3 Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger

• Author: Buzz Bissinger
• Genre: Sports, Baseball, Non-Fiction
• Narrator: Jeffrey Nordling – Excellent
• Writing: Good
• Story: Poor
• Time: 9 Hours 51 Minutes

I love baseball and, for the most part, love baseball books. To me, all baseball books have to hold their own against Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, the best baseball book of all time, in my opinion. In fact, I think it’s one of the best business books of all time, too. Three nights in August, doesn’t hold a candle to Moneyball. In fact, it’s just boring.

Tony La Russa is clearly one of the greatest baseball managers of all time and there are a few tidbits buried deep in the story that are interesting, but they’re wrapped in an overly detailed story of a three game series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs that took place in 2003. Aside from the virtual pitch-by-pitch description of the game, this certainly could be an interesting backdrop for a cool baseball story, but the author’s use of parenthetical flashbacks within musings during daydreams that La Russa has while eating dinner alone gets to be a bit much. The interesting parts of this story could have been placed in a much more succinct and enjoyable wrapper.

The narrator does his best to make the recursive story enjoyable, but in the end, the writing fails the subject matter.  Buy the Cliff notes and pick the next baseball book on the shelf instead. 

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