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Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember | 
 enlarge | Author: John Feinstein
Creator: Mel Foster
Publisher: Tantor Media
Category: Book
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $18.34
You Save: $11.65 (39%)
New (15) Used (2) from $18.34
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 1645286
Format: Audiobook, Cd
Media: MP3 CD
Edition: MP3 Una
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 1400157498
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570922
EAN: 9781400157495
ASIN: 1400157498
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| • | Paperback - Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember | | • | Hardcover - Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember | | • | Audio CD - Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember | | • | Audio Download - Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember (Unabridged) | | • | Kindle Edition - Living on the Black | | • | Audio CD - Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember |
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Product Description
Pitchers are the heart of baseball, and John Feinstein tells the story of the game today through one season and two great pitchers working in the crucible of the New York media market.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 An interesting and insightful look at two pitching greats July 8, 2008
Living on the Black is an interesting and insightful look at Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina, two of the game's greatest pitchers, during the 2007 season. Both pitchers experience frustrating seasons.
Glavine posts a 13-8 record for the Mets while registering his 300th career win. The Mets choke down the stretch, blowing a 7-game lead with 16 to play. Mussina goes 11-6 for the Yankees, who capture the wild card and lose to the Cleveland Indians in the first round of the playoffs.
Although I'm sure author John Feinstein would have preferred for the Mets and Yankees to have met in the World Series, or at least advanced farther in the playoffs, the book still delivers.
Feinstein devotes the first 125 pages to the careers of Glavine and Mussina prior to the 2007 season. I found that part of the book more interesting than I would have thought, particularly since I was fairly familiar with the careers of both players.
Feinstein's discussion of spring training pitching philosophy and workout routines is the best I've read.
Glavine and Mussina share a number of traits: They're intellectual, physically talented, reliable, push themselves to keep improving and constantly make adjustments.
Living on the Black gives readers a better appreciation of pitching and its challenges. You will better understand a pitcher's psyche, frustrations and ups and downs. The value each pitcher puts on his family also comes through strongly.
As Glavine pursues his 300th career win, Mussina attempts to deal with being dropped from the Yankees rotation after not missing a start in 498 turns.
Feinstein is as smooth a writer as Glavine and Mussina are pitchers. Despite its 500-plus pages, the book never lags. And, you don't have to be a Mets or Yankees fan to enjoy this book.
For baseball lovers everywhere June 30, 2008
John Feinstein's latest tome considers two veteran major leaguers plying their craft during the 2007 season search of major milestones in the magnifying glass of the media frenzy that is New York. Tom Glavine won his 300th game with the Mets last year, while Mike Mussina, a member of the cross-town Yankees, won his 250th.
Feinstein painstakingly chronicles these athletes as they inch towards their lofty accomplishments. Glavine has since returned to the Atlanta Braves, for whom he won more than 240 of 305 regular season games (as of this writing) and two Cy Young Awards, indicative of the best pitcher in the league.
After brief recaps of their journeys through the school and amateur ranks, minor league apprenticeships, and careers prior to 2007, Feinstein settles in for the long, detailed process for which he has become famous in such books as TALES FROM Q SCHOOL, LET ME TELL YOU A STORY and A SEASON ON THE BRINK, among many others. No detail is too small, no scrap of information unimportant. The breadth of the book --- more than 500 pages --- can seem daunting, but for baseball fans, it's never boring. Feinstein's access earned him heretofore unknown insights into each man's habits and the social structure of a professional sports team, with all the disparate personalities and quirks.
Glavine won his landmark game on August 5th in a nationally televised affair against the Chicago Cubs, with the added emotion of his family on hand to share in the event as he became just the 23rd major league pitcher to do so. On the other end of the celebratory spectrum, Mussina notched win number 250 in his last victory of the season on September 23rd (just over 50 have accomplished that). He didn't even return to the dugout to watch the final out, having been relieved some innings earlier. "Two hundred isn't three hundred," Feinstein quotes him as saying, giving a nod to Glavine. "I understand that."
On the periphery of the individual milestones are the disparate fortunes of the Mets and Yankees, eternally at odds as they struggle for the hearts and minds of fans from within and without New York's borders. The Mets, odds-on-favorite to win at least the National League pennant, blew a comfortable lead for the Eastern division with a late-season collapse of historic proportion. That Glavine had one of the worst games of his life when the Mets needed him most dampens the love that the team's fans will hold for him for years to come.
The Yankees, on the other hand, struggled mightily before rallying to capture the American League wild card slot (they subsequently lost to the Cleveland Indians in the first round of the playoffs).
Despite a few glitches --- major or minor, depending on the reader's demand for accuracy --- Feinstein's thoughtful treatise of two thoughtful craftsmen at the tail end of their careers rank high on the list of such books. Acolytes of the teams will relive sorrow and elation, respectively.
--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
Great insight to the art of major league pitching June 20, 2008
This book is a great read for those who happen to be fans of the cerebral aspects of baseball, and in particular pitching, as Feinstein picks the brains of two of the most successful major league pitchers of the past two decades while chronicling their 2007 seasons. The biographies of the two guys, Mike Mussina of the Yankees and Tom Glavine of the Mets (now again with the Braves in 2008) offers insights not only to how to get batters out, but on the relationships in the clubhouse between players, coaches, and the press, as well as the 1994 baseball strike and the role of the baseball players' union (of which Mussina and Glavine are player representatives for their respective teams).
The drama of the season is followed in two strands: In plot A: Glavine chases baseball immortality by capping a Hall of Fame career with 300 wins as the Mets appear to be cruising to a division title. In plot B, Mussina faces a career crisis as he battles injuries and ineffectiveness, hitting a nadir when he is removed from the starting rotation for the first time in his life while the Yankees pursue the wildcard. At the season's end, however, the tables have turned, and it's Glavine who faces a hostile press when he pitches one of the worst games of his career to end the Mets season as they suffer a historic collapse and miss the playoffs, while Mussina recovers sufficiently to reinvent his style and earn his 250th win, although not enough to regain the trust of Yankee management to start in the postseason, and he can only watch as his team loses in the first round of the playoffs again.
Overall, the book is enjoyable, with nuggets of pitching wisdom and funny anecdotes sprinkled throughout. The chapters do get a little tedious once the narrative begins detailing the 2007 season game by game (and there are some typos), but you will definitely learn a lot about pitching and baseball.
Very insightful June 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Reading the sports section of the newspaper will give you the results of yesterday's games. There will be some in-depth articles on how the home team fared, and there may even occasionally be a human-interest story on a particular athlete. But to truly understand how a professional athlete thinks or feels, to comprehend the psychology of the game, and to know what separates them from the talented high school or college star - you have to read a sports book.
John Feinstein has made a career following teams and athletes in various sports through a typical season, so that the reader can experience vicariously the life of a professional athlete. In Living on the Black, he follows two great pitchers in the twilight of their careers as they both play in the media-crazy hothouse of New York, albeit for different teams.
In this insightful book, Feinstein follows Tom Glavine of the New York Mets as he struggles to reach 300 wins, which all but ensures his eventual election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Simultaneously, the author traces the key events in the 2007 season of Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees as he approaches 250 career wins, a stellar accomplishment for any pitcher. These men struggle with injuries-physical and psychological, as they deal with both personal and team expectations.
The book is appropriately titled Living on the Black. The black refers to the inside and outside edges of the plate where control or finesse pitchers must throw to be successful in this most demanding game. Glavine had always been a control, rather than a power pitcher, and Messina having been forced to become one due to age and the decreasing speed of his once dominant fastball.
Although these two share many common experiences of having had a highly successful and lengthy career in baseball, they come from decidedly different backgrounds and exhibit very different personalities. What they do share in common is a strong belief in themselves and their ability to constantly fine-tune their mechanics, as well as their thought processes, which allows them to stay at the top of their game.
John Feinstein is an American sportswriter and commentator. He is a columnist for the Washington Post, an author, is a guest commentator on NPR.
Armchair Interviews says: You can learn how players stay at the top of their game with this up-close-and-personal story.
Not for the Casual Fan May 27, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Sports writers tend to specialize in one sport or another, but John Feinstein writes about different sports, and does every one equally well. However, his latest book, Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember, is definitely for readers who are more than just casual baseball fans. It's for those readers who are passionate enough to want to read about the 2007 season, following each pitch made by Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina. I'm one of those baseball fanatics.
When Feinstein picked Tom Glavine of the New York Mets and Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees, he selected two experienced pitchers who were very different. He knew if one was injured during the year, he still had another pitcher to follow. Glavine, a lefty, who never went to college, is a future Hall of Famer who spent his career in the National League. Mike Mussina, a righty, went to Stanford, and pitches in the American League. By selecting these two men, Feinstein could also examine the culture of the two New York baseball teams.
Feinstein sets the scene for his book by telling about the careers for these two masterful pitchers. Since Glavine and Mussina both cooperated with the author, it makes for a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the lives and careers of the two players. And, then 2007 proved to be an interesting year. Tom Glavine went for his 300th win, and the Mets went down to the wire in their Division. Mike Mussina struggled to find his pitches after spending time on the Disabled List, and the Yankees' woes jeopardized Joe Torre's career. Feinstein's writing is so good that even those of us who remember how 2007 turned out are left hanging on every pitch.
John Feinstein's Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember is one book for baseball fans to savor, and remember.
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