Neal Karlen

This is quite possibly the whiniest writing I have ever read! The author seems to have so many axes to grind! During the first 50 pages he writes repeatedly about his hostility toward Rolling Stone magazine and its head chief, Jann Wenner. Geez man, we get it!
And even in the part I was most into, about Ila Borders, the first woman to ever win a game in a men's professional baseball game, the author still manages to whine. His childish remarks about a columnist's weight problem totally show more distract from the point he is trying to make. Talk about "spewing sour grapes"! If the author could have taken the huge chip on his shoulder out of his writing, this could have been quite a story. Yeesh! show less

Minor League baseball is not like major league baseball or any other kind of baseball. It is nothing but fun. This book chronicles two years in the life of the St. Paul, Minnesota Saints. It's full of wonderful vignettes and stories and unforgettable characters. If you've never been to a minor league baseball game, go to one. I promise you'll have fun and cheap fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It "tells the real story of the seamy underside of Minneapolis, MN where Jewish mobsters controlled the liquor trade, invented the point spread in sports betting (still used today), and ran national sports gambling operations" (from the inside front cover). The book includes anecdotes about the gangsters, madames, comedians, singers, politicians, etc. who frequented Augie's Theater Lounge and Bar on Hennepin Ave. along the downtown strip between the high class show more joints on 8th Street and the sleazy flophouses and bars in the Gateway District in the 40's and 50's. The book is humorous, fairly well written, and I learned things about MSP that I found fascinating. Highly recommend bit it will probably appeal most to people who are familiar with Minneapolis. show less

SPOILER?
I think Karlen is a really bad writer, technically. His grammar isn't good & I don't think he knows what some words mean. Although, the only absolutely incomprehensible sentence was in a quotation from somebody else. The book is very repetitive. He is very self-focused and it sure gets old fast, who cares about this guy anyway?

But there are fun vignettes, and I enjoyed reading about some of the players.

Clearly an editor would have made a big difference. I have no idea how many of his show more facts are true. At one point he referred to William H. Gass as an author who fled the Midwest for the Coast (and I don't think he meant either the Coast of the Wabash or the Coast of the Mississippi River. show less