Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember

This is an account of the lives of two major league pitchers, one for the Yankees and one for the Mets during the entire 2007 season, from off-season work to spring training and real baseball.

Before we get to 2007 John Feinstein gives us a history of their lives leading up to this year.

Even though I am a big baseball and Yankee fan I didn’t quite love this book. At one point I remembered how 2007 ended and almost quit. It is incredibly detailed, at time too detailed which tended to make it drag at points. It was an almost game by game narrative, which makes it good that he was writing about pitchers who don’t play every game. The book also contains thoughts and observations from team mates and friends and family members. A very show more fascinating account of life in the major leagues that I feel could have been shorter than it was.

Still if you are a baseball fan I would recommend it. show less

I learned something new with this book. In baseball, a pitcher is referred to as living on the black because the edges of home plate in outlined in black. My plates never had black so I never knew that is where the term came from.

Living on the Black follows Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina, two of the best and most consistent pitchers in the game during the 2007 season.

Glavine and Mussia have some great similarities. At this point in their career, they both throw in the 90s or lower (considered soft in major league baseball) both have moved on from their original teams. Both play in New York. Both are union representative for their teams, including during the 94/95 strike. Both have a great understanding of the game. Both are at the ends show more of their career. Both grew up playing many sports and baseball was not their first sport of choice.

But they also have many differences. Glavine was drafted directly out of high school. Mussina went to college. Glavine plays for the Mets, Mussina for the Yankees. Glavine has a chance for his 300th win during the 2007 season, Mussina is going for 250. Glavine has always been a soft thrower, Mussina velocity has decreased with age and is learning to Live on the Black. Their personality is completely different, Glavine outgoing and always willing to speak to the media. Mussina very quite, reserved, sarcastic sense of humor.

I loved the premise of this book and did enjoy reading it. I didn't like how their stories bounced back and forth. I wish it was more divided. The descriptions of the games became monotonous and boring. It could have been done much better.

Overall, I enjoyed learning the inside of pitching and what goes on during a season during the ups and downs and even during injuries. Great book for a baseball fan. show less

John Feinstein’s latest tome considers two veteran major leaguers plying their craft during the 2007 season search of major milestones in the magnifying glass of the media frenzy that is New York. Tom Glavine won his 300th game with the Mets last year, while Mike Mussina, a member of the cross-town Yankees, won his 250th.

Feinstein painstakingly chronicles these athletes as they inch towards their lofty accomplishments. Glavine has since returned to the Atlanta Braves, for whom he won more than 240 of 305 regular season games (as of this writing) and two Cy Young Awards, indicative of the best pitcher in the league.

After brief recaps of their journeys through the school and amateur ranks, minor league apprenticeships, and careers prior show more to 2007, Feinstein settles in for the long, detailed process for which he has become famous in such books as TALES FROM Q SCHOOL, LET ME TELL YOU A STORY and A SEASON ON THE BRINK, among many others. No detail is too small, no scrap of information unimportant. The breadth of the book --- more than 500 pages --- can seem daunting, but for baseball fans, it’s never boring. Feinstein’s access earned him heretofore unknown insights into each man’s habits and the social structure of a professional sports team, with all the disparate personalities and quirks.

Glavine won his landmark game on August 5th in a nationally televised affair against the Chicago Cubs, with the added emotion of his family on hand to share in the event as he became just the 23rd major league pitcher to do so. On the other end of the celebratory spectrum, Mussina notched win number 250 in his last victory of the season on September 23rd (just over 50 have accomplished that). He didn’t even return to the dugout to watch the final out, having been relieved some innings earlier. “Two hundred isn’t three hundred,” Feinstein quotes him as saying, giving a nod to Glavine. “I understand that.”

On the periphery of the individual milestones are the disparate fortunes of the Mets and Yankees, eternally at odds as they struggle for the hearts and minds of fans from within and without New York’s borders. The Mets, odds-on-favorite to win at least the National League pennant, blew a comfortable lead for the Eastern division with a late-season collapse of historic proportion. That Glavine had one of the worst games of his life when the Mets needed him most dampens the love that the team’s fans will hold for him for years to come.

The Yankees, on the other hand, struggled mightily before rallying to capture the American League wild card slot (they subsequently lost to the Cleveland Indians in the first round of the playoffs).

Despite a few glitches --- major or minor, depending on the reader’s demand for accuracy --- Feinstein’s thoughtful treatise of two thoughtful craftsmen at the tail end of their careers rank high on the list of such books. Acolytes of the teams will relive sorrow and elation, respectively. show less

It's a long season, the baseball cliche goes, and this is a correspondingly long book.

IMO it could have been about 100 pages shorter, but it does hold interest. And Feinstein has an excellent sense of what behind-the-scenes info we really want to know about athletes and their trade.

This is an account of the lives of two major league pitchers, one for the Yankees and one for the Mets during the entire 2007 season, from off-season work to spring training and real baseball.

Before we get to 2007 John Feinstein gives us a history of their lives leading up to this year.

Even though I am a big baseball and Yankee fan I didn’t quite love this book. At one point I remembered how 2007 ended and almost quit. It is incredibly detailed, at time too detailed which tended to make it drag at points. It was an almost game by game narrative, which makes it good that he was writing about pitchers who don’t play every game. The book also contains thoughts and observations from team mates and friends and family members. A very show more fascinating account of life in the major leagues that I feel could have been shorter than it was.

Still if you are a baseball fan I would recommend it. show less

I wanted to like this, I really did, but it was too long, which made it a bit boring, and plagued by repeating a phrase or reference here and there, which I found a bit jarring. Maybe a 3.5. As much as I like reading about all aspects of baseball, I don't see myself rereading this one.

The thing I enjoyed most about Living on the Black was the inside look at conversations held in major league dugouts. As someone who will never make the major leagues, I felt that I was right in on the action and part of the conversation with Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine. Feinstein painted a picture of what it is like to be a pitcher in the major leagues.

The only thing that I did not really like was the play by play of some of the games. Not that it was all bad, but it got a tad old reading play by play of almost every game that the two pitchers pitched during the season. I more thoroughly enjoyed being able to read about pre- and post-game conversations and thoughts the pitchers had about the game.

Overall, I very good read for any show more baseball fan, especially those of Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, the New York Mets or New York Yankees. I would also recommend it to any young pitcher who could learn from two of the greatest pitchers and baseball minds in Glavine and Mussina. show less