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Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating by Mark Armour, Daniel Levitt
thomcat's review
4.0
I'm a baseball umpire, and big part of the problem is that there aren't specific rules to prohibit most cheating. The authors rightly point out that team management is also pretty soft on this - they would usually prefer that players and teams play on. The book covers a *lot* of ground on "creative" players, managers and owners.
The authors are both active in SABR, and there are a lot of references and notes for the incidents - the index is also ultra complete. The topics are solid - stealing signs, altering equipment, drugs, and flat out breaking the rules. They definitely missed the boat in not numbering the chapters as innings. I really enjoyed Mark Armour's [b:Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball|7218039|Joe Cronin A Life in Baseball|Mark Armour|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328822091l/7218039._SX50_.jpg|7992394]. I just wish I enjoyed this one more...
The chapters are a bit scattered. Within a chapter, the anecdotes jump around chronologically. It would be nice to list the specific rules (if any) that relate to the topic. As an umpire, I didn't need this, and maybe hard core fans wouldn't, but is that the audience? Both chapters 2 and 4 refer to sign stealing - the latter more about electronics and trash cans, but the two have a lot of cross over.
I thought the epilog was well done. The authors came back to compare similar issues in different eras, some acceptable and some not. It is very true that a lot of the "cheating" is there because we have umpires, and this is loosely related to subjective foul calls in sports like basketball, American and non-American football (soccer). Only in the epilog did the authors reveal that random enforcement made a big difference in both drug use and foreign substances applied to baseballs.
In summary, it's a good book, but the early high ratings are mostly from baseball readers who have been eagerly awaiting the book. I suspect the ratings will drop quite a bit over the next few years. I don't want to hasten that drop too much, so I'll list this 3.5 star book as a 4 on goodreads :)
The authors are both active in SABR, and there are a lot of references and notes for the incidents - the index is also ultra complete. The topics are solid - stealing signs, altering equipment, drugs, and flat out breaking the rules. They definitely missed the boat in not numbering the chapters as innings. I really enjoyed Mark Armour's [b:Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball|7218039|Joe Cronin A Life in Baseball|Mark Armour|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328822091l/7218039._SX50_.jpg|7992394]. I just wish I enjoyed this one more...
The chapters are a bit scattered. Within a chapter, the anecdotes jump around chronologically. It would be nice to list the specific rules (if any) that relate to the topic. As an umpire, I didn't need this, and maybe hard core fans wouldn't, but is that the audience? Both chapters 2 and 4 refer to sign stealing - the latter more about electronics and trash cans, but the two have a lot of cross over.
I thought the epilog was well done. The authors came back to compare similar issues in different eras, some acceptable and some not. It is very true that a lot of the "cheating" is there because we have umpires, and this is loosely related to subjective foul calls in sports like basketball, American and non-American football (soccer). Only in the epilog did the authors reveal that random enforcement made a big difference in both drug use and foreign substances applied to baseballs.
In summary, it's a good book, but the early high ratings are mostly from baseball readers who have been eagerly awaiting the book. I suspect the ratings will drop quite a bit over the next few years. I don't want to hasten that drop too much, so I'll list this 3.5 star book as a 4 on goodreads :)
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