Thank you, McFarland, for providing this book for review consideration in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished The 1964 Phillies: The Story Of Baseball’s Most Memorable Collapse, by John P. Rossi.

This is an updated version of a book that had originally been published in 2005. The new edition will be released on August 30.

One important thing to note about this book is how short it is. The print edition, as well as the PDF that the publisher supplied for an advance reading copy, is 192 pages, which includes two appendixes, bibliography and index. In a book this short, space becomes a zero-sum game. The more space the other devotes to other topics, such as the political situation in Philadelphia in 1950s and the Philadelphia Eagles, just takes away from space that can be devoted to the book’s topic.

Even the introductory information on the Phillies went on for for too long. This book wasn’t long enough to accommodate a history of the Phillies leading up to that year, along with far too much information on the 1950-63 period. The more devoted to non-Phillies material and to pre-1964, the less this book is really about the 1964 Phillies.

It is definitely possible for me to give a high grade to a book that isn’t really centered around what its title purports it to be. For example, earlier this week, I gave an A to a book that appeared to be about FDR’s Hundred Days but really much more than that. In the hands of a very good author, that can be done. In the hands of a lesser one, it’s much harder to pull off successfully. Unfortunately, this is a case of the latter.

I did find one egregious error in the book. This is a 2024 updated edition, so this would be one of the things that should be updated for the book. The author writes, about Dick Allen, “Allen today seems more at ease with his baseball past.” That is not the case. For the past few years, since December 2020, Allen no longer has the ability to be at ease with anything. For the past years, Allen’s remains have been laying in Clinton Cemetary in Wampum, Pennsylvania.

Despite my criticism of how much of the book was not really about the 1964 Phillies, I have to be fair to it in terms of its grade. The almost half of the book that wasn’t about the 1964 Phillies was still interesting enough to get a B. The half, or so, that was about the 1964 Phillies was interesting enough to get a B. So, I don’t see how I can give it anything other than a B.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B equates to 3 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

Mr. Book finished reading this on August 23, 2024.