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Ted Williams and the 1969 Washington Senators: The Last Winning Season
Heading into their ninth season, the expansion Washington Senators had never won more than 76 games in a season. New Senators owner Bob Short hired Hall of Famer Ted Williams to manage the team. Williams sparked the Senators to their only winning record for a Washington team since 1952. This book recounts that 1969 season in-depth.
- GenresSports
241 pages, Paperback
First published February 6, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 20, 2020
I'm old enough to remember going to Senators games in the late 60s/early 70s with my dad. We'd always go on Bat Day, and I still have 2 bats from those giveaways.
Unfortunately, while this book does give a detailed look at a brief moment of competitiveness by those terrible Senators teams, it's a writing performance that can be described as workman-like, at best. This book simply is not interesting to read, and the nuggets of good stuff are lost in a litany of brief game summaries as we follow the team through the season.
I'll credit the author for doing his homework, but I wish he'd found a way to make it come out snappier. It's kind of like the book equivalent of the slow, sleepy game that baseball is accused of being.
On the positive side, it's nice to know how well Ted Williams did in his first season as manager. The author does a good job of explaining the Williams philosophy of waiting for a good pitch to hit, and how most players were able to improve their plate discipline under him. And the author makes the point that Williams arrived for the start of the 1969 season, when baseball tightened the strike zone, thus making it even more attractive to take pitches in order to get better ones to hit.
As the book goes through the season, and especially in a long chapter about the 1969 offseason and 1970, the author does a nice job of diving into the handicaps with which Ted Williams was saddled. He had a cheapskate boss, Bob Short, and a thin pitching staff. Williams helped the players he had on the roster, because Short wasn't going to do anything to improve mid-season or post-season, if it cost any money at all. In fact, Short's trades probably hurt the team in the short run (no pun intended).
But the book doesn't get into any of this in quite enough detail. I'd like more on the Williams hitting philosophy, and more on the guys who adopted it, and those who didn't. I'd like more on the descriptions of how guys hit -- that is, how did Eddie Brinkman hold his bat and swing, vs. how Frank Howard or Mike Epstein did it. A talented writer would describe each batter to us, and would also bring us anecdotes about batting training, and personal quirks. None of that is in this book. I guess that the author eschewed that material in an effort to keep the book short -- and that's a legitimate decision to make, but it weakened the book.
I found a very few baseball facts to quibble with, far fewer than in typical baseball books. This guy understands the statistical revolution and the other evolutions of the game, and he does a good job of bringing them up, but without going on too much. For example, he explains why the lowering of the mound in 1969 and the smaller strike zone led to pitchers throwing more curves and sliders (they needed the sharp angle that they lost with the lower mound); and how that extra arm strain led to more injuries, fewer innings pitched per game and per season, and different types of pitchers finding success.
One final thing. I definitely did not like the dives into the cultural moments of 1969. Except possibly for mentioning Nixon throwing out the first ball and that he was a baseball fan, the rest of it was dumb. Woodstock, Vietnam, Moon landing and ticker-tape parade in NYC -- there wasn't enough in the book to tie in it, so it should have been ignored. Even the 1968 riots in DC, which were mentioned, weren't really explored in this book, except to say that Bob Short claimed they were scaring away fans, but without any evidence by the author for or against. And the culmination of this attempt at looping in pop culture is chapter titles that are songs from rock lyrics: Comin' in to Los Angeles; It's Getting Better All the Time; etc. Ugh, spare me.
Unfortunately, while this book does give a detailed look at a brief moment of competitiveness by those terrible Senators teams, it's a writing performance that can be described as workman-like, at best. This book simply is not interesting to read, and the nuggets of good stuff are lost in a litany of brief game summaries as we follow the team through the season.
I'll credit the author for doing his homework, but I wish he'd found a way to make it come out snappier. It's kind of like the book equivalent of the slow, sleepy game that baseball is accused of being.
On the positive side, it's nice to know how well Ted Williams did in his first season as manager. The author does a good job of explaining the Williams philosophy of waiting for a good pitch to hit, and how most players were able to improve their plate discipline under him. And the author makes the point that Williams arrived for the start of the 1969 season, when baseball tightened the strike zone, thus making it even more attractive to take pitches in order to get better ones to hit.
As the book goes through the season, and especially in a long chapter about the 1969 offseason and 1970, the author does a nice job of diving into the handicaps with which Ted Williams was saddled. He had a cheapskate boss, Bob Short, and a thin pitching staff. Williams helped the players he had on the roster, because Short wasn't going to do anything to improve mid-season or post-season, if it cost any money at all. In fact, Short's trades probably hurt the team in the short run (no pun intended).
But the book doesn't get into any of this in quite enough detail. I'd like more on the Williams hitting philosophy, and more on the guys who adopted it, and those who didn't. I'd like more on the descriptions of how guys hit -- that is, how did Eddie Brinkman hold his bat and swing, vs. how Frank Howard or Mike Epstein did it. A talented writer would describe each batter to us, and would also bring us anecdotes about batting training, and personal quirks. None of that is in this book. I guess that the author eschewed that material in an effort to keep the book short -- and that's a legitimate decision to make, but it weakened the book.
I found a very few baseball facts to quibble with, far fewer than in typical baseball books. This guy understands the statistical revolution and the other evolutions of the game, and he does a good job of bringing them up, but without going on too much. For example, he explains why the lowering of the mound in 1969 and the smaller strike zone led to pitchers throwing more curves and sliders (they needed the sharp angle that they lost with the lower mound); and how that extra arm strain led to more injuries, fewer innings pitched per game and per season, and different types of pitchers finding success.
One final thing. I definitely did not like the dives into the cultural moments of 1969. Except possibly for mentioning Nixon throwing out the first ball and that he was a baseball fan, the rest of it was dumb. Woodstock, Vietnam, Moon landing and ticker-tape parade in NYC -- there wasn't enough in the book to tie in it, so it should have been ignored. Even the 1968 riots in DC, which were mentioned, weren't really explored in this book, except to say that Bob Short claimed they were scaring away fans, but without any evidence by the author for or against. And the culmination of this attempt at looping in pop culture is chapter titles that are songs from rock lyrics: Comin' in to Los Angeles; It's Getting Better All the Time; etc. Ugh, spare me.
July 5, 2012
Very good book about the history of baseball in our nations capital. The focus is on the pivotal season of 1969 and how the Senators and Ted Williams surprised the American League.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews