Three Nights in August
In 1988, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist H. G. "Buzz" Bissinger chronicled a high-drama season of high school football in Odessa, Texas. His accounts, later published under the title "Friday Night Lights," revealed the rabid devotion that the small West Texas town held for it's gridiron heroes. Bissinger's book became a best-seller, and last year, was released as a feature- length motion picture from Imagine Entertainment starring Billy Bob Thornton. Now, Bissinger has focused his considerable literary talent on Tony LaRussa, the manager of Thornton's favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals.In 2003, Bissinger was given unprecedented access to the Cardinals' clubhouse. The book's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, summarizes Bissinger's accounts in this excerpt from the promotional news release...
"Three Nights in August shows thrillingly that human nature- not statistics- dictates ballgames' outcomes. We watch from the dugout as a spectacular series unfolds between the Cardinals and their archrivals, the Cubs, and we uncover surprising truths about the pathology of slumps, the psychology of the clutch, the complex art of beanball retaliation, the rise of video, and the innumerable eccentricities of pitchers. The greatest players of our time grace the line-up: Albert Pujols, Sammy Sosa, Scott Rolen, Mark Prior, and more."
Fellow bloggers, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this may very well turn out to be the greatest book ever published. After reading it, each of us will likely get down on our hands and knees and thank Johannes Gutenberg for inventing the printing press. It promises to be a masterpiece of literature for many reasons beyond even the author's pedigree or his worthy subject. For one thing, the series in focus has been largely forgotten. A week after it was played, another series was played between the two teams at Wrigley Field in Chicago- a five game set in which the Cubs won four games. Many Cubs fans think of the second matchup as perhaps the most pivotal regular season series in the last half century for the Cubs. Now, thanks to Bissinger's exquisite timing in traveling to St. Louis, that second series will be lost to time and posterity, in favor of the previous Busch Stadium tussle, in which the Cards took two of three games in dramatic fashion. (The Cubs went on to win the division, ending the Cardinals three year dominance, and providing brief respite for the Cardinals' five Central Division foes. The Redbirds resumed their dominance in 2004, winning the division once again, this time by 13 games en route to the World Series.)
Bissinger's book will no doubt take Cubs pitchers Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and Carlos Zambrano to task for their head-hunting pitching styles, and through its story arc, expose Cards' sluggers Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, and Jim Edmonds as American folk heroes to rival Daniel Boone, Bonnie and Clyde, and Dizzy Dean.
"Three Nights in August" will be available in hardback binding, and upon 256 glorious pages, April 5th- well within the seven day shopping grace period of my birthday, April 2nd.
But coordinate, people! I don't need a dozen copies.
posted by CM @ 7:50 PM
3 Comments:
I agree that it will be a great book, particularly because its about the Cardinals and therefore also, as mentioned, about the "pathology of the slump". He should have visited the clubhouse when they were in the World Series.
When they talk about the "pathology of the slump," they're clearly talking about Tino Martinez.
"If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere," my ass.
Ironically, Daniel Boone, Dizzy Dean, Bonnie AND Clyde combined for only one fewer hit than Edmonds and Rolen had in the World Series last year.
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