The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 - When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone

The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 - When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone
by Mike Shropshire

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Book Summary Information

Author: Mike Shropshire
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-14
ISBN: 0446401544
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Book Reviews of The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 - When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone

Book Review: A Funny Look Back at the Good Old Days
Summary: 5 Stars

This book begins with a review of the 1974 Oakland-LA World Series. When Catfish Hunter leaves the three-time World Champion A's due to a contract technicality,author and beat-writer Shropshire writes about how his hometown Texas Rangers can be considered favorites to win the 1975 AL West.

Shropshire does a terrific job of weaving significant events outside of the baseball world that year with his own and the Rangers' escapades during what became a disappointing season for the Rangers.

This book brought back fond memories of teams that were built from strong minor league systems--A's, Reds, Royals, Dodgers, et.al. before the Free Agency era led to the destruction of fine organizations (Pirates, Reds, Royals) and the continued dominance of the large market teams.

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All The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 - When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone Customer Reviews

Summary of The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 - When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone

There are baseball books and there are baseball books.

But for the baseball cognoscenti, there are just a few "must-have" classics: BALL FOUR by Jim Bouton. THE LONG SEASON by Jim Brosnan. WILLIE'S TIME by Charles Einstein. And SEASONS IN HELL by Mike Shropshire, which was a hilarous first-person account of Mike's travails serving as a daily beat writer covering the hapless 1972 Texas Rangers.

Now, in The Last Real Season, Shropshire captures the essence of a different time and different place in baseball, when the average salary for major leaguers was only $27,600...when the ballplayers' drug of choice was alcohol, not steroids...when major leaguers sported tight doubleknit uniforms over their long-hair and Afros...and on July 28th, 1975, the day that famed Detroit resident Jimmy Hoffa went missing, the Detroit Tigers started a losing streak of 19 games in a row. On the day that the Tigers blew a 4-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, Shropshire recalls: "I drank three bottles of Stroh's beer in less than a minute and wrote that 'Jimmy Hoffa will show up in the left field stands with Amelia Earhart as his date before the Tigers will win another game.'"

And so it goes. Filled with just the kind of wonderful baseball stories that real fans crave, this is the funniest baseball book of the year.

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