Pennant Race - Softcover

Brosnan, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140067558 ISBN 13: 9780140067552

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1983

Synopsis

The companion piece to his baseball classic The Long Season, Jim Brosnan's Pennant Race recounts the game-by-game lives of the Cincinnati Reds during their pennant-winning 1961 season—as only Mr. Brosnan could write it. He was a pitcher with Cincinnati that season, but also (as The Long Season had proved) one of the sharpest and wittiest writers baseball ever produced. His insider's account concentrates on how and why the Reds won the pennant that year. But as with The Long Season, Mr. Brosnan displays an uncanny knack for capturing the alternating excitement and tedium of a baseball season, its colorful characters, and the droll and uproarious aspects of everyday baseball. "One of the best baseball books ever written. If we allow it to be called a diary, it is probably one of the best American diaries as well. Jim Brosnan is a gifted observer.... His book is beautifully constructed, helped no end by the essential unity and chronology of a baseball season, and strengthened by a central theme: the increasing possibility that the Reds will win the pennant.... The book bristles with pungent dialogue, some of it hilarious, some bitter."—Arnold Hano, New York Times Book Review. "As the Samuel Pepys of the league champions, Brosnan obviously knows his baseball, writes about it wittily, informally and with irony. He is a cynical, tough professional athlete and his book makes wonderful reading for anyone who knows the difference between Chris Pelekoudas and Charles McCabe."—William Hogan, San Francisco Chronicle.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

With legendary pitcher Jim Brosnan’s first book, The Long Season, he not only entered the canon of great sports literature but also redefined it when he returned two years later to write Pennant Race—a memoir of his days playing for the Cincinnati Reds and how the team went from not being taken seriously as a contender to having a shot at the 1961 National League pennant.

In Pennant Race, Brosnan—with his trademark wise-guy wit and plainspoken practicality—once again offers a refreshingly candid alternative to hackneyed baseball mythologizing. Day by day, game by game, Brosnan reveals the real lives of professional ballplayers: their exhilaration and frustration, hope and despair, chronic worry over job security, playful camaraderie, world-weary cynicism, and boyish—if cautious—optimism. Although the Reds would ultimately lose the World Series to the Yankees, for Brosnan and his teammates, this was a winning season.

Pennant Race vividly captures a remarkable year in the life of a ball club and the golden age of one of Major League Baseball’s most memorable eras.

About the Author:

Jim Brosnan is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Long Season and Pennant Race. He was a Major League Baseball pitcher for nine years, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, and Cincinnati Reds. He went on to be a sportscaster and contributor to Sports Illustrated, Life, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the New York Times Magazine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0140067558
• ISBN 13: 9780140067552
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250