Tyler Kepner, author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches and national baseball writer for the New York Times hits a home run with The Grandest Stage. Kepner's seven chapter book, referencing the seven possible games of the world series, is well researched and presented in an engaging way. His stories include moments often not remembered by baseball fans, as well as stories many fans already know about. For example he tells about the forgotten moments in world series history that led up to the moments that have been passed down through generations of baseball fans.

He also talks about the pressures of playing in the games that all players and fans dreamed of playing in as a kid. There is a chapter on managing in the world series, as well as what its like as a general manager to build a world series winning team. One of the more interesting chapters is dispelling the myths in world series lore, such as whether or not Babe Ruth really called his shot, or if the 1919 Chicago White Sox would've been able to beat the Cincinnati Reds if they hadn't been paid by gamblers to throw the series. My other favorite chapter was about the forgotten moments and players in world series history.

I think this book is for the new and long time baseball fan. This makes for perfect off season reading while we wait for February to come around and spring training to begin or in season if you just can't get enough of this great game. My appreciation to Doubleday, author Tyler Kepner, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

This was a pretty fun look at the deeper history of playoff baseball and the unique stories that exist. My biggest gripe is that some of the stats or objective measures of comparisons used were cherry picked. The Grandest Stage was a good enough concept without having to make arguments like that. Otherwise this is a pretty standard book of research and general baseball fun being put to the forefront.

If there’s a sport that lends itself perfectly to narrative writing, it’s baseball. It also tends to attract some of the best narrative nonfiction writers to muse on it as a subject. Such is the case with Tyler Kepner, who wrote the excellent K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. He returns here with The Grandest Stage, a dynamic narrative history of the World Series.

Baseball and its disciples love to tell stories about the good old days, and at times that has made for some dry and subject-indulgent content on the topic.

What Kepner does here is inject a freshness to baseball history, polishing up the sport’s best-loved moments to a shine and supplementing them with lesser-known World Series lore.

I also really loved the structure of this book, the balance of first-person accounts to narration, and the tone, which achieves the symbiosis of nostalgia and subtle humor that defines baseball.

In all, a delight to read and an exceptional companion to the baseball season or to tide the reader over during the seemingly interminable offseason.

For baseball fans, “the most wonderful time of year” happens long before Christmas. It’s the end of October, when the nearly 120-year-old World Series, Major League Baseball’s championship showdown, takes place. Just in time for its return, Tyler Kepner, baseball columnist for The New York Times and author of “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches,” has penned a fresh take on the event, “The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series.” He tells fascinating stories of notable and overlooked moments that helped make this contest a North American institution.

“Baseball takes time to reveal its truths,” writes Kepner, a lifelong fan of the game. He points out, when comparing the steadfast value of America’s pastime to the growing popularity of football, that the measured, deliberate pace of the seven game series is its charm:

“Baseball is a fundamentally different product, an everyday companion for seven months, not a once-per-week spectacle for five. Americans spend countless more hours watching baseball, which has about 10 times as many games, than they do watching football, in person and at home. A Super Bowl lasts less than four hours; a World Series might go 25. And what a treat that is for the millions of us who love baseball. Every season is an inverted pyramid, contenders whittled away as the schedule descends to that delicious denouement, in four to seven acts, beginning in late October.”

Kepner paints baseball as a Homeric epic in contrast to the slam poetry of football – both powerful, but in their own ways. In “The Grandest Stage,” he invites all sports lovers to reawaken an appreciation for the long-form championship by looking back on a delightful hodgepodge of stories in World Series history that reveal the distinctive theater of baseball.

He’s careful not to call his book a definitive or chronological history, but rather, as the book’s subtitle suggests, “a history.” There are no game-by-game breakdowns or lengthy profiles of famous players. Instead, Kepner intentionally divides the book into seven sections, each focused on a narrow theme, to examine the Series in a novel way.

There are tales detailing how players handled the pressures of the series as well as myth-shattering stories. The fascinating role of managers is examined, as are the arcs of unsung heroes as well as those of players who committed now-forgotten gaffes. “I tried not to cover the same old ground,” Kepner writes in his acknowledgments, and readers will find he succeeds in providing new perspectives while telling engaging and occasionally eyebrow-raising stories.

Big names and moments get their mention: Kepner details how Babe Ruth’s famous prediction of where he would slam a homer in the 1932 series was likely a case of revisionist history and argues that the 1919 White Sox allegedly throwing the Series barely mattered since their opponents, the Cincinnati Reds, were simply the better team that year.

But far more frequently in the book, it’s the lesser-known players and pieces of history that get the spotlight. A whole chapter is given over to players who were never the best on the roster, but who made an impact in pivotal points of the Series, like Geoff Blum, whose clutch home run in the 14th inning of 2005’s Game 3 clinched the win for the White Sox in what was the longest World Series game to date.

By highlighting the more obscure topics, Kepner assumes at least a working knowledge of the Series’ history on the part of the reader. The structure of the second chapter, “Game 2,” which breaks down some so-called “Sidebars,” or obscure truths, makes this presumption plain. Kepner is after the behind-the-scenes deeper cut, what fans might not know about particular games or players.

“The Grandest Stage” is not exactly a book for baseball neophytes, but it is a quirky and engrossing celebration of the Series. Throughout, Kepner’s love of the game is infectious. His passion and experience as a sports columnist come together to make each story lively and compelling. Reading “The Grandest Stage,” bouncing from story to story, feels like having an all-night-long chat with a fellow baseball-obsessed friend.

Starting at the time young children dream of hitting a home run to win it all, the World Series is the ultimate destination for anyone involved in baseball. Since it started in 1903, it has a rich history filled with unique people, teams and moments – just like the game. Tyler Kepner, the national baseball writer for the New York Times, has captured the history of this championship series in a compelling book.

Kepner divides the book into seven chapters, representing the seven possible games in the World Series. Each chapter is filled with interesting stories about the particular topic. For example, he talks about moments that are forgotten because of one that occurred later that was considered even more important for that particular game or series. Take the 1960 World Series in which the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees when Bill Mazeroski ended game 7 with a home run. Kepner makes the case that Hal Smith’s home run in the 8th inning was just as important as it gave the Pirates the lead and without that, despite the fact the Yankees tied the game in the top of the 9th, Mazeroski’s home run doesn’t happen.

The book doesn’t just describe moments or games like that. There are plenty of interviews with players, managers, general managers. Tom Kelly, who guided the Minnesota Twins to two titles in five years; Theo Epstein, who was the GM for two teams who ended long droughts without a World Series titles, and (before his recent passing), former Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully. Scully’s story of how he and his wife celebrated the championship for the 1981 Dodgers with a bottle of champagne and potato chips in their hotel room was one of the more memorable passages from these interviews.

This is just a small sample of the type of material that baseball readers will encounter in this book. While it certainly cannot and does not have items about every World Series played, it does contain good material from the Series during every era and has something for every reader who enjoys the game, especially once that final best-of-seven series begins in October.

I wish to thank Doubleday Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The subtitle of "The Grandest Stage" is "A History of the World Series." That sounds rather deep and ponderous. You can almost imagine paragraphs that begin with "Then in 1922 ..." It's not easy to write about long-forgotten events in an interesting way ... and sometimes the reader never gives the author a chance to be judged.

Don't worry about that here. You are in good hands with Tyler Kepner. He's been with the New York Times for more than 20 years, and has been the national baseball writer since 2010. By all accounts, he's smart, thorough, knowledgeable and entertaining. He showed that in his first book, "K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches." That publication shed a lot of light on a subject that in an under-discussed (at least in the public) part of the game.

Kepner made the decision early on to break this into seven chapters, but the seven possible games of the World Series. (It was actually a best-of-nine at a couple of points in history, but we're sort of used to seven at this point.) You get the idea of where he's going with the subtitles of each chapter. Handling the pressure. The sidebar stories to great moments. Unlikely heroes. Managing. Building a winner. The other side of glory. The ultimate World Series lists.

Let's take the first chapter about World Series pressure. Kepner devotes sections of the chapter to some people who had to deal with such issues, with mixed results. You know about Reggie Jackson and the nickname "Mr. October." Jim Palmer had to face that pressure at the beginning (1966) and the end (1983) of his career. Mike Schmidt had some problems at World Series time, struggling at the plate when he was needed the most. David Freeze made his reputation in the Series; David Price rebuilt his storyline at the same time of the year. And it goes down various other paths from there.

How about some overlooked facts about a particular series in Chapter Two? Kepner has nine of them, and here are the first few: The Reds were the better team in 1919; Charlie Root never got over Babe Ruth's called shot in 1934; Clem Labine blanked the Yankees right after Don Larson's perfect game in 1956; Bill Mazeroski's homer in Game Seven in 1960 wasn't the biggest hit in that game; Rick Wise was the winning pitcher of Game Six in 1975.

Kepner sought out some of the people involved to review those moments. They provide a sense of perspective about the events from the past. The author also goes back and reviews what was said at the time about those crucial moments. That's obviously the correct combination in such cases. You'll hear some stories you don't know, and you'll gain some perspective on some events you do know.

Maybe this won't be completely entertaining to those who don't follow baseball too closely. Then again, they aren't likely to be interested in it anyway. "The Grandest Stage" serves its natural audience well, and it's a worthwhile read for those with an interest in baseball history.

Fans of the American Pastime will love this book. It has so many stories that you'll likely get tired of reading them all by the end. There are fascinating stories from the early days of the World Series to the latest one. There are obscure stories of players you probably don't know and plenty of them that feature names known to every baseball fan.
The only negative thing I saw in the book was the forcing the book into seven chapters, one for each game of a complete series, made them very long. I think I would have liked it more if it was split into the top and bottom half of each inning as chapter breaks. It was a little hard to stay on track with the theme of the chapters for me as well.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and I believe baseball fans will also enjoy the read.