The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of '78

by Richard Bradley

Book Overview

In this spellbinding book, Richard Bradley tells the story of what was surely the greatest major league game of our lifetime and perhaps in the history of professional baseball. That game, played at... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416534385
• ISBN13: 9781416534389
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Poetic as the game itself!

I was a 22 year old African American Yankee fan (attending college in Vermont) when this game was played. This book captures both the drama of that season, and the deep, abiding love New England had ( and still has) for The Red Sox. I've yet to see that degree of affection/devotion elsewhere, and it has been a long time since I have read a book this fine.

Excellant Book on The Greatest Rivalry in Sports

I just finished "The Greatest Game" a few minutes ago & i so enjoyed it's contents i had to author a quick review. In short, this was the best book on the 1978 playoff race between the Bombers & the Bosox that i've read yet & i'm an absolute fanatic when it comes to anything Yankees-Redsox. The author does a great job of alternating pitch by pitch, inning by inning accounts with a larger overview of the season and the exciting pennant race that led up to the game. One of the highlights of the book is that it contains fascinating new insights into players and managers who i previously felt pretty familiar with. Great Baseball Book!

Sports as History through a Diamond Classic

Richard Bradley provides enough fresh angles on the classic 1978 one-game playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox that it feels like playing caroms off the Green Monster for the first time. Delving into sports as history, Bradley avoids the cliches like simply retelling box score statistics or relying on rehashed recollections and truly delivers a clutch performance in making the legends come to life. As great as the ending of the regular season - which led to this stunning climax for supremacy of the East Division (third place Milwaukee would have won the West by one game) - Bradley's account places makes the diamond classic a spectacular gem.

The Best Book On The Late 70s Rivalry In A LONG While!

Every time a new book comes out on the Yankee teams of the late 70s, which were the first ones I experienced as a child, I keep hoping that it will be a book with some fresh, new insights. Most of the time, the results are very disappointing. Roger Kahn, Maury Allen and Phil Pepe have weighed in with books of their own in recent years and I have found them lacking because for the most part these authors are either too much rooted in the nostalgia for 50s baseball to do justice to the subject of the late 70s (when you read Kahn and Allen you end up seeing more digressions about the 50s than about the later years for the most part!) or they just rehash stuff that was written in books that came out years ago (Pepe's new book was a letdown because there wasn't a single thing I hadn't already read in the autbios of Nettles and Reggie, not to mention the Bill Madden/Moss Klein book from 1990). That's why Richard Bradley's book was such a breath of fresh air. *Finally* I felt like I was getting the story of 1978 told from a new angle and with some fresh insights on the players, and the race pennant race preceding the game. The alternating chapters of PBP of the game with the background details is not a new feature in baseball books (done with Game 7 of the 60 WS, and Buster Olney with Game 7 of the 01 WS), but it works magnificently here. It makes for a very entertaining and brisk read that I was sorry to see end. My only tiny nitpick involves the fact that since Bradley did have access to the original telecasts of the game, it would have been nice if some more of the comments of the announcers had been interwoven into the narrative of the game action. And there are also some interesting stories about the broadcasts themselves too (Howard Cosell for instance, was officially part of ABC's baseball broadcast team, but deemed the playoff game taking place on a Monday insufficient reason to miss that evening's meaingless early regular season "Monday Night Football" broadcast). Also priceless was the moment where Phil Rizzuto found himself lingering in the Boston press room after finishing the 6th inning on radio, before heading back to the TV booth and letting out a burst of "Holy Cows!" when Dent homered....only to forget that he was still in the Boston press room, and telling Bill White on-air later that "I thought Frank Malzone was going to bite me on the ankle!" showing how much the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry played itself out in all corners of the ballpark that day! Thanks again to Mr. Bradley for enriching the baseball literature on the Yankees-Red Sox of the late 70s by taking things to a new level. It gets my vote for what I know will be the best baseball book of the year for me.

Speaking as the author....

Thanks very much for that nice review, G. Haneke. You also give me a chance to mention that something did indeed go awry with that flap copy! So chalk that up to a production error, and the good folks at the Free Press will correct it ASAP. Never fear--the facts are right in the book itself. And thanks again for the compliment. I'm glad you enjoyed The Greatest Game.