It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book

From the authors of the popular statistical analysis site BaseballProspectus.com comes a rare bird, a sports book that's both thoughtfully written and brimming with drama. Dissecting 13 of the most compelling, down-to-the-wire pennant races in baseball history, from the 1908 National League to the 2003 National League Central, the authors first use flowing, novelistic prose to detail what happened, and then their own statistical formulae to illuminate why the race ended as it did. Regular readers of Baseball Prospectus will find some of this book repetitive, such as lengthy comparisons between teams from different eras, but there is much here for fans of all interest levels. One chapter examines the development of the modern farm system, while another illustrates how failure to integrate crippled some franchises for decades. Along the way, myths are debunked (infamous goat Fred Merkle gets acquitted, having been victimized by the inconsistent umpiring common in the early 1900s) and legends are re-examined (would Bobby Thompson have hit his ""Shot Heard Round the World"" if Dodger manager Charlie Dressen hadn't been in ""a kind of fugue state throughout that ninth inning""?). With clear prose and surprising wit, this book is a perfect end-of-summer read for fans.