Squeeze Play : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Great Baseball Novel...And More!
Review: Most baseball fans with an interest in the game's history will remember that for the first 70 years of the twentieth century, the nation's capitol was represented by two American League clubs known as the Washington Senators. (Their moments of glory were few. The famous cry was: "Washington. First in War, First in Peace and Last in the American League.) But what about the third Senators franchise, born in 1989? You don't remember them? That's because, sadly, they only existed in the imagination of Jane Leavy and between the covers of this book.

"Squeeze Play" is a wild, bawdy, funny, true-to-life account of life in a big league clubhouse and in the sports department of a daily newspaper. Leavy, a former sportswriter and more recently the biographer of Sandy Koufax, draws on her own experiences, a passionate love of the game and a wild imagination to create one of the most entertaining baseball novels I've ever read.

I suppose I should add a cautionary note: "Squeeze Play" is not for the prudish. Sex and crude behavior are often on display (just as they are in the real world.) The book is told in the form of a diary of the Senators' first season, as chronicled by Leavy's alter-ego, A.B. Berkowitz. Berkowitz, who grew up worshipping Yankee Joey Proud (a fictional re-creation of Mickey Mantle) is about to find out if her love of the game will withstand close daily exposure to it...in particular, as practiced by this group of has-beens and never-weres. The team starts out the season challenging the record for most losses to begin a campaign and comes to the wire shadowing the 1962 Mets for the title of worst team of the modern era.

But this book is about a lot more than wins and losses on the field. Leavy has a lot to say about life, love, friendship, moral values and all the things that really matter....and she does it with an abundance of wit, style and humor.

Rating:
Summary: Unbe-bleeping-lievable!
Review: This book was awesome, simply awesome. As a female baseball fan, it was great to get a glimpse of these fictionalized baseball players through a fellow woman's perspective. It's one of those books that I couldn't put down, didn't want to finish, but had to finish because it was so GOOD. It has a little bit of everything - love, sex, sarcasm, slapstick, raunch, baseball, hilarity, thoughtfulness...