108 Stitches
Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game
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3.8 • 33 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This is New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated broadcaster Ron Darling's 108 baseball anecdotes that connect America’s game to the men who played it.
In 108 Stitches, New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning broadcaster Ron Darling offers his own take on the "six degrees of separation" game and knits together wild, wise, and wistful stories reflecting the full arc of a life in and around our national pastime.
Darling has played with or reported on just about everybody who has put on a uniform since 1983, and they in turn have played with or reported on just about everybody who put on a uniform in a previous generation. Through relationships with baseball legends on and off the field, like Yale coach Smoky Joe Wood, Willie Mays, Bart Giamatti, Tom Seaver and Mickey Mantle, Darling's reminiscences reach all the way back to Babe Ruth and other early twentieth-century greats.
Like the 108 stitches on a baseball, Darling's experiences are interwoven with every athlete who has ever played, every coach or manager who ever sat in a dugout, and every fan who ever played hooky from work or school to sit in the bleachers for a day game.
Darling's anecdotes come together to tell the story of his time in the game, and the story of the game itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Baseball journalist, broadcaster, and former Mets pitcher Darling (The Complete Game) shows his deep love of the sport and the personalities that drive it in this collection of colorful anecdotes. The book is filled with short vignettes about players including such stars as Wade Boggs (who, after losing the 1986 World Series, had "tears running down his face like there'd been a death in his family"), as well as forgotten minor leaguers, loosely connected by such themes as "Some Crying in Baseball" and "Head Games." Darling takes a critical but understanding tone on topics like Darryl Strawberry's drug addiction, as well as the widespread use of steroids by Oakland Athletics players (Jose Canseco, an admitted user of steroids, called out teammates Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi, among others), showing how the stresses of the game can lead to regrettable decisions. He also includes his own stories, such as when he was hazed as a Mets rookie by an unsmiling Ron Hodges, who spit a stream of chewing tobacco onto his new uniform. Darling's at his best when he pivots from career trivia to philosophical yarns, showing that "the thing about baseball is that it catches the light of how we live and reflects it back to us in meaningful ways." This entertaining insider volume is sure to please baseball enthusiasts.
