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Pennant Race: The Classic Game-By-Game Account of a Championship Season, 1961

by Jim Brosnan

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A season told game by game

$15.90 USD
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Paperback New English

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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Praised by The New Yorker

    The New Yorker praises the book’s writing and reading experience.

AlbakiReads Editorial

A season told game by game

Jim Brosnan’s account follows the Cincinnati Reds through their 1961 National League pennant-winning season, organizing the year day by day and game by game. The focus extends beyond results to the working realities of professional baseball: uncertain job security, the strains and pleasures of team life, and the mix of hope, frustration, and guarded optimism surrounding a club. Brosnan places the season in the context of an era of Major League Baseball and notes its World Series loss to the Yankees. The book offers a player’s account of a championship campaign, with attention to both the record on the field and the lives behind it.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Baseball fans interested in the history of the Cincinnati Reds and the 1961 season.
  • Readers who enjoy season-long, game-by-game accounts of professional sports.
  • Those interested in the daily working lives and team dynamics of professional ballplayers.

Themes

Baseball historyProfessional athletes’ working livesTeam camaraderie and competitionHope and uncertainty across a championship season

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

"Brosnan obviously knows his baseball, writes about it wittily, informally and with irony. He is a cynical, tough professional athlete and his book makes wonderful reading."--New Yorker

From the author of The Long Season--considered by many to be the greatest baseball book of all time--comes another classic sports memoir by legendary pitcher Jim Brosnan, which chronicles how his team, the Cincinnati Reds, went on to win the 1961 National League pennant.

In Pennant Race, Brosnan--with his trademark wise-guy wit and plain-spoken practicality--once again offers a refreshingly candid alternative to hackneyed baseball mythologizing. Day by day, game by game, Brosnan reveals the real lives of professional ballplayers: their exhilaration and frustration, hope and despair, chronic worry over job security, playful camaraderie, world-weary cynicism, and boyish--if cautious--optimism. Although the Reds would ultimately lose the World Series to the Yankees, for Brosnan and his teammates, this was a winning season.

Pennant Race vividly captures a remarkable year in the life of a ball club and the golden age of one of Major League Baseball's most memorable eras.

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