Is This a Great Game, or What?

Stories and observations from the ESPN baseball commentator: “Is this a great book or what? Hilarious, irreverent, informative.” —Dan Shaughnessy, author of Reversing the Curse

ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian has spent over twenty-five years covering almost 3,000 Major League Baseball games—and interviewing about that many players, coaches, managers and executives. In Is This a Great Game, or What?, Kurkjian combines his years of experience and his uncanny knowledge and deep love of the game to create a book filled with some of the most fascinating insight into Major League Baseball this side of Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. Whether he’s explaining what goes through a ballplayer’s mind when he faces a fastball in the chapter “My Face Was Crushed by a Bowling Ball Going 90mph,” detailing bizarre rituals and superstitions performed by some of the game’s greatest players, or taking us into the locker room to see what transpires in a Major League clubhouse, Kurkjian’s tales are at times hilarious, other times horrifying, yet always entertaining.

Kurkjian has spoken to some of the greatest ballplayers ever over the years and they have revealed details about themselves and the game they love with a candor that readers won’t find anywhere else. Filled with memorable anecdotes, this is an essential book for baseball fans.

“Mostly humorous anecdotes collected on the baseball beat, but the standout chapter is a serious examination of the element of fear in the game. . . . Kurkjian also has a wonderful chapter on baseball’s unsung heroes, the scouts, underpaid lifers who travel thousands of backroad miles per year to find the next-best version of Mickey Mantle or Roger Clemens . . . Even as they savor every word, readers will be jealous: Why can’t we love our jobs as much as this guy does?” —Booklist

“Kurkjian has collected more delightful and insightful stories than anyone since Casey Stengel.” —George F. Will, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Men at Work