{"id":9710,"date":"2010-11-24T07:01:38","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T07:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9710"},"modified":"2010-11-28T09:56:06","modified_gmt":"2010-11-28T09:56:06","slug":"the-complete-game-by-ron-darling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9710","title":{"rendered":"The Complete Game by Ron Darling"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball and the Art of Pitching by Ron Darling (Vintage Books 2010), 272 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"CompleteGame\"TV companies are always quick to offer jobs to retired sportsmen and out-of-work managers, sometimes seemingly regardless of their ability to communicate with the viewers in an insightful and entertaining way.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a one question interview: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Were you a Big Leaguer? You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the job\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

Amid the dross there are some players who make a seamless transition to the broadcasting booth.\u00c2\u00a0 Virtually all broadcasters have their fans and their detractors, but for my money Ron Darling is one of the better analysts around today.\u00c2\u00a0 His work with the Mets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 SNY channel convinced me that he could put together an interesting book about pitching and he certainly has with The Complete Game.<\/p>\n

Darling is quick to assuage any fears that this is yet another long-winded, self-glorifying autobiography.\u00c2\u00a0 As he puts it:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This book is not a traditional baseball memoir. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a wistful reflection on a workmanlike career.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t set out to tell the story of my life or my time in the game. Rather, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an attempt to bring readers inside the mind of a major league pitcher \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to break the game of baseball down to its component parts and to offer my take on each piece so that we might better understand the whole\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Darling does this over ten main chapters, eight focusing on important games from his career and two from the Mets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 2008 season.\u00c2\u00a0 He uses an inning in each as a starting point to explore the craft of pitching and life as a Big Leaguer.\u00c2\u00a0 The format works well as it adds a logical structure to the overall book, while giving Darling scope to cover plenty of ground without it seeming disjointed.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

He does occasionally slip into those \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcin my day \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 asides that are so common from veterans, for example when bemoaning the fact that starting pitchers no longer going deep into games on a regular basis, but these moments are mercifully rare.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Darling proves to be an honest guide for the most part.\u00c2\u00a0 While he has a quiet self-assurance that you would expect from someone who pitched for 13 years at the highest level, he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hide behind excuses or bravado.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s refreshing to read him admit to losing his concentration on the mound when a pennant was on the line, or how he let the wind at Wrigley spook him into a poor performance.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Far from putting himself and fellow pitchers on a heroic pedestal, Darling reveals the worries and fears that even the best hurlers can be plagued by.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let me tell you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Darling explains, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mound can be the loneliest, most vulnerable place on earth while you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re out there waiting for your manager or coach to arrive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

Although it provides many insights into what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to be a Big League pitcher, this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a technical book with long sections on pitching mechanics.\u00c2\u00a0 Darling concentrates more on the mental side of the game, such as how to deal with long offensive innings by your teammates, getting prepared for a start and learning how to pitch differently as you get older and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite have the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstuff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of your younger days.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

It certainly gets you thinking about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art of pitching\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, as Darling puts it, but what you really take from The Complete Game is an appreciation for, and understanding of, what pitchers go through, not just on the field but off it as well.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The game is played by human beings.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that can easily be lost when looking at stats and analysing the game to death, which we all can be guilty of at times.\u00c2\u00a0 Darling\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ability to complete the New York Times crossword wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t show up on Baseball-Reference.com (although it has almost everything else you could ever wish for), but it helped him to settle into the Mets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 clubhouse and things like that, difficult (impossible?) though they might be to quantify, do matter.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

They matter partly because if you play sport at the highest level, you have to accept that your good days and bad days will all be played out in public: not a normal environment to work in.\u00c2\u00a0 You also have to accept that however hard you try and however much you want to succeed, the person or team you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re competing against is in the exact same situation.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t both win.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the great thing about pitching and hitting. Both sides are trying. Both sides are locked in. Both sides are bringing it. This was a World Series game, to be sure, but in one respect it was like any other game: you can do everything right and still get smacked around. Or you can do everything wrong and somehow come out on top. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Baseball is a confounding game at times, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a large part of its appeal for both players and fans alike and the Complete Game reveals just why that is so.<\/p>\n

Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Complete Game\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":"

Broadcaster and former Big League pitcher Ron Darling offers his ‘refections on baseball and the art of pitching’ in The Complete Game<\/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-9710","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\/9710","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=9710"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9807,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9710\/revisions\/9807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}