A fun read about a rowdy bunch of ball players. Gets a little bogged down in the minutiae of game recaps, but excels in player bios.

A good read for fans of the '93 Phillies and people who want to understate baseball's silly unwritten code.

Fantastic book...really enjoyed reading the stories on the 93 Phillies that beat my Braves in the NLCS. Many funny stories as well as serious and tragic stories. The extent of the steroid use is amazing. However, that being said, I respected the fact they were a team and the team came first before anything else. That characteristic is missing from the current state of the game.

Macho Row is about the 1993 Phillies and their Cinderella season. It focuses on former Met - Dykstra as well as Daulton, Kruk, Williams, Hollins and Incaviglia. Each of the six members has a bit of a bio and it talks about their seasons previously and then how they became a key piece of the 1993 Phillies puzzle. They played by "The Code" which is the unwritten rules of the game. They also made rookies life miserable, but they came out on top in the National League, winning the division and making it to the World Series where they lost to the Toronto Blue Jays who were too much even after the Phils caught lightning in a bottle. Although 1993 was a bit before my baseball time, it was a lot of fun to read about this team and how they made their way to the top!
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.

The increased democratization of publishing and the rise of long-tail, niche content have likely lowered the bar for what constitutes a team/season worth memorializing in a book. Thankfully, the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies, a ragtag assemblage of castoffs from other teams that went from last place to first and the World Series, make for good reading. William Kashatus' new book on the subject, Macho Row, is a light and enjoyable volume on one of the quirkier MLB teams of recent memory.

Macho Row is structured like most "single-season-retrospective" books, with a particular focus on the colorful characters employed by the Phillies in 1993. Kashatus devotes a good bit of his attention on the denizens "Macho Row," an especially-raucous section of the clubhouse where stars Darren Daulton, Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Mitch Williams, Pete Incavlia, and Dave Hollins resided. The book delves into the backstories of each member and these extended profiles were the highlight of the book for me. Dykstra, who was bursting at the seams with equal parts passion, hubris, and recklessness and the deceptively-clever Kruk were particularly compelling to read about. Kashatus got to interview many major players for the book and these interviews helped further enrich the sketches of each player. Macho Row doesn't actually get to the start of the season until about a third through the book, with extended passages on about half of Macho Row as well as some background on the Phillies and how their fortunes took a pretty severe dip after winning the World Series in 1980 and the NL East in 1983.

There are a few more biographical digressions peppered in the rest of the book but once the account of the season starts the book can get a bit monotonous. Kashatus seems to give brief summaries of each series over the season with a few basic statistics and noting the top performers. While most readers likely do not remember the game-by-game fate of the Phillies in 1993 it still doesn't make for the most gripping prose and occasionally feels like reading a massive volume of Associated Press game recaps (a frequent gripe I have with this type of book in general). This is further exacerbated by the fact that the Phils were largely cruising through their 1993 campaign, beginning every month of the season in first place. Besides a September slump that briefly injected a bit of suspense into the NL East title race, there wasn't a ton of drama. The fact that a rag-tag team of castoffs that finished in last place the previous year won their division the following season was remarkable, but the way they did so was rather humdrum (which makes their dominance even more remarkable, but not always the most captivating reading material when recounted). Kashatus' occasional asides on baseball's "code" also aren't going to be tremendously illuminating for a reader who is a big enough baseball fan to pick up a book about the Phillies' 1993 campaign. Furthermore, such an emphasis doesn't make a ton of sense given that several major Phillies such as Curt Schilling and Lenny Dykstra blatantly broke key components of the code during the season and over the course of their careers.

Those issues aside, the overall reading experience is a pleasant one and I'm ultimately glad I read Macho Row. Kashatus, a historian and college professor who has previously written books on American and baseball history, writes well and does an excellent job linking the trends of the 1993 season with what came before it and what followed, such as how the Phillies served as the inspiration for Billy Beane's Moneyball philosophy. Macho Row is a good read that will help bide the time until Opening Day. I don't think it quite has the "crossover" appeal to be worth being read by non-Phillies fans as if you're a big baseball fan you probably already are familiar with these players' basic backgrounds and careers but Phillies fans should get a lot out of it and enjoy revisiting one of the team's better seasons with some additional insight and interviews from the squad.

6.5 / 10

If you enjoy books about baseball and have fond memories of the 1980s-90s, you'll enjoy this well-written book.

During the 1993 baseball season, the Philadelphia Phillies were considered the surprise team. Not only because they unexpectedly won the National League pennant and took the defending champion Toronto Blue Jays to six games in the World Series, but also because of their image of being a rag-tag collection of misfits and outlaws. This book by William C. Kashatus shows that this image was well-deserved as he examines that season and the six men who played the biggest roles in projecting that image and also for playing good baseball.

The six players on which book focuses are Lenny Dykstra, Mitch Williams, John Kruk, Pete Icavigulia, Dave Hollins and Darren Daulton. To understand the team, one must understand these six players, their personalities and what “the Code” (the unwritten rules of baseball) mean to them. That is the strength of this book as the reader will learn a lot about these six men. Kashatus writes about each one’s personality, what drove them on the field and how they loved being part of a team of misfits that was beloved by a city known to be hard on its sports teams.

There is plenty of writing about the baseball played on the field as well as the reader relieves many of the key moments of the season, including all of the games of the National League Championship Series and the World Series. The former was the biggest surprise of that season as the Phillies defeated the heavily favored Atlanta Braves and it was in this section where I felt the best baseball writing was done in the book as it felt like I was at old Veterans Stadium celebrating along with the six members of “Macho Row.”

While the attention to detail is very good, at times that made the book a bit difficult to follow as the reader may have to refer back to understand a point made. Also, at times I felt there were contradictions in the opinions made by the author, such as how he felt about one of the players, Lenny Dykstra. On one hand, I thought he really liked Dykstra because of his hard-nosed play and the joy the author felt when he and his teammates later became winners. On the other hand, when the subject of performance enhancing drugs is discussed, the author makes his feelings clear that those who used them were cheaters. Because Dykstra’s use of PED’s is documented throughout the book, I wasn’t sure how the author truly felt about this key member of the team.

Nonetheless, this is a book that was as fun to read as was the lifestyle after games that “Macho Row” lived. Phillies fans will especially enjoy this book as it is one that should certainly be added to their bookcase.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Awesome story of the fighting phils! Really great insight and is great for any philly fan

The 1993 Philadelphia Phillies were one of the great "fluke" teams in recent baseball history.

If you look at the team's all-time record, year by year, you'll get the idea. The '93 team won 97 games to capture the National League East title. Philadelphia hadn't had a winning record since 1986, when it finished about 20 games behind the New York Mets in the division. The team didn't have a winning record again until 2001, when it won 86 games again.

That's part of the reason why that Phillies team was so popular, and remains so in to this day. It was all so unexpected. Another part of the reason. is that the squad had some good-sized characters. They were loud, brash, profane and fun-loving, and they all sat together in the home locker room.

That part of the room became known as "Macho Row," giving us the title for William C. Kashatus' book on that team. There were six occupants of that part of the room - Darren Daulton, Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Mitch Williams, Dave Hollins and Pete Incaviglia. They set the tone for the team, that took advantage of an opening at the top of the division.

Those on "Macho Row" get special treatment in this book. The six get their own chapters, and their exploits are fully covered on and off the field - sometimes in rather raw terms. (I'm not sure the kids will want to read about a baseball team from 24 years ago anyway.) Dykstra was the catalyst of the offense, Daulton was the power-hitting catcher, Kruk was the pure-hitting first baseman, Williams was the erratic relief pitcher, and Hollins and Incaviglia were good-sized pieces in the lineup.

Some of the boys on Macho Row might have had another connection: Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) use. Dykstra certainly bulked up in an attempt to improve his performance, and some of the others are at least under suspicion. There was no testing done on PED use back then, so it falls under the category of possibly unethical rather than illegal behavior.

But other members of the team and organization are covered as well, if less thoroughly. Special attention goes to Curt Schilling, who became the ace of the staff with a 16-7 record in a breakthrough year. He was won of five starters who won at least 10 games, which is impressive. Schilling's personality made some waves along the way, but the man could pitch.

Kashatus certainly did his research. He talked some members of that Phillies' organization, and went through all sorts of newspapers, books and magazines. Once the stage is set by introducing the characters, the author goes through the season month by month. It's a little difficult to make the year interesting in hindsight on a game-by-game basis. There wasn't much drama, as the Phillies got off to a good start and more or less stayed in first place for much of the season. The Expos put on a challenging burst for a while, but fell short. Then the tale moves into the playoffs, and such games are always memorable to fans.

Speaking of fans, Kashatus qualifies as one such person when it comes to the Phillies, and that's a drawback here. One odd moment comes when the playoff series with Atlanta comes up. After discussing the Braves' alleged arrogance because of their run of success, the author writes, "It was that same arrogance coupled with the belief that the Braves could dispatch the Phillies in four straight games that resulted in Atlanta's downfall." That doesn't really ring true, and doesn't give Philadelphia enough credit.

Then Toronto, the World Series opponent, is described as "the best Major League baseball team that money could buy." Kashatus paints the Series as a battle between the free-spending Jays and the frugal Phillies. Philadelphia didn't have a big payroll in 1993, but that probably was due to a lack of success in the preceding years that led to poor attendance and small revenues. It's tough to call Philadelphia a small-market team.

Along those lines, Philadelphia is cited as the original model for Billy Beane's "Moneyball" philosophy with the Oakland A's. There's about an eight-year gap between those teams, and the analogy seems to be a bit of a stretch.

Meanwhile, one of the themes of the book is how the Phillies followed the sport's unwritten code in terms of behavior. That includes such actions as sticking up for teammates, whether it be throwing at opponents when the situation calls for it to not airing dirty laundry in the media. That part of the book feels a little forced too.

Still, I can see how lifetime Phillies fans cherish some of the memories of the '93 teams. The year provided a season of head-shaking joy, in spite of the abrupt ending in the form of Joe Carter's walk-off homer in the World Series. Those fans are the obvious target audience for "Macho Row," and they will find some rewards here.

MACHO ROW by William C Kashatus follows the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies, particularly six men on the team called Macho Row. Those men set the tone and effort of the team, deemed "The Code", a specific pathos of loyalty, togetherness, and encouragement that the team embodied and it took the team as far as the 1993 World Series.
The six players (Darren Daulton, Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Mitch Williams, Dave Hollins, and Pete Incaviglia) are the centerpiece of the book and Kashatus provides a short history of each of them. He also reviews how the 1993 team was put together from farm system, trades, free agent signings, etc. The bulk of the book, though, is a detailed reliving of the Phillies 1993 season highlighting Macho Row and the employment of "The Code". Kashatus is careful to point out faults and problems (steroids, drugs, gambling, etc) as they happened with the team, not sugarcoating events or glossing over details. As much as possible, too, he has taken the words of the players, rather than his paraphrasing, to paint the picture of the wild and wonderful 1993 team. There are a few instances where Kashatus reiterates a story and/or detail unnecessarily, which slowed the book down a little, but for the most part his thoroughness and easy to digest style of writing was good. At the end of the book Kashatus provided a post 1993 update on a few players and how the result of the 1993 World Series was so emotional that for many years after, it still affects some of the player's relationships with each other.
For Phillies fans and really any baseball fan, MACHO ROW is a book to check out. The motley crew of the 1993 Phillies were one of a kind and played all out in a way few, if any, teams before or after ever did or ever will.

First time reading this author and enjoyed this book. Recommend it.