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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
This book made me want to be a minor-league reliever! Never mind the uncertainty, soul-crushing self doubt or madness-inducing travel schedule - Hayhurst makes it seem like every day is summer camp, and that no matter how bad it gets, playing baseball is still more fun than not playing it.
Awesome insight on a baseball players life as he tries to deal with family issues and baseball stuff! If you are a sports fan I recommend this book. I am not big on baseball but this book kept my interests throughout.
An honest, hilarious view on life in baseball's minor leagues. My only criticism is not for the author but whoever edited the book: You are a terrible editor. Typos abound.
This book was easy to read and enjoyable. However, it would have benefited greatly from a better editor and a good proofreader. All the poorly edited sentences and grammar errors made it just that much less enjoyable.
Hayhurst is a very engaging writer who has a great turn of phrase. It's always interesting getting a view into what life in the minors is really like, and this book doesn't disappoint. I took a star away because he has a few preachy moments. Also, because it's about baseball, it is OF COURSE about Hayhurst and his father.
I read this last summer and loved it. Dirk Hayhurst might not be good enough at baseball for a long big league career but he is a very engaging writer. This book follows one season in his minor league career and paints a beautiful picture of a world most of us will never see. It's the kind of book where I could feel myself smiling as I read it. It also deals with some of Hayhurst's struggles both on and off the field, written in a way that made me care what happens to him more than I expected.
From http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2010/04/dirk-hayhursts-bullpen-gospels.html
If you like baseball, then you have to read Dirk Hayhurst's The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran (2010). It is not airy bow-tie George Will baseball, but nitty gritty Jim Bouton stuff. I have rarely laughed out loud as much as I did reading this book. Yet for all the raunchy parts (shared nudity and farting are important elements of a baseball career) Hayhurst thinks very deeply and intelligently about what it means to be a baseball player, and what it's worth.
Hayhurst (who, sadly enough, will miss this season with an injury) was in the minors when he decided to write a book about the 2007 season. Eventually he made his way to the Padres (and later to the Blue Jays) but the book focuses on the details of spring training, A ball, and Double A. Importantly, the point of the book is not just gross details, but how players find meaning in the game--how they socialize, connect with their own families, connect with communities, and even figure themselves out. Hayhurst is a reliever and therefore spends a lot of time doing mostly nothing in the bullpen. The pitchers get constantly heckled and pestered for baseballs, which they can't hand out, but every so often they get a situation like a boy with cancer who gets the time of his life by sitting in the bullpen for two innings. Hayhurst chronicles the heckling (and counter-heckling) in a hilarious way, then shifts gears to think about how just being in the uniform can make a child's eyes light up.
Toward the end, Hayhurst spends time talking to Trevor Hoffman about baseball, and says the following:
Well, baseball is a lot of things, but it's not everything. It can't make your brother sober. It can't make your family stop fighting. It can't make peace or win wars or cure cancer. It makes or breaks a lot of people, like many jobs where the folks who do it find their identity. I don't know if it should be as valuable as it is, or maybe baseball is valuable, and we players just don't use it the right way. I guess that's what I want to figure out in this book (p. 336).
Well said. And you also learn that players must wear a cup at all times or get fined, because otherwise, like Hayhurst, they may get nailed with a line drive and end up with a baseball seam mark on their testicles. This book really has it all.
If you like baseball, then you have to read Dirk Hayhurst's The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran (2010). It is not airy bow-tie George Will baseball, but nitty gritty Jim Bouton stuff. I have rarely laughed out loud as much as I did reading this book. Yet for all the raunchy parts (shared nudity and farting are important elements of a baseball career) Hayhurst thinks very deeply and intelligently about what it means to be a baseball player, and what it's worth.
Hayhurst (who, sadly enough, will miss this season with an injury) was in the minors when he decided to write a book about the 2007 season. Eventually he made his way to the Padres (and later to the Blue Jays) but the book focuses on the details of spring training, A ball, and Double A. Importantly, the point of the book is not just gross details, but how players find meaning in the game--how they socialize, connect with their own families, connect with communities, and even figure themselves out. Hayhurst is a reliever and therefore spends a lot of time doing mostly nothing in the bullpen. The pitchers get constantly heckled and pestered for baseballs, which they can't hand out, but every so often they get a situation like a boy with cancer who gets the time of his life by sitting in the bullpen for two innings. Hayhurst chronicles the heckling (and counter-heckling) in a hilarious way, then shifts gears to think about how just being in the uniform can make a child's eyes light up.
Toward the end, Hayhurst spends time talking to Trevor Hoffman about baseball, and says the following:
Well, baseball is a lot of things, but it's not everything. It can't make your brother sober. It can't make your family stop fighting. It can't make peace or win wars or cure cancer. It makes or breaks a lot of people, like many jobs where the folks who do it find their identity. I don't know if it should be as valuable as it is, or maybe baseball is valuable, and we players just don't use it the right way. I guess that's what I want to figure out in this book (p. 336).
Well said. And you also learn that players must wear a cup at all times or get fined, because otherwise, like Hayhurst, they may get nailed with a line drive and end up with a baseball seam mark on their testicles. This book really has it all.
Fantastic book. Honestly one of the only books where I found myself having to stifle an audible laugh so as not to appear strange to those sitting around me. This book had everything I like: baseball, humor, life-lessons, behind te scenes information. I loved it; first 5 star book in some time.
Entertaining stories and a real, often unspoken perspective on baseball and life.
Fun read. At times touching, at times hilarious, at all times eminitently readable.
A must for any baseball fan's bookshelf (Virtual or otherwise).
A must for any baseball fan's bookshelf (Virtual or otherwise).