108 Stitches

Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game

by Ron Darling

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Pub Date Apr 02 2019 | Archive Date Apr 02 2019

Description

This is New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated broadcaster Ron Darling's 108 baseball anecdotes that connect America’s game to the men who played it.

In 108 Stitches, New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning broadcaster Ron Darling offers his own take on the "six degrees of separation" game and knits together wild, wise, and wistful stories reflecting the full arc of a life in and around our national pastime.

Darling has played with or reported on just about everybody who has put on a uniform since 1983, and they in turn have played with or reported on just about everybody who put on a uniform in a previous generation. Through relationships with baseball legends on and off the field, like Yale coach Smoky Joe Wood, Willie Mays, Bart Giamatti, Tom Seaver and Mickey Mantle, Darling's reminiscences reach all the way back to Babe Ruth and other early twentieth-century greats.

Like the 108 stitches on a baseball, Darling's experiences are interwoven with every athlete who has ever played, every coach or manager who ever sat in a dugout, and every fan who ever played hooky from work or school to sit in the bleachers for a day game.

Darling's anecdotes come together to tell the story of his time in the game, and the story of the game itself.

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781250184382
PRICE	$29.99 (USD)
PAGES	272

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Featured Reviews

Greville W, Reviewer

A really clever and enjoyable book as the old Mets pitcher takes us on a guided tour of his long, varied and successful career through a series of linked stories and anecdotes featuring many of the players, coaches, managers and personalities who he met and had dealings with throughout his career.

Well written and never less than fascinating, he provides some interesting insights into the make up, personalities and peccadillos of the stars and also less well known names of the time.

Perhaps he has pulled his punches from time to time in order to protect the guilty but this is a rollicking good read and is a perfect dip in and out of gift for anyone who followed baseball in the 80s and 90s.

Highly recommended.

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Reviewer 317843

his book is not your typical sports memoir. It is a book of interesting stories about people the author, a former player for the New York Mets, the Montreal Expos, and the Oakland Athletics and a current broadcaster for the New York Mets has met and worked with and/or competed against over the course of his baseball career. If you are looking for an expose of all that is wrong with baseball and those involved in it, this is not it. If you are looking for a loving tribute, that only touches on everything that is good or pure about the game, this is not it either. It is merely one person's view of a life in baseball using anecdotes to illustrate what it was like to know, work with and/or compete against some of the most famous, infamous, and lesser known people in baseball history. If you were a fan of the New York Mets and/or Oakland Athletics during the time of Mr. Darling's tenure with either team, the book will be like an insider guided nostalgia trip for you. However, even if you were not a fan of either team during that time or even if you were not even alive during that time, if you love the sport of baseball and you are interesting in its history and learning more about some of the great characters on all sides of the game from someone who knew them, you will enjoy this fascinating book.