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UP, UP & AWAY by Jonah Keri


jaedmc

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The only issues I'm having so far are my lack of general knowledge about baseball. I read Moneyball before, and do know enough to get by, but some of the statistics talk I don't really understand.

 

Also, he has a habit of (seemingly randomly) dropping names into anecdotes without having mentioned them before, assuming prior knowledge of the reader - or at least, that's how it feels.

 

Enjoyable story though so far - up to the point where he discusses the Toronto expansion.

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Finished this already since it's a subject I enjoy and I was able to get through it quickly.

 

I didn't realize how stacked those late 70s/early 80s teams were, which makes it all the more surprising that they didn't have more success. I had a harder time getting through the rest of the book knowing that 1981 was their peak. Even though Keri at times tries to play devil's advocate or take the less popular opinion on things like Jeffrey Lauria, I still think the entire Expos franchise history is a collection of very poor decisions and lack of foresight, but I enjoyed reading about them.

 

I also enjoyed the anecdotes and sidebars, but then again I do have the prior knowledge needed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finished this whilst I was away on holiday.

 

As a man who isn't hugely into baseball, I did enjoy the book. I have also read Moneyball as a non-baseball fan, and must say that I preferred that book in terms of a book that could be enjoyed by a non-fan. As I've already stated, I feel he drops names in with minimum explanation, expecting a level of understanding I didn't have.

 

My only other problem was that I feel that, outside of being the first Canadian team, there wasn't enough done to sell the importance of the team, or at least why a book was put together for them. They didn't seem to have a hugely lasting legacy, didn't exactly burn the brightest during the time they existed and never won anything. I dunno - as a non-fan, maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't get the feeling that this was a story that needed to be told.

 

On the whole though, I did like the book - I tend to prefer non-fiction to fiction personally.

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Finished this a few days ago.  I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I did get to attend one live Expos game, on a family trip to Montreal (they played the Padres, and Joe Carter was on the Padres, which nails it down to 1990).  I remember the chickens on the scoreboard.

 

The parts I enjoyed the most were the stories about players' drug habits, and the Vladimir Guerrero section, where Keri really got across the idea that Guerrero could hit pretty much any pitch.  I found all the play-by-plays of actual games started to wear on me after a while.  It's probably impossible to avoid going through games step by step like that, but when we're going through several decades of team history, it gets a bit long.

 

It's cool that they got Terry Aislin to do illustrations.  Aislin is as much of a Montreal institution as anything else.

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Made it through. 

 

I thought it was pretty good. There was definitely that sense of "why are we hearing about these guys?" that Liam brings up. I like baseball, and, in fact, I think the second time I met Mark, who chose this book, we went to a Nats game. Baseball is really the only sport I follow and I have a Varsity Letter (a joke really) for doing the scorebook in high school. That said, I'm pretty casual. Also, I used to live a few blocks away from RFK when the Nats played there so I could walk to the stadium, easily, drop ten bucks on a scalper, and go to games, so I do feel some connection to the club. Still, it's a lot of words on an ultimately futile baseball experiment. Also, a lifelong second or third generation Boston fan, I love Bill Lee, who had to be my dad's favorite player shortly before I was born in 81 and who he told me about frequently. As for Montreal, we went once, when my sister was graduating from UVM and my 70-something year old grandfather (who had been a Boston Braves fan and is now passed away but reminded me of both Gorilla Monsoon and Bogart in his own way) monopolized our visit by finding this one jewish sandwich place had seen on the internet (We had hooked him up with WebTV).

 

It was sort of a tale of four books to me. The first quarter was interesting because of all the stuff I didn't know about Montreal, the second quarter because of the interesting team, the third quarter because of the very personal connection from the author, and the fourth because of the strike season and the eventual sale. Those were the hooks and my natural proclivities made most interested in the first and third quarters. The history stuff was really interesting and I want to read more about Montreal in the 60s/70s now, between the world's fair and the olympics. The book changes completely when it becomes obvious that the author was starting the run that he remembered fondly. It lights up in a way, and i almost wish there were more stories of what he and his cronies did. What was there was good. Lots of interviews and different takes on things. 

 

I guess in the end, a lot of the actual on field stuff seemed incidental. Even if they won a world series it wouldn't matter. Actually, it felt a lot like Bill Watts talking about the decline of Mid-South/UWF due to the oil crisis. It was set in stone due to economic reasons. The business community left Quebec. They lost their TV coverage due to the Jays. The Canadian dollar went down the crapper. One. Two. Three. They could have won forever and it wouldn't have mattered because the die was cast. 

 

All in all, it was a good read. The futility and the alien nature of Montreal and the personal connection made it more than the sum of its parts. I'm not going to rush to read a book about the Twins or the Mets anytime soon though. I'm set on baseball books for a while even if I'm glad I read this.

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Yes. If you find various articles about greatest teams of the 90s, they are usually mentioned near the top. They're record was comparatively better than any team this year so far, with most teams just hitting their number of wins as of now, with about twenty or so more games played. 

 

I just didn't realize how great they were until this book.

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I think there was a general mentality that from the time that it was their year and it was sort of a shame that the strike happened to screw them. Everyone roots for a perennial loser. 

 

I really like how the Habs kept Youppi.

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Of course everyone just assumes they would have beaten my beloved Yankees in the WS that year (the Yanks had the best record in the AL when the strike happened)

 

Anyway - eventually I will find the box that I packed this fucking book in

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  • 1 year later...

Got this book for Christmas. Am halfway through it and it's amazing so far, I can't put it down. I really hope the Expos come back some day because those fans got screwed royally.

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