One Pitch Away

[spitball]

I don't know if I've mentioned this book or not so I'm gonna anyway.
It involves the playoffs and World Series of 1986 and the players most impacted by it.
Donnie Moore
Billy Buck
Gene Mauch
Doug Decinces
Bob Knepper
Billy Hatcher.....and more.

I started reading it again because the Angels are going to the playoffs and I wanted to go back and take a look at the last Angels team to make it .

Oh yeah. The author is Mike Sowell.

[Skip]

Spitball - what's your point? Is it a good book? Is it just 'a' book on the last Angels playoff team? Do you recommend it? I'm not tryin' to be bitchy here, but don't know where you want this to go.

[spitball]

It's a well written book about that year. Sorry about the vagueness, we're on deadline here and someone was talking at me when I was writing.
It involves all the teams in the playoffs that year .
The second half delves into the personalities and the directions their lives took in the aftermath of the 86 playoffs and World Series.
The chapter on Donnie Moore as told by his wife is riveting and sad.
It talks about Bob Knepper and the pressures he felt as a devout Christian . He felt he had so much to prove because of the belief that Christian athletes were soft.
Doug Decinces talks about his treatment by Mike Port the following year. He was released 3 quarters of the way through the season so they wouldn't have to pay his bonus.
'86 was a strange year .
Is that enough............sheesh.
And yes. I say thumbs up on the book.

[pathogan]

...about a very strange playoff,arguably the most exciting lcs game ever[especially the 5th game of the angels/sox}.I enjoyed it, though, unless Im in a timre warp,I think I read this in the beginning of the last decade.

[KCBOOMER]

Did it go into the failures of this team to get into the playoffs in '84 and '85 when they had the best talent in the division?