Jim Kaat: Good As Gold: My Eight Decades in Baseball

by Jim Kaat, Douglas B. Lyons

An unforgettable look at a lifetime of baseball packed with humor and passion for the game

With a career that has now touched eight decades, Jim Kaat has had a prime front row seat for baseball's continuing evolution.

Not only was he a major-league pitcher for 25 seasons, but his time as a pitching coach and his many years as a broadcaster have given him a singular long view of the game.

In Good as Gold, Kaat weaves the tale of a lifetime, taking fans on the field, into the clubhouse, and behind the mic as only he can.

Full of priceless stories from New York, Minnesota, and across the major leagues, this honest and engaging autobiography gives fans a rare seat alongside Kaat on a tour of baseball history.

Genres: Sports, Baseball, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Memoir, Biography Memoir

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 19, 2022

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually I am generous on rating memoirs because the person has lived that life so they know best. However, I just couldn’t do so with this one. This despite Jim Kaat being a player I enjoyed watching when he played for the Twins and whom I consider to be one of the best baseball broadcasters. This book disappointed me on several fronts, but I’ll mention the two that stuck out to me. One was that he spent an awful lot of time talking about golf courses. That’s fine for a couple pages or so, since golf is a hobby of his, but I started to wonder near the end was this a book about baseball or golf. Second knock on the book I’ll mention was the lack of fact checking. Not sure if this was Kaat not remembering details or bad editing, but I’ll give just one example, of which there were a few. Soon after talking about the Twins arriving in Minnesota from Washington in 1961, he talks about a game between the Twins and Yankees in “1960”. Even if a reader didn’t know about the move, this would be something that anyone can easily catch without using a search engine. Not pleased with this book - just hope his speech during his induction ceremony is not like this book and more like his broadcasts.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should have been titled, "Everything I hate about baseballs current state and why everything was so much better in my day."

I was immediately hesitant when in the Intro he was already talking about everything he dislikes about the game today. I went on anyways. The first half is just a high level overview of most of his career, with no real interesting stories. The second half is just his random thoughts and opinions, most of which are outdated (surprise, surprise). It felt like i was back watching a game with my grandpa listening to him try and tell me why the game was better in his day and how he would have dominated in our era. The best part is knowing Jim Kaat probably wouldn't even have made the majors in today's era.

[John R Urry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable look back at when baseball was fun , and watchable

[Thom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scattered anecdotes and complaints about how baseball has changed in the last 40 years. Occasionally repeats, scattered factual errors - this is much closer to a transcribed interview than a written and edited book. Jim Kaat was a decent pitcher and announcer, but should have stayed away from a word processor.

Reading this I did think back to baseball of the 70s and 80s - but I'd far rather read Roger Angell.

[RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN · Rating 2 out of 5]

RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: A FEW GOOD OLD-SCHOOL RANTS… BUT IF YOU’RE ALLERGIC TO THE WORD FRIEND… YOU’LL BE DEAD BY THE END OF THE BOOK
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Jim Kaat a former Major League pitcher for twenty-five years who retired in 1983 was recently elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Golden Days Era Committee. Kaat won 283 games and lost 237… during a career that spanned twenty-five years. His baseball broadcasting career has lasted even longer. It would be near impossible not to develop some very strong beliefs… and feelings… good and bad… about our grand old game… during a total career… that has been matched by nary a few. No one of course will agree with all… but an old-school fan like me… believes very strongly with many of them!

From detesting the designated hitter… to endless games that could be timed with a calendar as much as a watch… the lack of desire… drive… or strategy to pitch COMPLETE GAMES! The fact that most managers aren’t even managers anymore… they are simply a marionette… donning a uniform… with strings being pulled by some never-played-the-game Ivy League spread-sheet-addict… who refuses to ever include… heart… desire… drive… or even a drop of street-fighting-soul… into their equations. Team plans that are immune to hitting to the opposite field to advance a runner… bunting… sacrificing… hit and run… and G-d forbid… a little chin music to back up plate “hangers”!

This is a short book… made even shorter… by old publisher’s tricks… such as using a tiny bit larger type… and having much more “open” space around the pages and between headings. Kind of like the ballparks that have more open foul ground. In addition to the little “space-taking” subtleties noted… the author doesn’t spend a lot of time or detail on individual stories as he whips through twenty five years of playing and decades upon decades of announcing. As the reader progresses… something starts to become bothersome… almost like a ”burr under the saddle”! When it finally sinks in… the reader will become extremely annoyed… and almost lose sight for the feel and flow of the book…

Around page one-hundred-twenty-eight… I finally stopped… and said to myself… man… this guy sure uses the word *FRIEND* a lot! And I really mean… A HECK OF A LOT MORE THAN A LOT! It was driving me crazy… a “good friend”…” still a friend”… “longtime friend”… AD NAUSEAM!!! REPEAT AD NAUSEAM!!! It was so bad that I contemplated re-reading the first one-hundred-twenty-eight pages again and count them. I decided not to do that… but what I did do is start underlining and counting the use of FRIEND… in the last one-hundred-thirty-seven pages… (and remember… these are relatively short/small pages) AND THE NUMBER WAS **FORTY-NINE**! You can imagine what the total with the first half of the book would be! If this was a drinking game where you had to take a shot each time he used the word friend the emergency rooms would be overflowing worse than they were during the height of covid.

In summary… with the shortness of the written content itself… with the massive infestation of innumerable “friend-phraseology”… this short book… lost some of its potential impact. On a positive note… his straight forward blast of Alex Rodriguez is a bull’s-eye of truth. After an earlier negative situation between the two of them… Kaat writes: “WE HAVE BEEN FINE EVER SINCE, THOUGH I DON’T THINK IT’S RIGHT THAT HE GETS ALL THE EXPOSURE HE DOES ON TV AND WAS EVEN A CANDIDATE TO BUY THE METS. IF I WAS COMMISSIONER, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN BANNED FOR LIFE AFTER HIS SECOND OFFENSE. HE IS A WELL-MANNERED BUT INSECURE INDIVIDUAL WHO SEEMS TO CRAVE ATTENTION.” Amen Brother!

NOTE: LARGE-HISTORICAL-STATISTICAL-MISTAKE: early on the author brags about his near photographic memory and recall about everything in his career and the game itself. Yet when talking about one of his early idols Lew Burdette on page 6… he is 100% wrong! The author wrote regarding Burdette… “He led the Braves to victory in the 1957 World Series and won three games in the ’58 Series.”

THAT IS ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT BURDETTE WON THREE GAMES IN THE 1957 WORLD SERIES **NOT** THE 1958 WORLD SERIES!

[Jason M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dull and run-of-the-mill baseball book, a very loosely edited series of musings by octogenarian ex-player Jim Kaat, released in 2022 just as he was selected for the Hall of Fame and just before he retired from broadcasting. Kaat is a self-proclaimed "raconteur" so the book is him going off on a stream of consciousness, part recollections of isolated instances from his long baseball career, and part "Get off my lawn!" screed about the state of baseball after he left it. In Kaat's view, baseball (and this year is the 150th season of the National League as a going concern) was at its best only when he was in his prime. Funny coincidence, that. His golden age of baseball was when players were chattel, teams had strict quotas limited how many Black people could be on one team, spring training in Florida was racially segregated, and medical care was so primitive that any injury could end your career with no insurance or pension. OK then, thanks (to be fair, Kaat does acknowledge some of these inequities).

The parts of the book not complaining about analytics and relief pitchers are entertaining. Kaat is refreshingly free of religion and political conservatism, two things that weigh down many books of the genre. Everyone he's ever met is called "my friend", and his travelogue of New Zealand is unique. Kaat is still bitter about how his career ended (never minding that only two or three other players ever, out of about 24,000 MLB alumni, had longer careers), and his stories about how George Steinbrenner and Whitey Herzog dumped him are lively and interesting. More righteous anger and less get-off-my-lawning, as well as tighter editing and less repetition of the same anecdotes, might have made this a better book.

[Andrew Langert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little story before I review. When I was an 11-year-old boy, I wrote letters to the athletes I most admired. Jim Kaat, pitching for Minnesota at that time in the early 1960s, received one of my letters, where I asked for his autograph. I got replies from maybe half the letters/requests that I sent out. Jim Kaat not only replied, he sent me a handwritten letter on Twins letterhead thanking me for my interest in his career. I have saved everything I got back from those requests and Jim's reply was the one I most treasured.
So I have been a lifelong fan of Jim Kaat. There is nothing fancy about this book. It is Jim's summary of his life in baseball. He covered the positive aspects of his career as a player, coach and broadcaster. But he also covered some of the contentious relationships he had with team owners, team manager and broadcast executives. There is not too much about his personal life and his family, which was fine. Sadly, toward the end of the book, he revealed that he no longer signs autographs for free, after finding out the people were profiting off of selling his autographed memorabilia. So, if I was 11 years old now (I wish!), I would not be able to enjoy the classiness of Jim's reply.
Reading the book is like sitting down and listening to Jim talk. Written when he was 83-years-old, he is still sharp as a tack, though a good bit of "get off my lawn" has struck him. He especially hates the overreliance, in his opinion, on statistics to make baseball decisions.
I really enjoyed the book, but can see why others have criticized it, mainly for being a bit too negative about today's game.

[Zach Koenig · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a great amount of respect for Jim Kaat's athletic and broadcast career. Unfortunately, he has now penned two books that I don't consider to be quite in that league, so to speak.

Truth be told, "Good As Gold" on its own is probably a bit closer to 3 stars. It has all the reminisces that one would want from the author and his career. But there are some significant reasons which cause me to round down...

-It is all jumbled up (jumping forward and backward within trains of thought) and often covers similar material multiple times. I think the book would have greatly benefited from a more focused or linear structure (as is, it is almost more of an interview transcription).

-Kaat disguises it well, but there is a decent amount of complaining (about the current state of MLB) and some past sour grapes embedded in the text. I'm not opposed to an athlete speaking his mind in an autobiography, but there is an undercurrent of frustration or angst from beginning to end in "Good As Gold".

-This is essentially the exact same book as "Still Pitching", previously penned by Kaat. This one has a bit more material on the last 20 years, of course, but other than that it covers many of the same topics and has the exact same tenor.

I'm incredibly happy that Kaat achieved Cooperstown immortality in 2022, but I still far prefer him in the booth or at the mic as opposed to on the printed page.

[Shaun Ko · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ranked as one of the worst memoirs I have ever read! On par with Keith Hernandez's "five-year" autobiography! We should never let ball players who have low literacy skills to publish a book. For example, Kaat complained his HOF voting percentage dropped from one year to next, despite not pitching for X many years. This is a stupid claim because 1. the HOF ballot changes from year to year, yielding different totals and thus different percentages 2. Any given year there is one or two candidates two garnered the majority of votes, in the process taking votes away from others. These are simple logic. Yet a baseball HOFer cannot even comprehend and need to sabotage a writer's reputation????? STPUD!!!

[Monte Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book by HOF pitcher Jim Kaat. There are some good ideas on how to improve baseball and some of the anecdotes are good reading. However, the book does not read smoothly as some unrelated paragraphs seem to be dropped into an ongoing thought and then the original story line continues. At times I found the unrelated paragraph was more related to something that was written in another chapter.

The sections of his career were interesting and if you are a real baseball fan, it still has something to offer. It just needed some editing.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always liked Jim Kaat when he played baseball as a major leaguer, which he did from the late 1950's until the mid-1980's, for twenty-five years in total. His book was interesting for me, and I mostly enjoyed his writing about when he played baseball. His experiences as a broadcaster were much less interesting to me, but I appreciate that he would want to include them, since they contributed to his eight decades in baseball. I am happy he was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2022, and was glad to learn that Bobby Shantz was one of his favorite players, since Shantz was one of mine also.

[Tim Blackburn · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of My Baseball Card Heros

Always liked and respected Jim Kaat. I enjoyed this memoir that he authored. A large percentage of the book concerned his post playing days. I enjoyed but wanted to learn more details about his pitching days. I've already purchased his earlier book to now read hoping it will contain more info from his playing career.. It was always a thrill to pull his card out of a pack and I appreciated reading his book.

[Joseph Hilden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligent description of how baseball has changed over the past 50 years. Very well written with enjoyable inside stories. Mr Kaat has integrity and honesty on his side. Read this book if you love baseball or want to understand its hold on so many fans. Gambling has made the NFL the most popular USA professional sport but I still prefer MLB than college hoops and football. another great book explaining baseball is "The Book of Joe"

[Krista Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should be of interest to anyone who is passionate about baseball. Very honest and likeable!

[Steve Wolcott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very nice man who wrote a very nice book. A picture of how baseball used to be but few juicy stories.

[Ralph Dunphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice guy but this is a mess!

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy summer baseball read. Jim knew a lot of people in baseball. If you like baseball, read it.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Twins of Jim Kaat were probably my second favorite team when I was a kid. This is a fun, easy baseball book. Kaat is a real baseball traditionalist and eagerly shares his thoughts on the state of the game.

[Peter Simons · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half of the book I really enjoyed. The second half, he complained a lot. He even had a chapter on dislikes. If he could have left it at the one chapter, I would have scored this higher. I would have liked to hear more about his relationships and baseball stories.