Product Description

Three Nights in August captures the strategic and emotional complexities of baseball's quintessential form, the three-game series. As the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrival Chicago Cubs, we watch from the dugout through the eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa, considered by many to be the shrewdest mind in the game today. In his twenty-seven years of managing, La Russa has been named Manager of the Year a record-making five times and now stands as the third-winningest baseball manager of all time. A great leader, he's built his success on the conviction that ball games are won not only by the numbers but also by the hearts and minds of those who play.

Drawing on unprecedented access to a major league manager and his team, Buzz Bissinger brings a revelatory intimacy to baseball and offers some surprising observations. Bissinger also furthers the debate on major league managerial style and strategy in his provocative new afterword.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20390 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Bissinger eschews the usual method of writing about baseball in the context of a season or a career, choosing instead to dissect the game by carefully watching one three-game series between the Cardinals and Cubs in late 2003. The Pulitzer-winning journalist and author of Friday Night Lights had unprecedented access to Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, as well as his staff and team, and he used that entrée to pick La Russa's formidable baseball brain about everything from how he assembles a lineup to why he uses certain relievers. As the series unfolds, Bissinger reveals La Russa's history and personality, conveying the manager's intensity and his compulsive need to be prepared for any situation that might arise during " 'the war' of each at-bat." Typical characters—the gamer, the natural, the headcase, the crafty old timer—are present, but Bissinger gives new life to their familiar stories with his insider's view and cheeky descriptions (e.g., "Martinez's response to pressure has been like a 45-rpm record, a timeless hit on one side, and the flip side maybe best forgotten"). Bissinger analyzes each team's pitch-by-pitch strategy and gets the dirt on numerous enduring baseball questions: What does it feel like to have to close your first game in Yankee Stadium? Who knew about players using steroids before the current scandal hit? Do managers tell their pitchers to throw at hitters? Mixing classic baseball stories with little-known details and an exclusive perspective, this work should appeal to any baseball fan.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
Bissinger, whose "Friday Night Lights" celebrated high-school football in Texas, here explores baseball through the eyes of the St. Louis Cardinals' current manager, Tony La Russa. A three-game series against the Chicago Cubs in 2003 frames the narrative, and provides an opportunity to explore the quirks of the contemporary game; clubhouses offer four flavors of sunflower seeds, for instance, while a Cardinals' relief pitcher performs his pregame rituals in the nude. La Russa comes across as a passionate, conflicted man. He's an animal-rights activist who drives an Escalade, and an information omnivore prone to misusing baseball statistics; and, while he's the sixth-winningest manager in history, he still gets so upset about losing that he has been known to stomp off the team bus and walk in solitude back to his hotel after a defeat. Granted complete access to La Russa and the team, Bissinger has studied closely, but he betrays a weakness for platitude and for odd turns of phrase, as when he ascribes to one hitter "the slightest oregano of arrogance."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Bookmarks Magazine
Bissinger strikes out with only a few critics in Three Nights. With a knack for detail, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author picks apart the fundamentals of the game, enters the mind of one of baseball’s greats, and provides the reader with a front row seat. His ability to bring to life America’s pastime is wholly provocative and excruciatingly detailed. A few critics, however, questioned Bissinger’s insider expertise and near omission of the controversy over steroids (LaRussa managed Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire); others faulted his extravagant writing. If you’re not a true baseball fan, Three Nights may seem ho-hum; for those obsessed with America’s traditional pastime, Three Nights is a winner.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The best baseball book of all time!
An incredible work of art!!

I myself am a Cardinals fan, but that does not mean that this book isn't a great read for any fan of baseball. I have friends and co-workers who are fans of the dreaded Cubs, they have read this book and loved it as well!

"Three Nights in August" finally gives the sports fan a look at all of the work and strategy that goes into managing a baseball team. If anyone out there thought that it would be an easy job, think again... Buzz goes into Tony's daily routines during the season, and it's hard to believe the man can stand up let alone manage the greatest team in baseball. I don't know how he does it getting a mere 5 hours of sleep a night!?!?

This book does a great job showing the stress and incite of a manager and how they must deal with it everyday. A wonderful book that should be read by anyone who is a true fan of the game!

A Great Book For Baseball Fans Who Want More Inside Stuff
I'm biased being a longtime Cardinal fan but any serious baseball fan will get a lot of inside information from this book. I couldn't believe all the things I learning reading about St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa matching wits with Chicago's Dusty Baker.

They make the game sound really complicated, maybe more so than it should be, but it's pretty mindboggling all the things that go on in LaRussa's head during a ballgame. I can understand why he is good friends with famous coaches like Bill Belechick and Bobby Knight. All of these guys are obssessed about their jobs and teaching their sports to their players. (They are also all big winners.)

Buzz Bissinger does an outstanding job giving so much information with such a little premise: a three-game series in 2003. It's a great character study, though, of LaRussa. You'll never look at this guy the same after reading this book, especially when it concerns what he does with this family. Yup, he's a strange dude!

Bissinger is the author of the popular "Friday Night Lights," so if you like his style of writing, check out this book. You'll learn a lot of baseball, even if you already know quite a bit.

does not live up to its' promise
For all of the hype and attention this book received, this has to be one of the most disappointing baseball books I have ever read. I read this book hoping to gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of managerial strategy than a fan usually has; instead I was treated to excessive fawning over simplistic ideas and well as a lack of understanding of baseball and its' statistics. The author italicizes the phrase "hit and run" as if it were a copy writ invention of Tony LaRussa. He acts amazed at the idea that managers and pitching coaches actually plot out pitching matchups in advance [and refers to that plan as the Thing of Beauty (his caps, not mine) ad nauseum]. He describes a curveball that doesn't break as going from "a killer 12 to 6 morphing into a very mortal 12 to 3" when what he is trying to say is that it flattens out in the center of the plate. He quotes the statistical line of pitcher Garrett Stephenson from 2000 and 2001 to show how off of a year he is having when anyone can see that the only significant change is his won-loss record, which is more of an indication of run support from teammates. He tries to prove that Albert Pujols has the best start of a career of "any player in the history of the game" by comparing his early career stats to those of Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, as if they are the two best players in the history of the game, and as if that would in turn mean that they had the best two year start of a ny players.. He refers to the video room operator as the Cardinals "secret weapon", as if they are the only team to do this. He calls Rich Ankiel a "once in a millennium" lefthander, which not only would make him the best lefthander in the history of baseball but also as likely to remain so for the next 900 years. He describes an early August game between the Cardinals and Cubs (who are about tied for first place) as one that "the Cards cannot lose if they want to remain in the division race". I could go on and on but the basic idea is that one gets the impression that Bissinger just DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BASEBALL. In addition, he has an atrocious writing style, with overstated metaphors and similes on almost every page. I would recommend this book for masochists who enjoy having their blood pressure shoot through the roof, as well as to any immediate family members of the author who would be so proud as to render them oblivious to the books' faults.