Tom Verducci

The listed authorship of this book is deceptive, as it gives the impression that this is an "as told to memoir." But the book is all written in the third person, clearly by Verducci, not Torre, as a history of those years that Joe Torre managed the Yankees. Obviously, Verducci spent many hours interviewing Torre for this (as well as many other sources), as the book heavily relies upon quotes from Torre and on Torre's memories of events. My guess is that Torre included his name as co-author show more in order to avow his support for and approval of the contents of the book. Or maybe it was a marketing decision. Or maybe both.

At any rate, this is an excellent, excellent baseball history, and not just for Yankee fans. Verducci does a great job of describing the in and outs, the personalities, the drama and melodrama, of the 12 seasons that Joe Torre managed the Yankees, including the incredible run of championships at the beginning of Torre's tenure. But Verducci also does a great job of placing all those events within the context of the developments going on in and around the Yankees in the world of major league baseball in general. Both the steroid situation and the changes in scouting and player appraisal heralded by the arrival of the "Moneyball" philosphy are covered well, for example.

This is a smart, well-written, in-depth book, of interest to all baseball fans, I would think, not just for Yankee fans. show less

A GREAT FATHER'S DAY GIFT! A GREAT MOTHER'S DAY GIFT!

OR GRADUATION.....OR BIRTHDAY....OR.....

"The Cubs Way" by Tom Verducci is an excellent baseball book, a must for baseball fans, not just for Cubs fans. I have read a number of baseball books, and I have found many of them to be rather boring and poorly written. This book is exceptional, even before you get to the title page. Upon opening the book, you see in full color a copy of the lineup card that Joe Maddon kept in his hand for the Game show more 7. There are stats all over the place, scratchings, old sayings, initials, even a mild obscenity. To interpret all this for the reader, there is a key on the facing page which explains it all. Well, not quite all. Here's Verducci's opening to a paragraph on the Matrix, a number assigned to each batter: "The proprietary number Maddon assigns to each batter to capture how well the batter matches up against the starting pitcher." I hadn't read one word of the text yet, and already I was loving this book.

There are three major elements to this 363 page book - how key players were acquired, how some of the innards of baseball applied to the 2016 Cubs, and how each of the seven games of the World Series played out. By innards I mean all those components that impacted on players' performance throughout the year - from sabremetrics to pitchers' release points to Maddon's witty sayings. For example, ever hear of TrackMan? This is a system that provides information on a pitcher's speed, spin rate, spin axis, release point, and stride. I give Verducci tons of credit for introducing such material without inducing reader drowsiness. He covers a number of interesting details of the game like this without getting too techie; he always seemed to have the right balance of not too much, not too little. Ditto for his occasional mentions of how sabremetrics continues to develop to as a management tool and how pitching coaches work with pitchers to fine tune their mechanics. I particularly enjoyed a detailed chapter on how the Cubs negotiated with Jon Lester to sign with them as free agent. Verducci also goes in-depth to describe Jake Arrieta's performance, mechanics and regimen - not just as one of the all-time greats for the Cubs, but also as one of the all time worsts for the Orioles.

Interwoven with chapters on acquisitions and performance, are chapters on each of the seven games of the 2016 World Series. I watched each of those games, heard a lot of analysis of the games during their telecast (including a lot by on-air Verducci) but still learned a lot by reading some of his comments on the games in "The Cubs Way".

It's not a perfect book. But what I felt to be flaws were only minor things. He mentions -perhaps on three or four different points in the book Rizzo's naked recitation of great inspirational movie lines; it makes the book feel like some of the chapters were written in a vacuum. Some players are mentioned to illustrate a particular point, e.g. Stephen Ridings and TrackMan, an though it's not key to the point Verducci is making, readers, particularly this one, want to know "OK, thanks for telling me the Cubs drafted him in the 8th round of 2016 but where's Ridings now? How's he doing?". But those are nits. This is a 5 star book. A winner for Cubs fans, a winner for most baseball fans. show less

This is so much more than the payback, tell-all book of the press reports. Sure, there's the revelation that Roger Clemens had trainers rub hot liniment on his testicles before heading out to pitch, and more, but there is also informed discussion of the character of the Yankees over time and how it changed, the bio-mechanics of pitching, and more. I am fascinated. most of all, this is a history and discussion of how change came to baseball, seen from Torre's perspective. The changes include show more sabermetrics, revenue-sharing and the advent of Bud Selig. show less

5496. The Cubs Way The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse, by Tom Verducci (read 27 Aug 2017) This book tells of the most joyful event in sports in my lifetime. I became in the spring of 1938 at age 9 a rabid Cubs fan and have been one ever since and this book tells of the 2016 Cubs. It has a lot of technical baseball language and lore but is a joy to read because of the great events it tells of. The account of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series is so show more heart-poundingly exciting as to be unreadable if one did not know that all comes out super good in the end. The third and second last sentences: "It was a feeling that went far beyond Progressive Field. From the packed streets around Wrigley Field, where people had gathered all night around her sacred grounds, to the sons and daughters who watched with fathers and mothers in the biggest baseball television audience in a quarter of a century, to the many who wanted this night even more for the ones they loved and buried than for themselves, the faithful everywhere did not need the cool rain upon their skin to feel the change." (I admit that as I typed these words my eyes filled with tears of sheerest joy.) show less