It's a great book. I'm about 4/5ths through it.

One hilarious part of the book describing Sammy Sosa coming up to bat in a 2003 Cubs/Cards game:

"Sosa approaches the plate in his usual style, more decked out than an overeager groom, tight blue batting gloves stretched tight, a guard to protect his right shin, plus the strangest-looking bat in history, even minus the cork that popped out earler in the season. From the bottom of it hangs an oversized knob that, as one Chicago sportswriter put it, looks like an ever-expanding goiter."

I read the book. It's good. I like Bissinger. Friday Night Lights was really good. I also read Gunn's review of the Book on hardball times. I agree with Gunn that Bissinger doesn't analyze LaRussa's decision making in the book, but it's kinda hard to do that when your supposed to be writing it with him. Also, I'm not sure that was his goal. I think his goal was to write an inside into a series between two great rivals in the middle of August. I liked the parts about Cal Eldred and Darryl Kile.

Bissinger wasn't writing the book with La Russa -- La Russa's name is nowhere in the "written by," nor did he read any draft of the book until the last one, nor did he offer any changes to the book (besides correcting factual errors). Bissinger was shadowing La Russa for the season to get a glimpse into the way his mind worked, but that doesn't mean he wasn't perfectly free to weigh his thought processes. And I agree, Casie, that his goal was to be more descriptive than critical, but the end result is a book that's more boring than it needs to be.

Having said that, I regret I didn't spend more time in my review talking about how La Russa's mind worked. In this respect Bissinger's book is pretty good. It confirmed something I've suspected for awhile -- that TLR has a poor grasp of weeding out noises from signals. EVERY aspect of a ballgame seems freighted with importance to him. If that makes sense...

The original intent was for the book to be coauthored, but after talking about it they changed that. I'm about halfway through right now, but I second Brians thought about TLR information processing abilities. He seems to equate volume of information with quality.

"He seems to equate volume of information with quality."

That's the best summation of La Russa I've ever heard. I think that's it exactly.

My biggest complaint with the book--and this reveals to the world just how big a geek I am--is that the author/copy editor chose to italicize "hit and run."

There's no possible copyediting argument in favor of italicizing that phrase. You don't italicize "bunt" or "double play" as if they're weird imports from the foreign tongue of "baseball" that are only starting to make their way in the English lexicon.

It's a bizarre choice, and it becomes really irritating in the section where Bissinger considers at length LaRussa's use of the hit and run. It's like that part in _War and Peace_ where they're on a hunt with a guy known as "Uncle," and every time his name appears, it's with quotes around it to remind us that he's not really their uncle. It's impressively annoying.

See: geek.

Oops. Make that in _Anna Karenina_, which I think is where it actually happens. Russian lit scholars, feel free to correct my correction.