Down to the Last Pitch: How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves Gave Us the Best World Series of All Time

by Tim Wendel

Never in baseball history had a last place team rebounded to take the pennant the following season. Yet in 1991, lightning struck twice as the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves, a pair of cellar dwellers the year before, faced each other in an unforgettable World Series.For both clubs, the turnaround was one for the ages. Minnesota and Atlanta rallied throughout the 1991 season around a crop of rising stars—Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz—who each spirited their team's unlikely run all the way to the World Series. And what a Fall Classic it proved to be, with five of the seven games decided by a single run, four decided on the final pitch, and three-including game seven-ending in extra innings. When the final out was recorded, the cover headline in Baseball Weekly “Best World Series Ever.”In Down to the Last Pitch, Tim Wendel delivers all the hopes, dreams, and drama in a season—and a Series—touched by magic.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, History

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2014

About the author

Tim Wendel is an award-winning novelist and journalist. He is the author of 16 books, including Rebel Falls: A Novel, Summer of '68: The Season When Baseball, and America, Changed Forever, and Castro's Curveball. His stories have appeared in Gargoyle and The Potomac Review, and his articles in The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, Washingtonian and USA Today. A longtime writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, Tim teaches fiction and nonfiction writing. Tim has worked has worked on both coasts, covering everything from the Olympics to the America's Cup. More information and his blog can be found at www.timwendel.com."

Reviews

[Leanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

THIS WOULDA GOTTEN 4 STARS IF NOT FOR ALL THE GODDAMN TYPOS.

sorry.

but I did immensely enjoy this book.

Part of the reason I rated it tentative-4 and not 5, was because a lot of this book wasn't anything new to me, but that's not really fair, since I'm rather obsessed with the '91 World Series. I feel like anyone /not/ well-versed in the '91 World Series would find this much more...page-turning. There's also the bias I have having a far more vested interest in the '91 Braves than the '91 Twins, and this was definitely slanted more towards the Twins.

That being said, Wendel does a very good job of encompassing all the goings-on of the events of 1991 (Rose's ban, the beginning of OPCY, Maris's record acknowlegement, among other things) without veering too far off for too long, and it's never dry, as can be the case with a lot of "season" books. It's peppered with interesting anecdotes, a lot straight from the sources. You can tell this book was made with a lot of love and interest in the topic, especially the Twins, and I would recommend it to anyone who has even a mild interest in the Twins or the 1991 World Series.

[Tom Livingston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! The Twins came to Minnesota the year I was 8, and I fell in love deeply and hard. In 1965 they took the Dodgers to a seventh game before losing. I grew up and was living far away before they finally won the series a few years before this one, but did I ever notice and hang on every pitch. 1991 was nearly as exciting, maybe a little more enjoyable for the team haven "proven" itself just a few years earlier. Wendell has a well crafted storytelling style, winding the story of the games around the characters involved.

[John Burlew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book earlier this year (2017) and as a Braves’ fan I thought the story was entertaining. Wendel thought the Braves were the better team - and they were. But in remarkable Braves’ fashion they managed to lose their last game of the season once again. Good book though about America’s favorite past-time. And by “America”, I mean Dominican Republic.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't love the way that the book delved into various other baseball stories -- sometimes felt like padding -- but memories of this world series are so meaningful to me that I still totally loved the book.

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

The transcendent baseball book is David Halberstam's OCTOBER 1964, an adroit combination of sports enthusiasm and cultural history written with an artist's skill. In DOWN TO THE LAST PITCH, Tim Wendel had an opportunity to model Halberstam's book. Baseball was at a crossroads, heading into a time of exploding salaries, new media, and a steroids epidemic that still taints the sport. The 1991 World Series, with two last place to first place teams (the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves) vying for a championship was one for the ages, highlighting what baseball looks like when it is played at its best. The story of the 1991 World Series, on the cusp of all the disrupting changes that were soon to follow, is fertile ground for an incisive cultural history. Wendel does make some attempts at cultural analysis, but the efforts seem truncated and out of sorts.

Expecting any baseball book to reach Halberstam's levels isn't fair, but in many ways Wendel does not even tell the story of 1991 very well. Wendel divides his book by focusing on one game of the seven-game World Series at a time. Within those game-by-game sections, he moves back and forth from game descriptions, to player biographies, to commentary on people and issues that come up in his discussions, even if they are not directly connected to the story of the Twins vs. the Braves. There are many asides, some more interesting than the others, from looks at the career and death of Alan Wiggins, to the the sordid tale of Pete Rose and the John Dowd investigation, to the rise of super-agent Scott Boras. The reader must follow a very stream of consciousness path. One of these asides, the story of Gary Gaetti's born-again conversion and the disruptive impact on the Twins team that won it all in 1987, showed off Wendel's technique at its best.

In the end, however, even the actual story of the games seems lacking. It is not certain that someone who wasn't already a fan of one of the two teams would be able to follow the storyline. I am a long-term fan of the Minnesota Twins and that helped me keep up on the story and recognize the players, but I am not sure that someone without that background could have done the same. There is a disconnectness throughout, even in the conclusion, which includes a brief run-down (AMERICAN GRAFFITI-like) of a random collection of characters and a short listing of dramatic World Series events in history.

The story of 1991 is worth telling. Kirby Puckett is a tragic hero whose rise and fall deserves more attention. The role of Ted Turner and TBS is another worthy storyline, briefly retold in this book but not fully explored. Just a decade after this World Series, the Minnesota Twins were scheduled for elimination, abetted by a faithless owner (Carl Pohlad). Again, a topic worth more time and attention. Maybe, when all is said and done, my response to the book says more about me than the book itself. That World Series was so important to me, I wanted an OCTOBER 1964 to memorialize it.

Thunderous at home,
Kirby, Kent, Chili and Jack.
My wife could not look.

[Michael Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written about the classic 1991 World Series between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves, this book was an exercise In nostalgia for me. I grew up rooting for the Twins and although I had long since moved away, I sat glued to my TV for the length of the Series. With 5 games decided by one run, 4 decided in the last at bat and 3 going into extra innings, ESPN called it the greatest Series of all time. The author also makes a case for the series as a turning point in the history of baseball - the last hurrah before labor strife and major market spending dominance turned the sport away from it's roots ultimately ending it's reign as America's past time.

Perhaps it was a turning point for a loss of innocence as well. I remember the joy of a team of over-achievers beating the odds to win a championship (remember the 1980 US Olympic hockey team beating the Russians?). At some point baseball stopped being a team sport and became an individual sport - buy the best players and you can win the championship. That's when I lost interest. 1991 may have been the last of the true team championships - the heroes were the most unlikely and the superstar alike.

Yet, it's not just a book about baseball. It delves in to the personal stories of many major leaguers (both in the Series and not) and follows both the wonderful and tragic story lines. Kirby Puckett the superstar who was out of baseball with glaucoma in his mid-thirties and dead of a stroke before his 48th birthday. John Smoltz and Tom Glavine the young aces of the Atlanta staff who went on to 14 consecutive post season playoff appearances and hall of fame careers. The washed up slugger Chili Davis winding down his career with an unanticipated world championship. Players destroyed by drug abuse, others being "born again", some angry and disaffected, others finding the pinnacle of success in only their 1st or 2nd year of pro ball only to find that they never reach the summit again.

It's not a great piece of literature and it doesn't quite capture the intensity of the series, but it is well written, easy to read and fascinating - particularly if you are or we're a baseball fan.

[Tom Gase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, Tim Wendel writes a good book about a season's World Series, in this case the 1991 World Series between two Cinderella teams, the Twins and the Braves. The year before both teams had finished in last place, but both teams turned things around in 91 to get to the Fall Classic. This book really brought me back to being in 8th grade and reading Baseball Weekly and watching that season. I wanted to like this book a lot more, and to be honest this book was closer to a 3.5 than 4 because I thought Wendel strayed too far away from main subject too often. I don't think he talked about the actual games enough in certain parts, and instead he talked about subjects such as Scott Boras or Pete Rose and was reallllllllly stretching to tie them in to subjects concerning the actual game. Often when he strayed away from the games it worked, as with stories about Ted Turner, John Smoltz, Jack Morris, Kirby Puckett, Kent Herbek, Mark Lemke, Brian Harper, etc. But often times I thought Wendel reached too far to make a connection. Still it was a fun read and nostalgic for me. I also liked his book Summer of 68, so I'll probably read Wendel's next baseball book he writes. If you are a fan of the Braves or Twins you will enjoy this book.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Down to the Last Pitch is just so disjointed, I thought Wendel didn't have a feel for the ebb and flow of a game or a series, which would be insane for a longtime baseball writer. But then I realized, he keeps interrupting game narrative with irrelevant tangents, just stuff I imagine he wrote on the beat -- about Rickey Henderson, Scott Boras, the new-old stadium craze, etc. The reader gets two or three pages of WS '91 for every page of "etc.," and that will never be a satisfying reading experience.

On the plus side, Wendel does flesh out several of these players quite well. And I did warm more to Wendel's style in the chapters on Games 6 and 7. Whether that's due to heightened interest in the Series climax, becoming inured to his prosaic writing, or actual improvement, I cannot say.
The "where are they now" appendix was nicely done as well, but it was followed by an utterly unnecessary "great moments in World Series history" appendix, which only served as a reminder of how often I pictured the author at his desk with one thought: "Pad it out, Tim!"

The Twins-Braves fall classic of 1991 will someday inspire an "October 1964"-caliber treatment. Unfortunately, this ain't it.

[MacK · Rating 1 out of 5]

Baseball is, maybe more than any other "American" sport, a game that thrives on a fan's personal connection to the team and its players. Which is what makes Down to the Last Pitch so horribly disappointing.

Designed to chronicle one of the greatest World Series of all time (1991 Twins V.s. Braves), it's absolutely and utterly removed from the people in the action. Author Tim Wendel was there every step of the way. He was a beat writer throughout the whole season. He should have known the key players, the crotchet Bobby Cox and still smoking Tom Kelly, the effervescent Kirby Puckett and bold rookie John Smoltz, the muscly athletes in Atlanta (Ron Gant/David Justice) and the oddly assorted scrappers in Minnesota (Dan Gladden/Kent Hrbek).

Instead it's just a hodgepodge of summaries and irrelevant interjections from Wendel's old feature stories. There's no soul, no energy, no setting, no nail-biting. But there is a thought about when Scott Boras first became an agent. Because, what fan in the middle of a tense, pivotal, champion defining game doesn't think: "yeah, but what about that agent guy who's making all the money?"

[Luke Koran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Give me some Kirby, Hrbek, Twins, Metrodome and the 1991 World Series in the full-length biography they so deserve and I’ll be a happy camper. I absolutely enjoyed Tim Wendel’s “Down to the Last Pitch” when it focused on the seven exceptional baseball games which decided the world championship in October, 1991. However, even though I revere the history of this great game, I was greatly distracted by the significant number of pages devoted to specific baseball figures who had a life event occur in or around 1991. I appreciate understanding the importance of Rickey Henderson, Pete Rose and Roger Maris to the National Pastime, but Wendel did not elegantly weave or relate these anecdotes to the rest of the chapter. Both Wendel and Tom Kelly’s “Season of Dreams” are entertaining reads for Twins fans, but both have a large enough flaw that the reader yearns for more.

[Tom Richmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome retelling of the all-time classic 1991 World Series.

Wendel does a great job of weaving the core telling of the seven games played in this fall classic with tales about the history and future of the game, anecdotes about the state of the country and it’s culture at the time, and the personal histories, for better or for worse, of those involved in these seven days of October, 1991

As a Twins fan who was not around to witness it, this book has brought me the closest to experiencing a World Series title I have been in my life. I would recommend it to ALL the Twins fans in my life that similarly crave to see their hometown nine reach the summit.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted this book to be better than it was. While the 1991 World Series is a compelling topic, too much of this book rambles away from that central theme - there's a whole unnecessary discussion of Rickey Henderson (complete with a photo of Rickey) that has no bearing on the rest of the story. While I liked Wendel's efforts to layer in context and backstory around the central frame of the series on a game-by-game basis, there is too much that feels like Wendel's attempt to share personal stories just because he found them interesting, rather than because they are specifically relevant to the '91 series. While this could have been a great read, it's instead simply a good one.

[Dave Cottenie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly one of the greatest World Series ever. Tim Wendel weaves through each game with ease and offers interesting perspectives and histories of the key players. At times, it seems like he meanders into some places that don’t seem to match up with the Twins or Braves or the time (i.e. the monologue on Roger Maris) but overall it is interesting and gives a spotlight to a series that definitely deserves it.

[Joe Loncarich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy read that was especially fun for me as Kirby Puckett was my favorite baseball player growing up, but it goes over everybody who had a big impact on the World Series. But my favorite part, by far, was learning that Kent Hrbek had to stop hanging out with Gary Gaetti when he became a born-again Christian, because he turned into a total bore. Kent Hrbek owns.

[Leroy Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had all the potential of being a very good book. Unfortunately, the writer packed the book with dozens of non-related stories about baseball players and other people who had absolutely no connection to the story that he was supposed to be telling. It was a chore to even try to read it.

[Reed Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twins win! Twins win!

[Blake Osburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a baseball fan this is a good read

[Brian Sexton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but it was hard to follow as the author seemed to go off on tangents at times. Interesting when he did stick to the topic of what led to the world series.

[Clint · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a 50-plus year Atlanta Braves fan, I was hoping for a little more from this book (even though my team lost). Published 23 years after the 1991 World Series that has been called one of the best ever and featured two last-to-first teams, it didn’t offer much more than a recollection of the games and background (fresh quotes) from a few of the players. It goes down rabbit holes on several non-Series participants throughout (perhaps to fill out the pages) but doesn’t spend much time on the Braves’ incredible pennant race or have fresh insights from some of the key players on both teams.

[Zach Koenig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up "Down to the Last Pitch" because I'm a huge Minnesota Twins fan and thus have fond remembrances of the '91 World Series. As a "Twins insider" who knows this series and its players inside and out, there wasn't a whole lot of new material here for me. Yet, the writing of Tim Wendel is so fluid and engaging that it still turns out to be a book that I finished in a matter of days.

The book has a simple format: seven chapters, seven games in the WS. While Wendel covers the key moments of each game, he also weaves a much broader tapestry including his own experiences and what was happening around MLB at the time.

The best parts of "Down To The Last Pitch"? The stuff about the Series itself. Like I said, no new ground to cover here, but the writing is so engaging that it creates a page-turning narrative like a fiction book. Plus, if you just vaguely remember the '91 series instead of knowing it inside and out like myself, this will take you on an exciting journey down memory lane.

The only reason it doesn't get the full five stars? As good as Wendel's writing is, his focus can sometimes be off just as much. The Series stuff is always on-point, but some of the other material seems very out of place. Like him working at Baseball Weekly or the interludes about something that really has nothing to do with the Twins/Braves. Some of the tangents he goes down are downright strange.

Basically, if you put Kirby Puckett in his infamous pose on the cover of any book, Twins fans are going to give it at least a look. Luckily, "Down to the Last Pitch" deserves a full read, as it combines great writing with the innate unscripted drama of the 1991 World Series itself.

[Robbie Petersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book, Down To The Last Pitch, is a remarkable story about how the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta braves overcame all odds to make it the the World Series. The author of this book is Tim Wendel. Tim usually writes for news papers and magazines but was intrigued by this story he had to write about it. The setting in this story mostly takes place in The Twins' and The Atlanta Braves' home stadiums. At the time, Minnesota played in the H.H.H Metrodome. While Atlanta played in the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The book has many characters displaying there memories of that season and post season. An interesting character in the story is Scott Erickson, he was a very good starting pitcher the twins had in their arsenal. Erickson, no matter what kind of season he had, he was still very nervous. When Erickson had be asked if he was nervous before pitching in a World Series game he answered," Damn right, I was was worried." Another interesting character in the story as Frank Robinson. Frank was always living for the big moment. He once described what it was like to hit a home run. He described it as, a gun shot by the sound it made as the bat struck the ball just right. I personally loved this story. I love hearing the behind the scenes intake about important sporting events. I also loved that it was about the Twins. No matter, how bad the Twins are now, I will always love them and their history. I personally would recommend this story to any one who loves baseball, or any one that loves hearing about the history of the great sport of baseball.

[Rosi Hollinbeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review for the San Francisco Book Review:
How does one write an intriguing book about something for which everyone knows the outcome? Start with a truly great World Series, add two storied teams facing each other at a time when the game was really changing, then have it stirred together by a man with deep experience in baseball writing.

“Kelly talked about the state of his team as though he were viewing a wreck on the highway from a good distance away. Perhaps that was the correct approach to take, seeing as his ball club had lost by nine runs on this night in Atlanta.”

It was 1991 and the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves had both crawled out of the cellars of their respective leagues to face off in what many believe is the greatest championship series in sports. Author Tim Wendel breaks down the series game by game, inning by inning, almost pitch by pitch. This was one of the tightest contests ever in the Fall Classic, with five games of the seven played being one-run games. Wendel takes his readers into the dugout, the locker room, around the field, and introduces the reader to every player, coach, and manager personally. Readers get to know their personalities, their strengths, their weaknesses and see baseball heroes in the making. The close examination of the series by Wendel is almost like being there with an all-access pass, privy to so much more than a regular fan ever gets. This is a winner.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book through Goodreads' First Reads program in exchange for my honest review.

Any fan of baseball will enjoy this book. It looks closer at one of the most entertaining World Series in baseball history, with one chapter for each memorable game. The book explores the teams, the key players and the moments that made the series so exciting. I was 9 when the series happened, so I have at most vague memories of the WS, so was enjoyable to read about.

At around 225 pages (including the appendix), this is a fast read. The length also leads me to question the inclusion of some anecdotes. There are stories about Roger Maris, Pete Rose, and first person accounts of the author's interactions with Rickey Henderson and the author's time with Baseball Weekly. While entertaining, they have very loose ties to the 1991 WS, making me wonder if they were included just to beef up the page length. You won't regret the inclusion, just question the relevance.

I gave the book 3 stars for being an entertaining overview of one the best WS of all-time.

[Dale Stonehouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic retelling of a great time for baseball fans, especially Twins fans. The writing is great and the author interviewed most of the key people involved, with the exception of the late Kirby Puckett; but since everyone who met Kirby has stories, there was plenty about his role in perhaps the 2 best World Series games ever, 1991 games 6 and 7. The only disappointment is the presence of numerous grammatical and other errors, evidence that the only proofing of this manuscript was by machine spell-checker; mistakes that would cause the average 3rd-grader to stop and say "that sentence doesn't make any sense." If it was up to me, the publisher would be required to revise the book after a human being proofread the entire text to correct its mistakes, complete with apologies to a reading public which deserves better. Watch the skies for flying pigs if that happens.

[Adam Omelianchuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice memoir of a sports reporter who witnessed my favorite team (the Twins) beating the Braves in the 1991 World Series. I agree: it was the greatest ever. Sadly, this is probably not the best account of it, because each chapter is interspersed with detours and asides about subject matter irrelevant to the World Series. Case in point: a superfluous story about a sports agent who wheeled and dealed with owners over prospects. What connection did this have with the Twins and the Braves? Absolutely nothing! The padding aside, it was fun to be reminded of all the suspense and drama of a Series that included several plays at the plate, extra-inning tie-breakers, and dramatic home runes.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great World Series, yes. That’s recounted very well. Two great characters emerge: Kirby Puckett and the Metrodome. (They used to turn on the air conditioning blowers behind home plate when the home team was batting! It may have given the ball a little bit of a ride.) Puckett became a hero, but after baseball his life unraveled. Tim Wendel appreciates the joking of the players and the mysteries of how a game can turn on a play, a hesitation, or how a mediocre player can put in an MVP performance. He understands how damn majestic, pedestrian and just silly the game can be, sometimes all in the same moment.

[Jason Bellamy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was impressed with the detail when the writer stayed on topic. I agree with previous reviews he was kind of scatter brained. And he touches on baseball topics like Pete Rose which were not relevant to the topic of the book. At times it sounded like he was tooting his own horn on his experiences especially with USA today. My biggest problem is his portrayed of the infamous play that involved Ron Gant. He also seemed to be trying to make the twins look like innocent children. I would have given it a 3 if he had a more accurate portray of the Gant incident and a 4 if he had also stayed on point. The writing style was easy to read which is few and far between with books on sports.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not even close to Summer of 68. Could have written the book in less than 100 pages. His diversions away from the series have far fetched connections. Twice calls the Mpls star trib. The St. Paul Star Trib. Even though he has a plug from the Mpls. Star Trib. On the back cover. Says the collective bargaining agreement was between the owners and the owners. He did do a good job of researching the Twins, but makes it sound like they were deadbeats forever after when the truth is they dominated the A L central for many years in the new Millenium.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The parts about the World Series were fun to remember with, but the book as a whole felt very disjointed and scattered. The transitions between game situations and tangential stories were abrupt and often not even considered. I did finish it though, because the story of games 6 and 7 are part of one of the greatest stories in Minnesota sports history.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would have been a five star book had the author stuck with writing about just the games, the Braves and the Twins. Too many non-related topics. Full review is posted here:

http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...