Three Nights In August

Moneyball is a great "Airplane" read.

Two of my favorite humorous titles are

"Little League Confidential" for those who have finished the youth baseball programs. It is hilarious, and very entertaining.

"Rotisserie Baseball" from the guys that started the fantasy sports things about 15? years ago, was also a good read.

Little League Confidential is one of those books that you keep nodding your head as you read it.

You keep nodding your head because you know most of the "characters" in book by a different name!

Sure is a fun read.

I have read all of these - Moneyball is a great read as is 3 Nights... but LL Confidential is hilarious.

How 'bout the LL team sponsored by the Hair Salon called "Curl Up and Dye"!

Yeah, I seemed to know everybody the writer was talking about.

He even described me in a couple of places.


From Amazon:

quote:

This Little League coach's account of his woes, travails and soul storms in the course of one season is side-splitting. Geist, a CBS News correspondent, lives in Ridgewood, N.J., where he has shepherded preadolescents on the diamond for nine years and, to his amazement, has survived. He describes the draft system for securing players and a shrewd angle-worker who rigged the system. He analyzes the four major types of coaches: "It's only a game, so let's just have fun" (the nerd, according to the kids); "Win or I'll kill you" (the *******, according to the kids); "We're here to build character, to learn life's lessons" (the despicable preacher, according to Geist); "I pick the kids with the best-looking mothers" (attribution superfluous). He writes of the games, with pitchers flinging balls three feet over the batters' heads, outfielders aiming for third base but throwing to first and a few tyros who are actually good. For anyone in need of a good laugh.

Little League Confidential is a MUST for everyone who participates on this website. You will probably have to order it at your local bookstore because it is normally not on the shelf. It is so darn funny, you will laugh your head off. We order several copies every year and give it to my son's baseball coaches as a Christmas gift or end-of-season gift.

I played in the New York-Penn League in 1983 and this guy named Roger Kahn wrote a book about a team in that league. It is a really neat book. The team he wrote about was an independent team, which means they had no MLB affiliation. There were several "famous" owners of this team, Bill Murray, his brother Brian and some others I can't remember.

The ironic thing about the story is, this team beat my team, the Newark Orioles in the championship series. It was kinda a fairy tale ending to the story.

It's a really good read and a neat story of minor league baseball. The thing that I remember most was that I was on the DL during the second half of the season and didn't get to pitch in the playoffs. It would have been fun.

Here's a synopsis (if that's the right word) of the book "Good Enough To Dream" that I found. It's a pretty interesting story and worth reading if you like baseball.



In 1983 Roger Kahn went in search of a minor league baseball team to buy. After his first choices fell through, he ended up owner and president of the Class A Utica Blue Sox in the New York-Penn League. Lacking a major league affiliation, he put together a rag tag group of players who had been dropped by various major league club's minor league affiliates or who were never drafted. This book establishes Kahn's life long love of baseball and then follows the Blue Sox from opening day to the final game of the 1983 season. Many books on baseball have used this inside the clubhouse format. Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" and Pat Jordan's "A False Spring" come readily to mind. "Good Enough to Dream" is different from the others in that it is told from the perspective of the front office.
The machinations of the front office, the relationships among the players and the manager, the descriptions of the long bus rides, the dreams and hopes of the players, and the hardships that all involved are willing to withstand for the love of the game are all interesting and well told. The one area which failed to hold my attention was the long narrative of the Blue Sox's run for the league title. Kahn attempted to heighten the drama with repeated illustrations of why the team felt that the league office was working against their success and he left no doubt about the strong will to succeed that drove everyone in the organization, but in the final analysis I just couldn't seem to care enough about who won the 1983 New York-Penn League championship to do more than skim through the last one hundred or so pages. That having been stated, this is a very good book about a part of baseball that few fans ever get a chance to see.