In every era there is one book that captures the way baseball is played at the time. That book has now been written for this era of baseball, and it is the new tome by veteran writer Rob Neyer titled Power Ball, taking apart and examining our current era of lots of home runs and lots of strikeouts. This is the perfect writer for the book that describes the baseball of the late 2010s.
The book is modeled after Dan Okrent's classic Nine Innings, published in 1985 and centered around a 1982 game that examined the way baseball was played in the 1980s. That book and this one used the framework of a single ballgame to look at the many issues surrounding the game; the players, the owners, the rules, and often life in general. Okrent's original stands up as a slice of baseball in that time. Neyer's book will do the same.
Neyer was an assistant to Bill James, a free-lance writer, and for more than a decade was ESPN's main baseball writer on its website. He also wrote or co-wrote six books in that time, including the three volumes in his "Big Book of Baseball ____" series that were well-researched and entertaining. This, his seventh book, is his best to date.
Neyer is the perfect writer for such a volume. He excels at the short-essay format, which is baked into the book. It allows him to go off on tangents related to the happenings of the game, and look carefully into the many facets of the game today, plus what is working...and what isn't and should be changed.
Neyer is a talented writer who never forgets what it is like to be a fan. His long time writing about the game gives him a deep perspective, and his background in analysis and sabermetrics lets him use all the modern tools to look deeply into the game as it exists. This is a great read, and an instant classic. Highly recommended. posted by Shawn Weaver at 4:47 PM
