Pennant Race

The companion piece to his baseball classic The Long Season, Jim Brosnan's Pennant Race recounts the game-by-game lives of the Cincinnati Reds during their pennant-winning 1961 season-as only Mr. Brosnan could write it. He was a pitcher with Cincinnati that season, but also (as The Long Season had proved) one of the sharpest and wittiest writers baseball ever produced. His insider's account concentrates on how and why the Reds won the pennant that year. But as with The Long Season, Mr. Brosnan displays an uncanny knack for capturing the alternating excitement and tedium of a baseball season, its colorful characters, and the droll and uproarious aspects of everyday baseball. "One of the best baseball books ever written. If we allow it to be called a diary, it is probably one of the best American diaries as well. Jim Brosnan is a gifted observer...His book is beautifully constructed, helped no end by the essential unity and chronology of a baseball season, and strengthened by a central theme: the increasing possibility that the Reds will win the pennant...The book bristles with pungent dialogue, some of it hilarious, some bitter."-Arnold Hano, New York Times Book Review. "As the Samuel Pepys of the league champions, Brosnan obviously knows his baseball, writes about it wittily, informally and with irony. He is a cynical, tough professional athlete and his book makes wonderful reading for anyone who knows the difference between Chris Pelekoudas and Charles McCabe."-William Hogan, San Francisco Chronicle.