Baseball is nostalgia, and this book is a tour de force of anecdotal history par excellence. If you were around for baseball in the 70's and 80's, read it to remember. If you weren't, read it to understand a bygone era. ( )

Started reading this at lunchtime today and couldn't put it down. It is simply fantastic. While the author provides a great inning-by-inning account of the extraordinary 23-22 game that took place on a windy day in Chicago's Wrigley Field, it is his delving into so many other stories that makes the book so great. First, we get amusing histories of the futility of both franchises over the years. Cook also provides insights into the personalities of many of the major players that day, such as the Phillies' Bob Boone, Pete Rose, and Tug McGraw and the Cubs' Bill Buckner and Dave Kingman. The saddest story, of course, is Cubs' pitcher Donnie Moore, still struggling to find the stardom that he would briefly achieve, before a tragic ending that narrowly avoided being even worse. Baseball was on the brink, as the author says; salaries were soaring--but the steroid era hadn't quite arrived yet, and the players were normal size men, who still practiced lesser vices, such as popping too many pills and drinking too much. Cook has done a wonderful job of putting it all together into a book that, for a moment at least, made me care about baseball again. ( )