by a pair of young general managers. Theo Epstein of the Red Sox and J. P. Ricciardi of the Blue Jays represent a new generation of general managers, weaned on two decades of baseball analysis that started with the groundbreaking work of Bill James and Pete Palmer. Without the Yankees’ financial advantages, both Epstein and Ricciardi contend by carefully building their organizations and their big-league squads with a blend of financial good sense, scouting know-how, and the kind of analysis that helped them reach their positions in the game today. Indeed, both GMs now have such people as Bill James and Keith Law (formerly of the Baseball Prospectus ) to help them crunch numbers and take their best shots at beating the Yankees.

Genres: Sports

316 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Paul Whitla · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first mistake was to include both teams, the Red Sox and the blue jays. Doing either one would have been better and there is really very little value in doing both, especially as the jays were largely out of the running by August. Secondly, although the title is related to the Yankees there is actually very little stucture or purpose t the book, it is more a list of things that happened in the front offices of these teams rather than a narrative with an overall theme. Third, the book has a terrible habit of introducing each new player, coach or executive in the same way as they pop up in the list of personnel movements, a history of the playing career, a physical description and too often a pop psychology reference to the parentage. Characters are never developed and enter and leave the book at random. The key events of game 7 of the alcs as described in the last chapter see the first real mention, and of course description of Grady Little, surely a key figure throughout the year. Some info f interest to a AL fan, but really rather poorly put together and edited.