Toronto Blue Jays Books

To be honest, I thought the actual content of this book was fantastic. It was really entertaining. I knocked it down to 4 stars because there are some grammatical mistakes, which I can't stand in published writing. The writing is overall pretty good, and there were only a few occasions where I had to stop and read a sentence 2 or 3 times to figure out what exactly was wrong with it so I could move on, but those times irritated me.

Rob Bradford provides a very involved look at the 2003 Red Sox and Blue Jays. A lot has happened since then, so the book is a little dated, but the close contact he had with Jays GM JP Ricciardi and Sox GM Theo Epstein is worth the price of the book alone. In terms of baseball analysis, there really isn't any, so if that's what you want, I'd recommend "Mind Game" or some other such Baseball Prospectus publication. But if you want an inside look at running a baseball team, replete with entertaining anecdotes (Theo's dad is a real piece of work), this is the book for you. Rob Bradford is not that great at involved sports analysis, but he's great at working with his subjects, which has me wondering why he's still stuck at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. After his exclusive interview with Sox owner John Henry last year, one would think the Herald or the Globe would come calling.

As a die-hard Sox fan, I am interested by any writing about the Red Sox under Theo Epstein, especially when it involves a new and different look at the managerial goings-on of a sabermetric franchise. And there are plenty of interesting tidbits and stories about sagas such as the Jose Contreras deal and the Kevin Millar signings that many Red Sox fans remember vividly. But I felt like there was too much background for certain players, too much focus on specific games. It's worth a read for die-hard Sox fans, but I can't really recommend it for most.

I received Chasing Steinbrenner for Christmas and, being a 40-year fan of the Red Sox, I enjoyed the read immensely. Knowing the joyous outcome of the 2004 MLB season made reading about Theo's first season as GM enjoyable. I don't think I could have read it had the Red Sox -gulp- lost to the Yankees in 2004. We know the amazing story of the 2004 season, and Bradford's entertaining and informative book gives us the inside story of the ups and downs of two franchises, the Blue Jays and Red Sox, that led to Aaron "What's the Big Deal?" Boone's 2003 ALCS Game 7 homerun. Bradford gives readers the stories-behind-the-stories of some of the deals that, in retrospect, led to the 2004 World Series championship. What if Theo had succeeded in signing Jose Contreras or did not obtain Kevin Millar? There's no Game 4 comeback in the ALCS. The details of the players' lives and the focus on certain 2003 games allow diehard fans to relive, without anguish, from whence the 2004 championship came. Bradford's chapter on Theo's first game as GM makes me believe that one day Carl Crawford will be stealing bases and hitting walk-off HRs for the Red Sox.
Juxtaposing Toronto's general manager J.P. Ricciardi, his limited resources, and Blue Jay fans with Boston's young general manager, sizable yet still somewhat limited revenue, and the Red Sox maniacal fan base allows readers access to the front office machinations about which newspapers, television, and radio shows only speculate.
For fans, Bradford opens the front office doors. He also opened my eyes that the GM's care as much if not more than many of the diehards. Read it and no longer weep!

Though the Red Sox finally "caught" Steinbrenner (for one year at least), the frustrations and challenges of being a franchise forever obsessed with the Bronx Colossus remain. This book is as relevant now that the Red Sox have won their World Series title as it was when the sting of Aaron Boone was fresh. Rob Bradford provides the reader an entertaining look into the sub-$200 millon world of Red Sox GM Theo Epstein and his Toronto counterpart J.P. Ricciardi, Massachusetts natives both, who work to overcome Yankee dollars with good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity , and yes, luck. After all, Theo was heartbroken over losing Jose Contreras to the Yankees. It's all in the book.
A good read.

I'm a huge Red Sox fan, so the idea of a behind the scenes look at the team really appealed to me. And, I read a lot of baseball books, so I'm used to tolerating mediocre writing in order to get my fix. This book, however, was just awful. Unreadable. Bradford's final product reads like a college freshman's first draft. He simply doesn't have enough ability. You'll find yourself reading a paragraph and then stopping to wonder incredulously, who writes like that, and why didn't his editor stop him? Unfortunately, the problems didn't really show up in the excerpt available here, so now I'm out twenty-five bucks.

Before you disregard this warning and buy it anyway, ask yourself a couple questions. Why would a book that should have a similar appeal to Michael Lewis's bestseller, Moneyball, end up with a tiny publisher like Brassey's? Because the other publishers wouldn't take it, that's why. Why can't you find it in the brick and mortar bookstores? Because those stores won't stock it, that's why. And finally, have a look at Dan Shaughnessy's blurb on the back cover. Talk about damned with faint praise. I ignored the signs because I really wanted to like this book, but it really isn't worth your time or money. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's better for you to hear it now.

Montreal Expos fans still grieve for the loss of Les Expos. This book is interesting and makes some good points. Since the amount of material on the Expos is so limited, I couldn't pass it up. Not inside info like you get with Brochu or Gallagher, but worth the price. Les Expos sont la!

The author goes to great lengths in the promotional literature to state he will speak of how the rivalry between the two cities led to conditions which led to the Expos leaving. He really doesn't get around to it until the final chapter and his argument wasn't convincing in that the conditions he described were not necessarily Toronto's fault, but rather were those of Montréalers and the consortium.

The structure of the book is a chronological mix of the 2002 baseball season for both teams and a decent outline of urban planning in Canada. As 2002-2003 were probably the years I was most excitedly following the Expos, I looked forward to this. But the author really leaned heavily on secondary sources -- mostly newspaper clippings -- to compile the season's history and didn't provide any real original research or new conclusions. The lack of original sources was a tad disappointing -- especially as I had this book on pre-order for more than four months.

A couple minor mistakes also got through the editing process and the author tries to argue (regarding the proposed Labatt Park) in chapter 10 that new stadiums don't promote urban revival, using the examples of Detroit and Toronto not improving their areas. Yet he doesn't analyze Baltimore, Denver and the south of Market area in San Francisco, where new ballparks did directly improve the neighborhoods.

The Blue Jays were the first back to back champs since some decades. The two World series they played in were exciting and the last ended with a home run on one run down, two outs and a full count. That series also had a thrilling extra inning game in Philadephia. But I did expect a lot more from this book than just a dull account of facts, similar to what I wrote here. Pictures and statistics, for instance. But no, this is one dull book with all the wrong pictures and a text that seems to be written on a lazy afternoon at the office. "Coffee Lou?" "Nah, I'm just finishing a book about something historical and that coffee may just have me missing my train. Gotta be home before six, you know, or the missus will kill me". Some book.