Living on the Black

April 28, 2008
Though the season-long profile-in which a sportswriter follows a player, team or coach through a single season-grows increasingly familiar, this entry from Feinstein, one of the genre's pioneers (Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL; The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever), delivers rare insight into the minds of two of baseball's most cerebral (and successful) pitchers. Veteran sportswriter Feinstein follows the Yankees' Mike Mussina and the Mets' Tom Glavine during the 2007 season, as they pursue personal milestones and try to pitch their teams back into the postseason. Although they each reach some of their goals (Mussina to 250 wins, Glavine 300), neither team reaches its ultimate goal. The main narrative, of personal and team struggle, is compelling, but the true enjoyment of books like these are in the details, and Feinstein does not disappoint. Not only does he exhaustively chronicle the season on-field, he reveals tidbits of inside ball that even hardcore fans will find enlightening: Who knew that Mussina's best friend on the Yankees is the bullpen catcher, Mike Borzello, or that Glavine helped avert a likely player strike after the 2003 season? This smart season tour makes a treat for both casual and die-had fans.

February 1, 2008
Sportswriter Feinstein follows star pitchers Tom Glavine (Mets) and Mike Mussina (Yankees) through their 2007 seasons.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2008
Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina have been among baseballs best pitchers for close to two decades. Both were pitching in New York in 2007; Glavine for the Mets, Mussina for the Yankees. Both had pitched long past the age when pitchers are normally effective. The season did not end well for either man. Glavines Mets collapsed down the stretch and missed the playoffs. The Yankees made the playoffs but were summarily eliminated. Best-selling sportswriter Feinstein, who popularized the year-in-the-life approach to book-length sports reporting, does it again here, with a dual look at 2007 in the lives of Glavine and Mussina: how each dealt with success and failure and how they approach the game as older, somewhat physically diminished pitchers forced to rely as much on their baseball IQs as their athletic gifts. Glavine and Mussina are both extraordinarily intelligent andguided by the inimitable Feinsteins incisive questioningare able to articulate many of the games subtleties. As always, Feinstein guides readers into a world with which fans have only surface familiarity, revealing in the process multiple substrata of nuance and meaning. Baseball fans who read this wonderful book will come away with a deeper understanding of the game in addition to having encountered a pair of fascinating men who just happen to play a game for a living.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)