Watching Baseball: Discovering the Game Within the Game

By Jerry Remy

Book Overview

The Boston Globe's number-one bestseller is back, revised and updated for the 2008 season and presented in a new trim size. Jerry Remy's name and face are already known to millions of fans. During baseball season 400,000 or more households tune in to listen to his broadcast of Red Sox games. But many learned to love him years ago when he was traded to the Sox, earning a trip to the 1978 All-Star Game in his first year with the team. Remy hit .278, scored eighty-seven runs, and stole thirty bases that season.

Injured in 1984, Remy never played another game. In 1988 he began his work as an announcer, working color commentary for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN, a basic cable channel available throughout New England and by satellite across the country.

In Watching Baseball Remy explains America's favorite sport by going inside the minds of coaches and players to reveal the game within the game. He takes readers around the diamond, pointing out the positioning of infielders, what's really going on during batting practice, how catchers and pitchers call a game, the difference between high cheese and a knuckler, and much more.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076274801X
• ISBN13: 9780762748013
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: The Globe Pequot Publishing Group, Inc.
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

RemDawg has alot to teach

Remy knows it ALL. Every game I watch is infinitely more interesting because of the insights he shares in this book. Fantastic read.

Great for the serious fan or player

I bought this book for my son. It's a little less anecdotal and more technical than I expected. If you really want to understand the strategy of the game, this book is for you. It is light-hearted and there are also some funny baseball stories and info on the Red Sox, but that's not the main part of the book, and if that's what you're looking for this probably isn't the book for you. Overall, I very much recommend this book for those who are true students of the game, and especially for kids about age 12 and up who want insights into how to become a better player MENTALLY, or those interested in coaching. Jerry doesn't explain how to hit a fastball, but he explains the STRATEGY of the game exceptionally well.

From the Insiders View

Baseball is such a simple game. Someone throws the ball, someone else tries to hit it, if he does he runs around .... Well you know.But what's really going on. In this quite large (367 page) book, Jerry Remy, a former second baseman explains the game as the players see it. There are hundreds of little tips: playing in the rain is to the advantage of the hitter, should the cutoff man jump if necessary to catch a ball, what about contract negotiations. And of course there's the discussions about people. As a player and then a baseball broadcaster, and a chat room moderator he knows all the principals in the business/game. If baseball is your thing....

I loved it!

Remy is the best. His analysis of the game and insights into why players do what they do are second to none--and he's always entertaining, too. I loved this book.

For fans and students of baseball

I always look forward to baseball games when Jerry Remy is in the broadcast booth because he continually teaches me new things about the sport. This book is full of those insights, all written in Remy's entertaining, conversational voice.