The Batter's Edge: A Year With the Boston Red Sox

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended!
Review: Excellent read which will appeal to all baseball fans. Olivieri does a fantastic job at bringing the reader inside the clubhouse and experiencing the locker room subculture. Pretty good gig for a baseball fan right out of college to become a part of the red sox and make a positive impact on the players performance. He brought great insight without being disrespectful. i wanted to keep reading and will look forward to a follow-up book. highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Pack a lunch..you'll read this cover to cover
Review: I literally could not put this book down. Okay, so im a huge baseball fan and sure, I adore the Red Sox..but the perspective you get from a regular guy on the inside of the very private world of professional sports is enlightening and a joy to read.
Moreover, it describes how and where an organization--through its many quirks--succeeds and fails.

This tome is like a real-life version of something like the "The West Wing", where you get an inside look at the inner-workings you're not supossed to see. Mr. Olivieri shows how a team operates beyond the sports pages and delves into the sociology of a pro sports team--how the management, the players and the folks like Olivieri try to keep the team one step ahead of the competition. I felt like the view of this storied franchise was unlike anything I had read or heard of before.

Would love to see a series on this in other facets of life written in such a down-to-earth manner.

The Red sox used cutting edge technology to gain an edge...frankly, tech like this should have been emphaiszed more then, as the current management relies on it.

I would recomend this book to any baseball fan, any sports fan, and to anyone in management who should see how operations function at the fox-hole level operate.

Rating:
Summary: a walk on Yawkey Way
Review: I loved this book! I had a hard time putting the book down. The book was interesting, funny, well written, and a quick read. The club house and personal stories were hilarious. The thing I liked best was that Olivieri brings you through the process of what it's like to go from being a fan, to a stranger in the club house, to a part of the team. After reading it, I bought one for my Father in-law,(a fellow believer)for Christmas. You'll love this book too.

Rating:
Summary: "If we could crack the code of the league's top pitchers..."
Review: In 1991, Scott Olivieri, then aged twenty-one and a passionate Red Sox fan, lived the dream of every member of the Red Sox Nation, spending the entire season in the Red Sox clubhouse, hoping quietly to improve the team's hitting. Until that year, each batter had had to rely on a pitcher's stats and his own experience in trying to anticipate pitches. Videotape existed, but using it to show a player his individual at-bats was a prohibitively time-consuming process. By 1991, however, Pete Olivieri, Scott's father, had developed a computer program which would not only record each at-bat and each pitch but would allow individual players to call up at-bats instantly so they could be reviewed and studied. Players could also use multiple screens to compare and contrast swings and hits. Without fanfare, the computer suddenly became an essential part of the game.

Olivieri's lifelong love of the team shines through here as he describes being a child growing up a few miles from Fenway Park, playing Little League with Jim Rice's number on his back, memorizing locker combinations by associating the numbers with Red Sox players' numbers, and watching or listening to every game. Even as a youngster, however, he realized that "the Red Sox, ultimately, are a symbol of disappointment." Time after time, he watched a team "with superb talent losing in ways screenwriters couldn't script." His chance to make a difference, using a home-grown computer program to give an edge to the batter, not only allowed him the chance to meet some of his heroes but actually to help them to improve their hitting--and maybe the team's record.

Olivieri's descriptions capture both the romance the game and the tedium of the locker room, the camaraderie of the players and the excesses of the press, locker room "etiquette" and the public missteps of some of the players. He himself is a respectful, "background" sort of person, careful not to call attention to himself so that the players can discover for themselves his program and its opportunities. His opinions of Wade Boggs, Ellis Burks, Mike Greenwell, Phil Plantier, Roger Clemens, and the unfortunate Jeff Gray ring with truth and personal insight. Red Sox fans, computer specialists, and lovers of baseball should be fascinated by this behind-the-scenes look at the interface between the computer and baseball--the beginning of a new era. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: a walk on Yawkey Way
Review: Scott Olivieri does a great job of describing what it means for a lifelong fan to move to the inner circle of the Red Sox. While baseball fans will find plenty of stats and baseball analysis, the casual baseball fan will not feel bogged down in numbers and technical terms. The human story of a young college grad having a chance of a lifetime is compelling as well. Particularly amusing is the story where he can't cash a check from Roger Clemens. Can't wait for the next book!

Rating:
Summary: Love those Red Sox
Review: Since my daughter has been living in Boston for the past 10 years, and I get to travel there to visit quite a bit, I have become a rabid Sox fan (but just in the American League; the Phillies are my team in the National!). I love their storied and star-crossed history, and this book gives me new insights into the baseball culture and system. It's told from the perspective of a fan who gets the "once in a lifetime" job to mingle with the players on his hometown team. There are tremendous locker room scenes, and the players appear to be more human than we really see them when they are just on the field. Even Roger Clemens appears likeable, which is almost amazing! A close read of the book reveals that the writer was not too thrilled with the front office Sox organization, but it's the old story that familiarity breeds contempt. This is a book all baseball fans, and those who enjoy a well written book, will love! Read it, you won't be sorry.

Rating:
Summary: You have to read this book!
Review: This book is great! It has changed the way I think about baseball players and the organizations they work for.