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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

Crazy 08 is a decent book, definitely worth a look at the bargain book price. I wasn't a great fan of Murphy's writing style, and thought the book could have done with a bit more polish, but there are moments in the book that make it worth keeping on the shelf. It is possible that I have simply read too many baseball books, but I found the "timeouts" a bit tiresome, and I have found that too many writers of baseball books always try to write thinly disguised social commentaries of America at the same time as they write a story about baseball. While there is no doubt that the stories are intertwined, the more skilled writers find ways to weave the stories together without distracting from that narrative at hand.

Bottom line - if I were doing an Amazon.com review I would give the book three stars out of five, and recommend a purchase at the current price. There are certainly less worthy titles that would cost you more.

While we're recommending other baseball books in the topic, I would recommend that anyone who has not had the pleasure of reading the baseball books by Mike Sowell check out the following:

The Pitch That Killed
July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty
One Pitch Away: The Players' Stories of the 1986 League Championships and World Series

The first book deals with the fatal beaning of Ray Chapman by Carl Mays, but ends up covering the histories of both players as well as the entire 1920 seasons of the Yankees and Indians that ended in the Indians taking the World Series title under manager Tris Speaker. The other two are self explanatory, and One Pitch Away is obviously more modern, but both are great reads.

Mantle's autobiography is a fairly good read, and I have always considered My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams a masterpiece as far as baseball autobiographies go - it obviously had a co-author, but Ted's influence and voice are there in all their glory. Anyone who enjoyed Halberstam's October 1964 might also enjoy Bob Gibson's book, which was titled "Stranger to the Game". Gibson has always been one of my favorite players, and the guts the man showed in his personal and professional life were without peer. If I had one game with my life on the line there is no question that Bob Gibson would be the man who would be starting.