Boston Globe Review
Posted: June 16th, 2009 | Author: mshapiro | Filed under: Reviews | No Comments »“(An) engaging look at a significant, though often forgotten, chapter in
the game’s history.”
“(An) engaging look at a significant, though often forgotten, chapter in
the game’s history.”
Shapiro, author of the terrific “The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together,” does an admirable job telling this complex story.
Chicago’s two remaining baseball clubs open a three-game series at Wrigley Field on Tuesday night and you are thinking, remaining?
Cubs. Sox. And the ghost.
Read Op-ed here from Chicago Tribune
Michael Shapiro elegantly describes the ill-fated effort to establish the eight-team Continental League in “Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself.”

The book was written focusing on two men – Branch Rickey and Casey Stengel much like Moneyball was written with a focus on Billy Beane and Bill James. If you enjoyed Moneyball you surely will enjoy Bottom of the Ninth. I can’t recommend it enough.
“There’s something refreshing about a book in which the heroes both fail. Shapiro makes us feel their pain. He captures the sense of loss — not only for Rickey and Stengel, but for baseball and its fans. As Stengel once said, “Without losers, where would the winners be?”
“a fascinating piece on a long neglected aspect of baseball’s past.”