{"id":6133,"date":"2009-11-25T07:01:15","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T07:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=6133"},"modified":"2017-05-06T20:41:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T19:41:59","slug":"book-review-roads-to-redemption-by-craig-w-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=6133","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Roads to Redemption by Craig W. Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roads to Redemption: A Guide to Major League Baseball by Craig W. Thomas, (Inside Corner Books, 2005), 256 pages.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roads to Redemption is the main book about MLB on the market that was written by a Brit for a British audience, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remiss of me to have taken so long to write a review of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Published in 2005, the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s format does already make some parts a bit dated, but there is still much to commend here beyond the basic appeal of the British perspective on MLB that it provides.<\/p>\n

Craig W. Thomas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 book first came to my attention when he was invited on to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBaseball on Five\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to promote it back in 2005.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the many benefits of Five\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coverage was that they were hugely supportive of baseball endeavours by Brits and presenter Jonny Gould even provided the foreword to Roads to Redemption, written in his own inimitable fashion.<\/p>\n

It fits in well with the overall tone of the book.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas is a Red Sox fan who cut his writing\/editing teeth on a Chesterfield football fanzine and he brings across the humorous and witty style that characterized the best of a format sadly now largely a thing of the past.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

As the sub-title accurately states, this is a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcguide to MLB\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rather than more broadly a guide to baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t touch on how to play the game or offer a clear guide to the rules, but it does contain a very useful \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rough, incomplete, short history of baseball [MLB]\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, including lots of excellent photos, and each of the thirty Major League teams is covered in order in pleasing detail.<\/p>\n

The only slight knock on this latter section is that a lot of the opening stats in each profile focus on the 2004 season: understandable when it was published, but less relevant to someone buying the book today.\u00c2\u00a0 That \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdated\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 side to the profiles is unavoidable to a certain extent as the sport always moves on (titles are won, teams move to new stadiums or \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in the case of the Expos \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to a new city), but perhaps the 2004 content could have been kept to a minimum to lessen the impact.<\/p>\n

The last seventy pages or so are undoubtedly the best part of Roads to Redemption.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas has put together a dictionary containing 1,000 key words and phrases from the sport.\u00c2\u00a0 He notes at the beginning of the book that had he known of Dickson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Baseball Dictionary<\/a> before he started the task, he probably wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have attempted it.\u00c2\u00a0 We should be thankful that Paul Dickson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work had failed to fall in front of Thomas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 eyes because his version is extremely useful\u00c2\u00a0to British baseball fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, it is far less comprehensive than Dickson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s monumental effort, but that makes it more user-friendly to someone who simply wants to learn the key terms and phrases and it is still wide enough in scope to serves as a handy reference tool.<\/p>\n

More specifically, it is the selection process and definitions that make all the difference.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas has an eye and an ear for the terms and phrases that a Brit will discover along their baseball journey, up until you begin looking in more detail at specific areas, such as advanced statistics.\u00c2\u00a0 You can tell that he has been guided predominantly by the sights and sounds of a televised ballgame and, as that is often how Brits learn about the sport, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great reference point to work from.\u00c2\u00a0 His descriptions are well-worded, with a dash of humour along the way, and he includes the etymology of words where appropriate as well.<\/p>\n

Other sections in the book include a chapter full of book reviews, a short article about Ichiro Suzuki\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s record-breaking 2004 season (written by a friend of Thomas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122) and a chapter on the Red Sox\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s triumph in the 2004 postseason.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll notice there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more 2004-specific content here, which does help to articulate the excitement and emotions of the game, but would feel like a random departure if you bought the book now.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, Roads to Redemption does seem to have been cobbled together somewhat, rather than being the product of a planned approach.<\/p>\n

This is reinforced by the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153First Impression Errata\u00e2\u20ac\u009d double-sided A4 sheet that amusingly points out some of the errors in the book (in my version at least).\u00c2\u00a0 These range from sentences that are either missing\u00c2\u00a0 a word or including an extra one by mistake, to\u00c2\u00a0basic\u00c2\u00a0errors such as referring to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDerek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Weaver and claiming that the Cubs “threw” the 1919 World Series rather than the White Sox.\u00c2\u00a0 If still uncorrected in the version you can buy, these certainly should count as a knock against the book.<\/p>\n

However, the good far outweighs the bad in Roads to Redemption, not least with the wonderful chapter all about the Baseball on Five show.\u00c2\u00a0 It was enjoyable to read when the book was released, but now that the show is seemingly a thing of the past, it serves as a fitting tribute to the much-loved programme.\u00c2\u00a0 That chapter, the MLB history section and the impressive dictionary all make Roads to Redemption well worth buying for a British baseball fan, so long as you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not expecting a completely polished product.<\/p>\n

Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Roads to Redemption\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":"

This week’s book review looks at the main title about MLB on the market that was written by a Brit for a British audience<\/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-6133","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\/6133","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=6133"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19810,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6133\/revisions\/19810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}