Jerry Grillo

A great, little-known story

Revisado: 01-09-25

Don't you just love it when a well-told story is backed up by exhaustive research that doesn't exhaust you? That's this book. I learned so much about some of the greatest coaches in college basketball, and now I'm psyched up for the rest of the roundball season. Another excellent book by Clayton Trutor and performance from Barry Abrams.

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A Master Class on Storytelling

Revisado: 09-24-24

I've long been impressed with Mike and Ted as excellent human beings and Northeast Georgia neighbors, and have always enjoyed Mike's writing and stage performances. But this book ... this is really is a master class on storytelling. This is, "how to tell an authentic story of love and resilience and captivate your audience while doing it." Mike's writing is sharp, funny, intelligent, self-assured, accessible, empathic, sometimes sad (without being maudlin or sentimental), brimming with honesty, and rich, colorful detail. His writing doesn't tell us. It shows us. As Mike's friend, I am beyond proud of his achievement. As an avid book listener, I'm blown away by the power and depth of this story about people I know and care about, and also the presentation. The only reason the performance got four stars instead of five is because I would have preferred to actually hear Mike reading it. But the narration was great. It helps that the Mr. Springer had a big and wonderful story to tell. When you put great words in a speaker's mouth, this is what you get.

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Great writing ruined by terrible narration

Revisado: 12-17-23

I can't say enough about Cohen's writing, and I'm glad to have read this one before. This audiobook is ruined, in my opinion, but the narrator's inability to pronounce some famous names from American history. KOO-fax? Mari-COL? Nee-EKRO? Dude has a wonderful speaking voice, which is why he got the gig (or, I suppose, any gig). Unfortunately, he didn't take any time at all to learn how to pronounce all the words and that really cheapens the product. Time or money I won't get back. Sigh.

I totally suggest reading the book and leaving this audio version alone, and also suggest the producers of this kind of slipshod production take some time to 'proof-listen' ... because crap like this sounds more like a cold script-read than a final production.

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Please learn how to pronounce famous names

Revisado: 08-22-23

I've read most of Roger Kahn's books and the benefit of that has always been, the voice in my head knows how to pronounce the names in these stories. These are famous names, well known in our culture, easy to pronounce.

But I decided to listen to this book and I wasted a credit for it. A complete waste.

The narrator absolutely butchered one of the most famous names in baseball history, Leo Durocher. He destroyed it. His awful and unnecessary mispronunciation was so profoundly bad, I could not listen to the entire book. I gave the story five stars because the writing was first class.

Kahn was a master of the craft. He and his readers -- or rather, listeners -- deserve so much better than this dreadful performance. I'm deleting this one from my library. Ugh.

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Great biography, weak narration

Revisado: 02-28-22

Creamer's biography of Stengel is a classic and it deserves first class narration. Instead, the narrator's apathy comes across clearly with multiple mispronunciations of common baseball names. Get the printed version.

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Great story that deserves better narration

Revisado: 02-28-22

Snelling does a terrific job of writing the complete story of one of baseball's great characters, but the audio version suffers from very weak narration. What a shame that one of baseball's colorful individuals, who is written about splendidly by the author, gets a such colorless audio treatment (there is a phoned-in rhythm by the narrator, who seems profoundly uninterested in the story, and has real difficulty pronouncing some pretty famous names. Anyway, I highly recommend the printed version of this wonderful baseball biography.

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This one breaks into my starting lineup

Revisado: 11-29-21

If I had a starting nine of baseball books, this one might bat clean-up. Just a fabulous and gigantic work from Posnanski, whose deep love and knowledge of the game, and immense skills as a writer, come together to create a -- to use one of Joe's favorite adjectives -- "breathtaking" collection of essays. When Joe writes about baseball, I'm always reminded of why I've loved the game for so long.

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Terrific writing

Revisado: 10-19-19

Kennedy offers an entertaining narrative of DiMaggio's hitting streak in 1941. The writing and most of the research is fabulous, especially the stuff at the end where Kostya (who took the time to immerse himself into probability theory) offers the different calculations of how difficult (i.e., impossible) it would be to do what DiMaggio did. The only thing that bothered me was the part where Kennedy writes that nobody had hit better than .400 since Roger Hornsby in 1924 (when writing about Ted Williams' amazing '41 season, when he batted .406). Kostya and his researcher should have known that Hornsby also hit over .400 in 1925, and that Bill Terry was actually the last .400 hitter before Williams (in 1930). Later in the book, Kennedy gets it right, mentioning that Terry had been the last .400 hitter. So, the fact checker was asleep at the wheel or something. Anyway, this is a very entertaining book, though the narrator sounded like he probably didn't know the difference between a ballgame and a cumquat. You guys oughta offer your narrators some tips on proper pronunciation.

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