The Seattle Pilots Story

Rating:
Summary: An important but sloppy book
Review: Although Jim Bouton's 1970 book Ball Four made the Seattle Pilots famous (or infamous), no book actually told the full story of this one-year enigma until Carson Van Lindt's 1993 book, The Seattle Pilots Story. All in all, the book isn't half bad. The history of professional baseball in Seattle, especially at Sick's Stadium, was well covered. It has a few good photographs, goes into great detail about how the club was founded, and then how it floundered. It covers the Pilots' sole season in a series-by-series format that recaps each of the games the team played that summer of '69.

This book was clearly not a big-budget affair. No interviews - just a lot of hard work putting together the whole story by way of newspaper sources and other archives.

Now the downer. While a lot of effort was made to tell the whole story of the Pilots, Van Lindt clearly is not a gifted writer. His writing style for the most part tends to be factual and aloof. He goes into great detail about the games, the negotiations, and the courtroom battles, but there's something missing. You don't get a full feeling for the personalities of the players or some of the quirks and nostalgic memories that make a particular team or season unique. The coverage of the season games tends to be repetitive and is tempting to skip at least in part. The real meat of the book is in the sections before and after the 1969 season.

It also seems like no one ever took the time to edit Van Lindt's manuscript. The writing at times is awkward, and even a basic word processor should have snagged the myriads of punctuation errors that plague the book from start to finish.

Overall, good story and lots of information. The somewhat terse quality of the writing shouldn't detract from the unique subject this book covers. Because of that alone, I give it four stars.

Rating:
Summary: Grin and bear it.
Review: Further evidence that you don't need to be able to write (or hire a proofreader) to publish a book. If you can get past the second-grade grammatical errors, malapropisms, and punctuation gaffes, you'll at least learn something about another very sloppy enterprise: the Seattle Pilots.

Rating:
Summary: The Pilots Will Live On
Review: My First Major League game was the Seattle Pilots and the Washington Senetors in DC. during the summer of '69. Is it my ability to kill franchises (the Senetors moved to Texas and the Pilots left for Milwaukee) that made this read such a pleasure, or is it a story of a season and a plan to remember. Maybe both. The writing is simple...a "voice" from a fans eye. As baseball fans remember that 1969 season for the Miracle Mets, yet miles away in the banks, courtrooms and backrooms a used car salesman and future baseball commisioner Bud "Kenesaw Molehill" Selig was bargin hunting the corpse of the Pilots to bring major league baseball back to Milwaukee. It takes a great look at the rich history of baseball in Seattle before the Pilots arrived. Seattle was often considerded a home for many MLB teams looking to relocate beccause of the success of Triple A Rainers. This is a MUST READ for those who wonder how baseball has gone from America's "Past Time" to America's "Part Time". A strange story of baseball passion, love, greed and why used car salesmen and lawyers are one and the same.