Rating: 
Summary: Good but not great history
Review: Strong points: Origins of St. Louis baseball, the Cardinals years up to 1950 (particularly Branch Rickey), the good Cardinals teams in the 1960's (including the Curt Flood story), the 1944 Browns, and the Browns under Bill Veeck.Weak points: The Browns during 1920-1940, the Cardinals during 1970-1997 (there was more to 1982 than Darrell Porter trying real hard), and no mention of the Federal League St. Louis Terriers. I am something of a stat-head, so I also have to point out the book has not benefited from the advances made by Bill James et al. For example, saying the team was hurt by its pitching, then citing the pitchers' records as evidence is not helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Not comprehensive, but a good read
Review: This is the latest in a series of oral history books Peter Golenbock has written about baseball teams. It looks like this time he bit off more than he could chew. Golenbock tries to tackle the histories of both the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns in one book. It would have been better if he would have split these into two books. He misses out on or glosses over several key events in Cardinal history (Musial's retirement, Torre's MVP are examples) as he tries to cram the histories of two teams in one book.
Rating:
Summary: Some Good Content, Terrible Editorial Work
Review: While Golenbock has a stellar reputation for sports writing and the chronicling of oral sports history, and that shines through in parts of this book, he has to be embarrassed by the failure of editors to remove numerous typographical, editing, and factual errors contained in this book.
For example, in speaking of the move of the Cardinals from Sportsman's Park (by then also called Busch Stadium) to the current Busch Stadium, he states, "the new stadium meant saying goodbye to a small intimate ballpark with few amenities but great sightlines and saying hello to a gleaming metal bowl carpeted with artificial turf. . ." While it's an interesting juxtaposition, fact of the matter is, when the Cardinals moved to Busch Stadium in 1966, there was no artificial turf; the new stadium originally had natural grass. As well, when speaking of John Tudor's turnaround during the 1985 season, he tells how Tudor started the season 1-9, then won 20 of his last 21 decisions, and led the league in shutouts with 14. In fact, Tudor did win 20 of his last 21 decisions; however, he started the season 1-7 and recorded 10 shutouts in 1985. Finally, it was Greg Mathews, not Gary Mathews, who started game 1 of the 1987 NLCS for the Cardinals. If one can accept these and other glaring errors, the "read" itself is entertaining and enjoyable for any St. Louis baseball fan. In the end, I'm left with the lingering thought of what else, if anything, is factually wrong about the accounts of the Browns and Cardinals.
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