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 enlarge | Author: Buzz Bissinger
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $5.19
You Save: $29.76 (85%)
New (18) Used (10) from $4.44
Avg. Customer Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 340483
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.8 x 4.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 1565119762
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570977866
EAN: 9781565119765
ASIN: 1565119762
Publication Date: April 7, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Pure Baseball November 27, 2005
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mr. Bissinger ("Friday Night Lights" - one of the best sports books ever written) takes us behind the scenes during a critical 3 game series between the Cards and the Cubs. It is geared toward the baseball purest ( such as discussing the strategy behind a pitch out) but should be fun for the casual fan. THIS IS A GREAT READ!!
Beautiful baseball, beautiful book October 28, 2005
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Using his unlimited access to Tony LaRussa and the Cardinals, Buzz Bissinger takes us inside the fundamental unit of a baseball season: the three-game series. And not just any such series, but one of epic proportions -- a meeting of perennial Midwest rivals, St. Louis versus Chicago, the Cardinals versus the Cubs. And not just a series between rivals but between contenders for the division title. On this August series could depend the outcome of the season and a berth in the playoffs.
Bissinger captures the drama of each game, of the entire series, in which the result could depend on a single pitch or one swing of the bat. It also depends, perhaps more substantively, on the manager. We see the games through the eyes of Tony LaRussa, who is at once strategist and tactician, statistician and historian, philosopher and theorist, psychologist and psychiatrist. LaRussa is a purist, a traditionalist -- a baseball man. He loves the game -- eats, sleeps, and breathes it -- and, like any lover, is devoted to it, tosses and turns over it, constantly thinks about it. He frets about whether, and when, to retaliate for batters hit by opposing pitchers. He plans for each game meticulously and focuses on the mechanics, down to individual batter-pitcher matchups.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and for all LaRussa's planning and strategizing, for all the skill of his players, a game usually -- too often, LaRussa couldn't be blamed for thinking -- returns to that single pitch, that one swing. "Anything can happen in baseball," Bissinger writes, "the beauty or the brutality." With generous asides on the players' and coaches' backgrounds and the history and evolution of the game, Bissinger reveals the heart of baseball, and the heart is this: it's a beautiful game -- even when it's brutal, it's beautiful.
Insight into an accomplished manager's thoughts about baseball October 24, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
3 Nights in August is a very solid baseball book, one that should be enjoyable to any baseball fan. It is interesting to see how an accomplished manager thinks throughout the game, not only about the specific strategies of the three games in question, but also about his players, about players on other teams and about other issues in baseball. While describing the accounts of an important three game series in August, 2003 against the Chicago Cubs, Bissinger also tells us about how Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, thinks about some general baseball issues. These issues include: throwing at hitters, handling individual players, looking at statistics as a guide only, steroids, and family life.
Some of his ideas are controversial. For example, it seems La Russa believes that any opponent pitcher that hits one of his batters did it on purpose. In particular, a pitch thrown by Kerry Wood in the second game of the three game series grazes the shirt of Pujols. It doesn't even hit any skin, muscle or bone, just nicks the shirt. In baseball, this is still considered a hit-batsman, and Pujols is awarded first base. However, La Russa still has vengeance in his head, and it is described how he plans to plunk Sosa, and is perturbed when his pitcher does not do the job correctly in the following innings. An eye for an eye, anytime his hitters gets hit, he wants to go after their guys. That's La Russa's philosophy, and in my opinion, it's a dangerous one and a stupid one. If he's going to plunk Sosa, what would stop the opposing manager from taking retaliation himself - especially if Pujols was not even hit, but it only nicked the shirt? I'll bet if La Russa was in the manager of the opposing team too, he would look at a possible Sosa plunking as reason to go after another one of the Cardinal hitters. And that's how these beanbrawls escalate.
The book also covers a bit about La Russa's views on steroids. He's one of the few people in baseball that admits that he had an inkling that baseball players, on his team and others as well, were using them. However what bothers me about the account about steroids in this book is the lack of insight into Mark McGwire. La Russa was his manager for many years with Oakland and St. Louis. Yet the discussion in this book is more on Canseco than McGwire. There's even a bit of propaganda that Bissinger writes: "He (McGwire) was big when he came into the league in 1986..." This was mentioned to mean that McGwire didn't get all that big, therefore he wasn't on steroids. But anyone who has ever seen one of McGwire's rookie baseball cards (just hit it up on ebay and you can find one) can easily see that by 1998, McGwire was about four times as big as he was back in his rookie season in 1986. He was a twig back then, a tall lanky guy with a long swing. In 1998, he was Paul Bunyon in real life, making even Sammy Sosa look like a little man. Why spend the time to harp on Canseco when McGwire is the more important baseball figure, and the one that La Russa knew more about? That was disappointing, but understandable since La Russa is still loyal to McGwire, but not to Canseco.
As for some folks that think this is an anti-Moneyball book - it is not...definitely not. There is rare mention of Moneyball or sabremetrics.
All in all, I thought this was a worthwhile book. Bissinger does a good job in relaying how La Russa thinks. Of course, not everyone is going to like or agree with every one of his thoughts, but the fact they were presented clearly and in an enjoyable way makes this book highly recommended.
 Toilet Paper Is More Interesting To Read October 15, 2005
8 out of 24 found this review helpful
If you believe that Tony LaRussa invented baseball, this is the book for you. Otherwise you will find Buzz Bissinger's take on baseball's most overrated manager to be a trite piece of [...].
A detailed description of Tony LaRussa and the Cardinals going through a 3 game series with the Cubs in 2003 is the focus of the book. The author attempts to show two things. First, how great Tony LaRussa is and secondly how complex managing a baseball game is. The author succeds on the first point as he fawns completly over his subject. On the second point, he fails greatly.
Bissinger details each and every managerial decision that LaRussa makes as if he is building a space shuttle by himself. Baseball fans completely understand the decisions that LaRussa (and Dusty Baker) are making in real time and do not need them dumbed down for them as Bissinger does in this book.
However, that is not the worst part of the book. Bissinger goes out of his way to knock anyone using statistical analysis (read the Moneyball crowd) to evaluate players while praising LaRussa for be able to utilize statistics. The reader is left to belive that Bissinger did not understand this paradox because he does not understand the game of baseball particulary well.
The book also includes a significant amount of complaining about the money that the players of today are making for their efforts. This is amusing since LaRussa is among the top compensated managers in the game. Based on the fact that Super Manager LaRussa is 5-12 is World Series games and 1-3 in the World Series (In each series his team was a significant to prohibitive favorite.), Bissinger's arrows about being overpaid are shot at the wrong target.
If you are a baseball fan who wants to learn something about the game, there are plenty of GOOD to GREAT books out there. Three Nights in August is not of them.
If you hate Moneyball and all that it stands for, you will like this book October 5, 2005
13 out of 25 found this review helpful
If, like me, however, you found Moneyball intriguing and insightful, you will probably hate this book. For some reason, Buzz Bissinger feels that his insider scoop descriptions of Tony LaRussa need to be coupled with this weird defense of the "old-school" and a puerile attack on Michael Lewis' Moneyball and sabermetrician statheads in general-- as if the statheads didn't love the game or something. This makes little sense, as you have to ask: who would ultimately devote his intellectual life to the compilation and analysis of aracane baseball statistics but a real lover of baseball?
Sad to say, but Lewis writes/researches circles around Bissinger. Unless you're a die-hard Cardinals fan and have to lap up every available fragment of Cardinals literature, I wouldn't waste my money on this book. It's too bad that Bissinger has to pick this fight, because he could have written a perfectly acceptable, though fluffy, account of LaRussa and his OCD managerial style without it. Bissinger had all the aaccess in the world to the Cardinals and apparently all the time in the world, as he followed the team around most of the season in order to provide back-fill for the 3 days in August that form the timeline of the narrative.
Since he did pick the fight, however, Bissinger is asking us to take sides and to pick a winner. He loses. Badly. Like a Left-handed utility infielder flailing at a Randy Johnson slider. He is not as sharp, talented, or eloquent as Michael Lewis, or even Bill James for that matter.
Skip this book.
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