Now Taking the Field: a Review

It's not as if I didn't enjoy "Now Taking the Field" by Tom Stone, I just thought that I'd enjoy the book a lot more.

That's a dubious opening sentence, but it doesn't exactly encapsulate what I'm trying to say. The elevator pitch of "Now Take the Field" (NTTF) is this: every Major League franchise has its stars. But what if all of those stars were able to come together--regardless of era--and fill out a roster. What would that roster look like? Stone answers that question in this book.

In his forward, Stone said that he had spent about 20 years researching and perfecting the idea of this book. And that shows. There aren't a lot of books (baseball or otherwise) which are as doggedly researched as NTTF. When reading this, it's abundantly clear that Stone did his homework and didn't cheap out by just grabbing the most recognizable name and throwing them in a position. Nor does he move player around too much so that the best team could be assembled.

For example, if a team had two great first basemen and a handful of average third basemen, Stone didn't simply transfer one of the great first sackers across the diamond to make the best team. He stuck to his rules and had two great first basemen and a few mediocre guys at the hot corner.

Unfortunately, what's great about his book is also where it starts to bog down. There was a lot of information and statistics in this book--there had to be--but after awhile all of the numbers, all of the names, all of the teams started to run into each other. Stone kept the same dry format over and over and over, for over 600 pages.

It got to be a little too much.

Not only that but in every chapter were lists from the past of how other publications viewed each franchises' all-time teams. This was a good idea, in theory, it's interesting to see what people in 1950 thought that the Red Sox all-time team looked like. But there were so many examples, and so many of those lists were virtually the same, that it almost became in exercise in typesetting.

There were not a lot of real insights or interesting stories about the players that he selected. Most paragraphs would start out with the player's name, a rehashing of his statistics (which were printed above the paragraph) followed by a line or two of what the player did best. These are the best-of-the-best, so I knew about 95% of the players and while I may not have known every number, I had a pretty good idea of why they would be chosen.

For example, former Boston Braves infielder and Hall of Famer Rabbit Maranville was chosen as one of the backup second basemen for the Braves. Stone said he chose him because while he couldn't hit, he was fast and played good defense. That was pretty much it. These few lines were sort of flat and lacked a bit of life.

I know that it's sacrilege (and almost unfair) to compare a modern baseball write to Bill James, but when Bill James released his Baseball Almanac almost 20 years, he had a top-100 player list at every position. James would cite some stats, but then wouldn't just regurgitate the stats in the paragraph; he'd write something that you may not have known about the player.

For example, when discussing Rickey Henderson, James mentioned that if you took away his stolen bases, Henderson was still a Hall of Famer thanks to his other numbers. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, there was a school of thought that Rickey was mainly a speed guy. He had some power too, but he was kind of pigeon-holed into a stolen base threat. James changed some of that perception by pointing out that his other numbers were incredible too.

I don't think that Stone really did that. He took a very straight path in explaining why a player deserved to be on the team. Baseball is a game of circuitous routes and rabbit holes, Stone didn't explore those holes. And that's a shame because I think that would have made this a better book. Instead of relying on what the 1959 readers of Sport Magazine thought about who the best all-time White Sox were, it might have been better to explore other areas.

I think that Stone had a great idea for a book, Rob Neyer (a Bill James acolyte) wrote a similar book 15 years ago called the "Big Book of Baseball Lineups" and Stone would quote his all-time teams as comparison to what he thought. Neyer's book was just as regimented, but shorter and filled with more interesting tidbits.

I don't want to dump on this book a lot, because it was a decent read and I was really excited at the premise of the tome because I really do love baseball history. And maybe I should review the book that I read rather than the book that I wished it could be. It's more than apparent that Stone is a huge baseball fan and obviously did a ton of work on his research and he has a gift for turning a phrase. It may not be ideal to read this book from cover to cover, it's probably best to bounce around from team-to-team like I did. To be honest, I found the strongest part of Stone's work is when he was able to use his voice more and pick the rosters of the newer teams like the Mariners or Rockies or Diamondbacks. There he was writing without the net of past all-time teams and he was a little more free with his prose. I likes that a lot.

For a first book, I thought that this was a really good effort. If you're on the beach this summer and need something to peruse, you could do much worse.

I was sent Now Take the Field free to review and comment on. This did not have any effect on my review.