Three Nights in August
Reviewed by Michael Davenport
JULY 13, 2005 archive
If you are a casual baseball fan looking for another "Shucks, I was born in a little town . . ." book about a renowned sports persona, this volume is not for you. Nor is it likely to please those anticipating an "innocence corrupted by professionalism" sociological examination of a community, as Bissinger did in Friday Night Lights. Also, do not expect the good-old-boy quips and quotes from managers like Herzog and Lasorda whose pre-game beer-belly rubbing and joking while going over the ground rules are legendary. And there are no Bouton-esque anecdotes about the locker-room grab-assing of million dollar whiz kids.
Not for the faint-hearted, this book presents the deadly serious, often dark and driven, obsessive-compulsive side of one of baseball's most statistically successful managers. Tony LaRussa's stone face is the image with which the author begins the tale. The writer moves quickly from appearance toward defining the reality behind the countenance and, as it turns out, what you see may be what you get. Bissinger provides numerous flashbacks, anecdotes and in-depth analyses of what he thinks is going on behind the stoic mask, but can reveal only what LaRussa will allow, which seems more icy and computer-like than paternal, both in managing his players, and in approaching the game. The man eats by himself after games, works grinding twelve-hour days from spring training through October, and lives alone in a hotel during the season while his family, to whom he must be a stranger, stays in California.
The title reveals the book's focus: a classic three game series in 2003 between the Cardinals and the Cubs, both contenders in the N.L. Central. The games occur in what visitors must think is the Red Sea -- Busch Stadium. Long gone, except for their ghosts, is the stable of greyhounds upon which Whitey Herzog relied, as well as the leg-killing, shoe-melting Astroturf, which brought the "Rat" success. In these contests LaRussa is trying to outmaneuver the crafty, toothpick-gnawing Dusty Baker. For game one these men have put, in their three and four slots, hitters who would intimidate any pitcher but a Gibson or a Koufax: Pujols and Edmonds against Sosa and Alou. On the mound are Stephenson and Prior. Williams and Wood are matched for game two, and matchups are what baseball is all about in LaRussa's judgment. The writer details the chess moves in play-by-play fashion for the set of three.
Readers must have something of the aficionado in them to appreciate the painstaking, detailed scrutiny of pitchers and hitters, the generous dose of statistics, and LaRussa's psychoanalyses of gifted under-achievers, and sullen prima donnas who resent having to play as part-timers. For the rest of us, though, the interest might lie in the confirmation of what we already knew, or suspected, about major league baseball - too much money, too much ego, constant, unsettling travel, and workdays that proscribe normal family life for many of those involved - especially the managers and coaches. This study is a grim reminder that baseball, for men like LaRussa, is hardly an Edenic, frolicsome, pastoral drama, but more of what is reflected in the Cardinal skipper's dispassionate demeanor - agony on the level we non-participants can never imagine. Bissinger's analysis clearly reveals and strongly reinforces the notion that today's ballgame, like the old gray mare, sure ain't what she use'ta be.
Buzz Bissinger. Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. Hardcover. 280 pages. $25.00. ISBN 0-618-40544-5.
Copyright © 2005 by Michael Davenport.