...
It has been done a dozen times before. Gather up a few Casey Stengel quotes . . .Bob Uecker has said a few funny things . . .oh, and Berra ...find every Yogi Berra quote you can! Put 'em all in alphabetical order, slap a cover on it, give it a 'best baseball quotes ever' title and every baseball fan/geek will want to buy your 'quotes' book looking for something new and fresh.
Unfortunately, it usually is not . . .'new and fresh' I mean.
Glenn Liebman does it the right way, a different way. Opening his Grand Slams: The Ultimate Collection of Baseball's Best Quips, Quotes, and Cutting Remarks is like your Mom handing you that shoebox full of old baseball cards she found while cleaning out the attic. Flipping through them, you find you remember many of these old 'friends'. Many more seem brand new simply because you must have forgotten them. Or maybe they are some cards your little brother added to the box.
Grand Slams hits all the expected names. Stengel, Berra, Uecker, Durocher, all the usual suspects.
But the index, organized by both topic and name, has a relatively recent tone and 'freshness'. It shows Liebman dug deeper for the rarer baseball gems.
George (do you really need the last name..?), Bill Lee, Barry Bonds, John Kruk, Whitey Herzog and other recent personalities in the game all draw multiple entries among the over a thousand quotes found in the book.
But you not only get the funny, or serious, or cutting remarks words they said but you also get indexed quotes of others talking about them. As the 'cutting remark' of the title suggests, they are not always nice to each other in the game. Or talking about it afterward.
Liebman also looks at the larger context of the game. Or I should say he lets the those lucky enough to play or manage in the game or be associated with the game . . .he lets them tell us about the many layers of living and playing in the big leagues.
They tell us about parks, (Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Tiger Stadium, the Metrodome.) About cheating, drinking, and ballpark food. The fans get a few quotes, none too complimentary. They talk about being traded, the futility of pitchers trying to be hitters, money, home runs. It seems like every imaginable topic is covered. Well, almost. There are no indexed topics about girls, women, wives, groupies, or sex. . . .Hmmmm.
With the quote, the attribution, and just a small set-up of the situation that inspired the quote, Liebman delivers a thousand small insights, brief moments when you are eavesdropping, into the history of the game.
While the book covers nearly a century of modern professional baseball the heavy emphasis seems to be on the words and personalities of the players, managers, and owners of the last forty to fifty years. But the influence of the game beyond the ballpark is reflected in quotes from Charles Barkley; Carson, Leno, and Letterman; Jeff Foxworthy; hell, even Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan make it in!
The Bottom Line
Wide-ranging quotes that hit for power. Grand Slams: The Ultimate Collection of Baseball's Best Quips, Quotes, and Cutting Remarks hits for the cycle and pitches a perfect game for the reader looking for the ultimate resource for experiencing the game in the words of those who have lived, breathed, and 'given their all' for the game of baseball.
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Certified 'Lean-n-mean' review.
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Other 'Baseball and diamond dust' reviews by sleeper54
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"Just the facts, ma'am"
Title: Grand Slams: The Ultimate Collection of Baseball's
Best Quips, Quotes, and Cutting Remarks
Author: Glenn Liebman
Publisher: Contemporary Books
Copyright: 2001 by Glenn Liebman
Pages: 288
ISBN #: 0809297310
Ages recommended: teen to adult
Reference web sites:
Major League Baseball: The Official Site
www.mlb.com
Recommended:
