{"id":539,"date":"2008-08-06T06:30:59","date_gmt":"2008-08-06T05:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=539"},"modified":"2009-09-30T20:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T19:05:00","slug":"as-essential-by-steven-travers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=539","title":{"rendered":"A’s Essential by Steven Travers"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Triumph Books, 2007) 227 pages.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not long after you’ve began your fascination with baseball, a decision has to be made on which MLB team you should support.\u00c2\u00a0 Once chosen, you then find yourself wanting to learn about the history of the team that you now call your own.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve fallen for a team like the Yankees or the Red Sox, you are spoilt for choice when it comes to great books about them.\u00c2\u00a0 If a small or medium market team has won you over, it may be a little more difficult to find a good overview of their history.\u00c2\u00a0 As an Oakland fan, I was therefore\u00c2\u00a0interested to find A’s Essential<\/em> when browsing on Amazon recently.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Steven Travers has so far released four MLB-related books in his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything you need to know to be a real fan!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d series.\u00c2\u00a0 The Oakland version is joined by similar efforts on the L.A. Angels, L.A. Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks (the latter being a good forty or so pages shorter than the others, on account of the relatively youthful nature of the franchise).\u00c2\u00a0 The books provide an overview of each team’s history, written in lots of short chapters about specific players and moments that you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153need to know\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 This makes them perfect for dipping in and out of, while also being lively to read from cover to cover (although, in the Oakland example, there is the occasional bit of repetition to put individual chapters into context).<\/p>\n

A’s Essential <\/em>leads you through the history of one of the most successful and colourful franchises that Major League Baseball has seen.\u00c2\u00a0 Beginning with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s (a period that is covered in some brevity) , we then pass through the controversial reign of Charlie O. Finley (and his mule) in Kansas City and Oakland, before ending with the Billy Beane era of the early twenty-first century.\u00c2\u00a0 A significant part of the book focuses on the legendary \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moustache Gang\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the early 1970s that won three World Series in a row.\u00c2\u00a0 With vibrant characters such as Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers performing heroic feats, their attraction as a source of great stories is obvious.\u00c2\u00a0 The same can be said for the Oakland team of the late 1980s and early 1990s.\u00c2\u00a0 With Rickey Henderson, the ‘Bash Brothers’ Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley to name but a few, they who made it to the World Series in three successive years from 1988 to 1990, winning it all in 1989.<\/p>\n

The stories help you get a sense for the identity of the organization: the players that have worn the A’s uniform and the common strands that link the teams from different eras together.\u00c2\u00a0 Newcomers to the A’s will be well aware of General Manager Billy Beane’s current ‘rebuilding’ project.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the product of the organization being unable to afford to keep hold of its best players and it’s interesting to learn that this has often been the A’s way.\u00c2\u00a0 Connie Mack’s great team from 1910 to 1914 was sold off to pay the bills, as was the 1929-1931 team that won two World Series.\u00c2\u00a0 Oakland’s great run in the 1970s came to an end due to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153baseball’s economics\u00e2\u20ac\u009d making the players unaffordable, with the departures of Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter to the Yankees being the most notable examples.\u00c2\u00a0 The trend is epitomized by the fact that the star player chosen to adorn the front cover of this book, Dan Haren, is no longer with the team.\u00c2\u00a0 It has always been a case of feast or famine with the A’s; greatness or relative hopelessness.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what makes them worth supporting though, through the good times and the bad.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Throughout the book, the main text is accompanied by ‘Trivia’ boxes that pose questions for you to consider before flicking to the back to find out the answer.\u00c2\u00a0 This doesn’t always work seamlessly.\u00c2\u00a0 A question on page 60 about pitcher Vida Blue, for example, can be answered by reading the main text right next door to the ‘Trivia’ box.\u00c2\u00a0 The short chapters are further broken up by black and white photos and boxes containing additional information such as ‘Top Ten’ lists and, most useful of all, ‘Teams of the decade’.\u00c2\u00a0 They all add to the snappy presentation and tone of the book, summed up by Travers’ comment that L.A. Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shoved the bat so far up Oakland’s keisters they could not walk for a week\u00e2\u20ac\u009d during the 1988 World Series.<\/p>\n

A’s Essential<\/em> also contains an all-time A’s roster list, which is handy when you want to look up the dates between which a certain player represented the team.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, the only trouble with such lists is that they become out of date almost as soon as the books are printed.\u00c2\u00a0 In the same way, the chapter arguing why manager Dick Williams should be in the Hall of Fame is less relevant now that he has finally been inducted in Cooperstown this year (although that does show Travers’ arguments were\/are valid).<\/p>\n

These are only minor quibbles though.\u00c2\u00a0 A’s Essential<\/em> is a fun, if not comprehensive, guide to the franchise.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a great place to start for new Oakland fans and, if they follow the same pattern, Travers’ books on the Angels, Dodgers and Diamondbacks should appeal to fans of those respective teams as well.<\/p>\n

Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A’s Essential\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Triumph Books, 2007) 227 pages. Not long after you’ve began your fascination with baseball, a decision has to be made on which MLB team you should support.\u00c2\u00a0 Once chosen, you then find yourself wanting to learn about the history of the team that you now call your own.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve fallen for a team like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[76,553],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-books","tag-book-reviews","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4930,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/4930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}