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Overview
"The Last Nine Innings is the last word on the inside of baseball. It's full of wonderful revelations and perceptions that help us understand the game in ways that we might never have imagined. Charlie Euchner has done a marvelous job in getting players to talk, simply, about how they play, and we're the wiser for it."
—Frank Deford
"Charlie takes an unorthodox approach to an emotional week and succeeds at finding the heart of both the tension of the World Series and the technical foundations of the baseball profession. This is a different book, in a very good way."
—Howard Bryant, the Washington Post, and author of Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball
"The lengthy description of game 7 makes for dramatic reading, and the interviews with key players from that game add a human dimension."
—Booklist
"I enjoyed Charles's book. It's an interesting read, rich in thought-provoking detail and context, in the manner of Malcolm Gladwell. He deftly pulls off a difficult double play: educating the serious fan while entertaining the casual one."
—Tom Verducci, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated
"The Last Nine Innings is entertaining, engaging and enlightening. You'll never watch a baseball game the same way."
—Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime and Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College
"Memo to ESPN analysts, FOX color announcers and daily baseball scribes: stop telling us about who had a haircut, who didn't have a haircut and who collects stamps. Rip out the red thread on the baseball, peel back the cowhide and talk about all the stuff that's wound up inside the game. That's what Charles Euchner does in The Last Nine Innings and it's fascinating."
—Leigh Montville, author of Ted Williams, Biography of an American Hero and Why Not Us?: The 86-Year Journey of the Boston Red Sox Fans from Unparalleled Suffering to the Promised Land of the 2004 World Series
The Great American Pastime has changed. For the first time in the history of the game, the three major forces that drive the evolution of modern pro baseball-The Triple Revolution-is revealed:
The Triple Revolution:
(1) Globalization of Recruiting and Business
(2) Scientific Analysis & Reduction of Physical Baseball Movements
(3) Evolution Effect of Modernized Stat-Crunching
Charles Euchner uses a dramatic moment-by-moment narrative of the seventh game of the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks to display the Triple Revolution; and to reveal the hidden dimensions of the "game within the game": From pitching motions to batting styles, from fielding and base-running, to training and strategy.
Euchner uses extensive interviews with all the players from this modern classic to produce a comprehensive view of the game that will fascinate casual fans, and stimulate baseball experts. The insider narrative includes Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Luis Gonzalez and Curt Schilling, along with the game's coaches, managers, support staff, even medical researchers and top game stats experts.
Among the questions answered: What is the ideal pitching motion? How can we judge defensive performance? What makes managers succeed and fail? What changes the odds over the course of the game? And much more. Whether a recreational fans, or serious student of the game, The Last Nine Innings enlightens; as baseball author Andrew Zimbalist writes, "You'll never watch a baseball game the same way."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781402248801 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Sourcebooks |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Charles Euchner is the author and editor of seven books, a former college professor, city planner and journalist. His books include Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them and The Umpire's Handbook. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Charles Euchner is the author and editor of seven books, a former college professor, city planner and journalist. His books include Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them and The Umpire's Handbook. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Read an Excerpt
The Last Nine Innings reveals the seismic changes that are dramatically transforming baseball. With his edge-of-the-seat, pitch-by-pitch account of the 2001 World Series finale-when the Arizona Diamondbacks rallied in the bottom of the ninth inning to take the championship from the dynastic New York Yankees-Charles Euchner provides an in-depth view of the revolutionary changes in the national pastime. Euchner brings the reader behind the scenes to see how scientific analysis, exotic statistics and globalization have changed the game forever.
Among the questions The Last Nine Innings answers: What is the ideal pitching motion? How can we judge defensive performance? What makes managers succeed and fail? What changes the odds over the course of the game? How do Derek Jeter and Randy Johnson and the other star players do it?
Euchner uses extensive interviews with all the players from this classic game-including Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Luis Gonzalez and Randy Johnson-as well as the game's coaches and managers, trainers and scouts, medical researchers and pioneers of statistical analysis. No other book provides such a comprehensive analysis of the game within the game.
Table of Contents
Pregame: Prelude to a World Series Classic
First Inning
1. Four-Tenths of a Second
2. Gambling Early
Second Inning
3. Bodies in Motion
4. Inside the Diamond
5. Calling the Game
6. Dramatis Personae
Third Inning
7. Standing at the Plate
8. Swinging Style
Fourth Inning
9. The Philosophy of Pitching
10. The Science of Pitching
Fifth Inning
11. Trench Warfare
12. Managing the Game
Sixth Inning
13. The Numbers Game
14. Strategy of Scoring
15. The Next Generation
Seventh Inning
16. Virtues of Veterans
17. Specialization
Eighth Inning
18. Going Global
19. Striving
20. Mo
Ninth Inning
21. The Big Unit
22. Breaks of the Game
23. End Game
Postgame: Ecstasy and Agony
Index