Feeding The Green Monster

[SmedIndy]

I just finished it. It's a quick read, but I'm a bit disappointed in it. I think he's good in short doses on the net, but over a long stretch he kind of gets samey. He offers no real insight, and he isn't much of a storyteller to make it compelling.

[Skip]

Ryan Wilkins did a review at

http://baseballjunkie.blogspot.com/

More positive than negative, but pretty lukewarm. Pretty much how I felt about "Baseball Dynastys"

[Xanadu Dragon]

Originally posted by Skip
Pretty much how I felt about "Baseball Dynastys"

BD didn't do a whole lot for me too.

I think Neyer wants to be a James, but, you can't be someone else.

[SmedIndy]

I actually enjoyed Baseball Dynasties, more so than this.

In BD, Neyer and Epstein were more theorists, and not storytellers. Here, Neyer tries to weave in some antecdotes and its not that successful.

Very few can be both sabermatrician and storyteller successfully.

[Skip]

BD was ok, I enjoyed reading it but it came off as awfully light. I mean, its not exactly rocket science to use simple standard deviation calculations to show distance above the mean. At the same time, I was surprised no one (to my knowledge) had done so. Maybe I'm just jealous I didnt think of it first. :)

[SmedIndy]

Originally posted by Skip
BD was ok, I enjoyed reading it but it came off as awfully light. I mean, its not exactly rocket science to use simple standard deviation calculations to show distance above the mean. At the same time, I was surprised no one (to my knowledge) had done so. Maybe I'm just jealous I didnt think of it first. :)

You say standard deviations to a baseball man, they'd think someone was locked up for 10-20.


:D

[gyb13]

Red Sox fans out there (or others who have been to Fenway):
what did you think of Neyer's portrayal of Fenway, the fans, hecklers, etc - the life w/in the stadium?

[sweaver]

Just finished the book...I think it's about half of what it could/should be. Neyer seems awfully self-absorbed here. There's a lot more about his personal life than I care to know. Still, it has good points.

[Xanadu Dragon]

How thick is it?

[sweaver]

About 300 pages.

[Skip]

Here's Neyer's take on the process of publishing the book. Not really relevant to the book's content, but I found it interesting.

http://www.robneyer.com/book_01_02.html

[GGC]

Rob updated his website. Cool! I've finally seen him on TV (BTW, he didn't wear a flannel shirt) and heard him on the radio. I've conversed with him through e-mail before and he seems like a good guy. I hope that this new book of his is good.

[sweaver]

A bit longer version of my thoughts on Feeding ; does anyone else think the cover of the paperback (see website link above) is truly awful? One of the worst covers I have ever seen. It starts you off with the impression the whole book was done on the cheap.

The essay on Neyer's website answers one of my questions about the book, about how he got the money to spend six months in Boston (not a cheap place to live) and to pay scalpers for tickets to every home game, and how with said investment he still ended up looking for a publisher.

I probably wasn't quite as disappointed with the book as the planned original publisher, but I understand his unhappiness with the manuscript turned in, especially if Neyer subsequently pared 25,000 words before the eventually product was published. IMO, about twice that much more could be eliminated, related to the author's personal life, and improve the book. Also, more material about the season in general and the Sox in particular could certainly have been added, making the book stronger.

It's not a bad book, I kind of liked it. It was just like a Peggy Lee song: Is that all there is?