Rating: 
Summary: Great book on a number of baseball stars from 1999.
Review: The book written by Mr. Tim McCarver, is a great book to read about some of the players who made a major contribution to the special summer of baseball which took place during the perfect season of 1998. He does a great job in useing diffrent players from diffrent teams to show how each one of the players from there respective teams each made a lasting impression on baseball during the year of 1998. The writter did a super job in picking diffrent players, and showing the reader how each one of the players he profiled made a contribution to the season of 1998. Also the book itself was very well written, and a joy to read. This book chould very well be read by any age reader, and in turn that reader whould enjoy this book. Super baseball reading at it's best.
Rating: 
Summary: Despite McCarver's Babbling, Some Good Stories
Review: This book is absolutely terrible, with McCarver making weak connections between moments of the season. Also, McCarver gives little evidence as to why the 1998 season was the best (what is so great about the Yankees running away with it? Great only if you're a Yankee fan). There are some good stories, but the book would be improved if McCarver just kept his feeble minded opinion out of it. I don't know how the man has an announcing job after all these years.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing little book
Review: Tim McCarver's "The Perfect Season" does not live up to its title....namely, that the 1998 baseball season was the best ever. No one doubts McCarver's expertise in the game, but there's a long-windedness about this book, much like his broadcast style. McCarver has too many chapters devoted to players whose entry into the book was made because they "hit 50 doubles and stole 50 bases in one season". I know that baseball is a game of statistics but this kind of minutiae (or"dim-minutiae") is as meaningless as meat filler in a hamburger patty or a weatherman's recitation of the wind-chill factor....it gets boring very quickly. There are certainly some good chapters and well-deserved entries (the New York Yankees, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, and a wonderful tribute to Roger Maris), but I found myself being able to put this book down many times, even though the chapters are quite short. It's simply bogged down with too much useless detail.
Rating: 
Summary: Uninspired Retelling of the 1998 Season.
Review: Whether 1998 was baseball's greatest year or not is open for debate, of course. If it was, then this book doesn't do a very good job of retelling those events. It misses much of the excitement of that year. A big part of the problem is the format of the book: a particular date is called out, then a particular player is singled out for discussion for that date (maybe he got a hit that day), then a retelling of his career ups and downs, punctuated with statistics even baseball fans will find uninteresting ("..the only player since Joe Blow in 1973 to get two hits, steal two bases, and catch a fly ball in both left and right field...." - that's not a direct quote, just the way it seemed to me). In other words, the book is on the dull side.The second problem is that the book wanders all over the place. Rather than being largely about the 1998 season, it becomes a soapbox for Mr. McCarver's opinion on the whole field and history of baseball. One the plus side, it's nice to hear the experiences of someone who's closer to the action than most of us get to be. And it's nice to tell some stories and antidotes I hadn't heard before.
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