Bottom of the 33rd

Hope and Redemption in Baseball's Longest Game

De: Dan Barry

Narrado por: Dan Barry

On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours, the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys - the ballplayers; the umpires; Pawtucket's ejected manager, peering through a hole in the backstop; the sportswriters and broadcasters; a few stalwart fans shivering in the cold.

With Bottom of the 33rd, celebrated New York Times journalist Dan Barry has written a lyrical meditation on small-town lives, minor-league dreams, and the elements of time and community that conspired one fateful night to produce a baseball game seemingly without end. Bottom of the 33rd captures the sport's essence: the purity of purpose, the crazy adherence to rules, the commitment of both players and fans.

This genre-bending book, a reportorial triumph, portrays the myriad lives held in the night's unrelenting grip. Consider, for instance, the team owner determined to revivify a decrepit stadium, built atop a swampy bog, or the batboy approaching manhood, nervous and earnest, or the umpire with a new family and a new home, or the wives watching or waiting up, listening to a radio broadcast slip into giddy exhaustion. Consider the small city of Pawtucket itself, its ghosts and relics, and the players, two destined for the Hall of Fame (Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs), a few to play only briefly or forgettably in the big leagues, and the many stuck in minor-league purgatory, duty bound and loyal to the game.

An unforgettable portrait of ambition and endurance, Bottom of the 33rd is the rare sports book that changes the way we perceive America's pastime, and America's past.

©2011 Dan Barry (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers

I love baseball

Oh, what a game! It was fun to listen to the details of this game, played by 3A teams from Rhode Island and New York in 1981. It was very interesting to learn a little bit about the lives of some of the players, some who made it to major league, and more who did not. I grew up with a father and brothers who were crazy about baseball, so I learned a lot about it at an early age. Some people stake their whole life's dreams on making it in professional sports, but when it comes right down to it, it is a game. There are lots of really great things to spend your life doing other than pro sports. Yeh, the money one could make from playing pro sports would allow you to help a whole lot of people, but really, you are not a failure if the highest rung you ever achieve in baseball is 3A. How many people even get that far?

Anyway, I liked it a lot and learned a lot too. Me, I'm a Cubbies fan. As soon as they are in the pennant race, I am going to Chicago to watch the games. It sure won't be this year, though. Why am I a Cubbies fan? Because I figure they need at least one fan who doesn't HAVE to be a fan. They'll come out on top someday. Hope I'm still alive. (Update: The Cubbies won the World Series in 2016 against the Cleveland Indians, 108 years after the last time they won it. I did not get to go to Chicago, but I watched every game on TV. Ohhhh that game 7! It was perhaps the best game in baseball ever.)

This book was read by the author, not usually the best choice for narrator. Dan did ok, but it is pretty obvious he is not a professional narrator. He was not annoying like many authors who read their own works are, but hint to authors who think they can read: let the pros do it.

Lots of Baseball . . .

I purchased this book on a whim--don't remember exactly why. But I truly enjoyed it for many reasons.

The basic story line follows a minor-league baseball game in the Spring of 1981 that just would not end! But the story tells so much more--every person involved with this historic game was a part of this narration. It could be daunting for those who do not enjoy tons of detail, but I found so much of it very interesting. Some of the players involved in the game went on to become big names in the majors (Cal Ripkin Jr. and Wade Boggs to name just two), and it was interesting to get an insight of them at the beginning of their careers.

The book is read by the author, and he did a wonderful job. I am very glad I chose this book to listen to.

Pawtucket

This is a very interesting book not only for baseball fans, but also for those who enjoy hearing how people and lives evolve over time. The author, who is also the narrator, skillfully sets the scene for us in 1981, and then switches seamlessly to events prior and subsequent to the longest baseball game ever played.

A great baseball book

Well narrated by the author. It almost invites you into the meditative state of that forever game, drifting sleepily between innings and biographies, histories and statistics. It's the kind of book that makes you fall in love with baseball all over again.

Excellent book, great story

Finished in a few days, a gripping story brought to life by the author/narrator. Great job weaving personal history into the game story.

What a Game!!!

33 innings. There was no reason it should have gone all that way. It should have been called and delayed innings before so it could start again the next day or wheather the two teams would meet again. However they forgot about the rules for that weekend and it is a classic involing 2 hall of famers and a great cast of charecters.

Dan Barry does Dan Barry

and, what could be better? The author narrates this story with all the irony, wit, and compassion of the person who created the tale, as he did.But,from history, and boy, does Barry do his homework. Barry's tone is somewhat deadpan, but he knows how to render the longest game in history, with the right amount of inflection. Sometimes I literally laughed out loud. If you like baseball, which i do, you just might get caught up in the flow of the story of unlikely characters; ball players, managers, bat boys, announcers, writers, their families.. At times even suspenseful, the narration moves you along with human interest stories that catch you by surprise. You ache for these (mostly) young men as the rawness outside, the wee hours of the morning in this interminable game, all make you feel for their plights. Some have a happy ending. Most do not. I ended up buying book versions of "The Bottom of the 33rd" for at least 3 people this holiday season. Only because they don't do audible.

The Mysticism of Baseball

This was the single best baseball book I've ever read. The level of detail for each participant in the longest game ever - from players, to owners, to listeners, to the press, to the stadium staff, and the fans who stuck it out on a cold April day - is unrivaled in any other account. I appreciate the audio effect to make the lines from the radio broadcast sound like they are from the radio itself. An amazing tour of prose and magic surrounding an otherwise meaningless minor league game if not for time standing still one Easter Sunday.

Too much fluff

I love baseball books. I was intrigued by the story. I’m fact, the part of the book about the actual game was pretty good. The problem: two thirds of this 8 hour story is unrelated - or barely related- to the game. The author goes into the minutia and minutia of minutia about any and every possible detail and side detail. And my least favorite: the author’s attempt to turn this story into a Field of Dreams type classic by piling on adjectives in a failed attempt to make the text sound like literature rather than what this is- an interesting baseball game.

So the decision to read this book is a dilemma…If you can slog your way through the painful attempts of the author to wax poetic every other sentence, and if you can get through the typically boring side stories that dominate the book with a diarrhea of details, the actual description of the baseball game and some of the directly related side stories, which are at best 1/3 I’d the book, are actually the result of a lot of research and make for an interesting and well written story.

A great book, baseball fan or not!

This book was a pleasure to listen to from beginning to end. The format was outstanding as he would give a short narrative of the pertinent action and then go on to give short biographies of a player who figured prominently in the action of that inning. These ranged from the owner, the general manager, that manager, the publicist, the radio broadcaster all the way to some of the fans at the game, and of course Hall of Famers Cal Ripken Jr. and Wade Boggs.

My only problem with the book was that the author sometimes tried to hearken back to the 1920's-1930's style of baseball writing that was overly flowery. For example, he drifted into obsessively calling the baseball a "white orb" for stretches of the book. But this was not enough to overcome the otherwise outstanding writing.

You do not need to be a baseball fan to enjoy this book. He explains EVERYTHING (it has been a long time since I have heard an intentional walk not only described, but the strategy explained), but he was going into his writing assuming that the listener/reader does not know about baseball and I would rather have that than someone who assumes that terminology is understood if I don't know about it.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for insights into a game that can too easily be thought of as a million "Trivial Pursuit" questions. It showed the diversity of the individuals involved and how their lives became intertwined by this one event that they all experienced.