I need to preface this with the fact that as of a young age, my grandfather taught me that the St. Louis Cardinals were the bane of baseball's existence due to the fact that in game 7 of the 1934 World Series, Joe Medwick slid hard into third base while the Cardinals were up 9-0, and continued to run up the score. Mind you, the first baseball game I ever watched was 53 years later, but regardless...

Doug Feldmann's One More For the White Rat tells the story of the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals. Incidentally, the first World Series I ever watched was the 1987 World Series between the Cardinals and Twins. Since this book gives a chronological blow-by-blow accounting of that Cardinals season, it's basically the immediate prequel to my baseball fandom. And granted, I never really knew much about that season other than the Twins won the World Series (spoiler alert) and that Mark McGwire hit a ton of home runs.

Feldmann digs deep for stories, interviewing several player participants and providing all kinds of human interest factoids on the season. This book is extremely detailed and it's interesting. I will admit for a person who inherited a dislike for the Cardinals, I did become bored with their continuous winning. I was more entertained with the flashbacks to their wreck of a season in 1986. But that's me.

It's well-researched and well-told. I don't know how much new information is presented since, as I have mentioned, I don't like the Cardinals, but most of it was new to me. I do think Cards fans may enjoy this more than others, but I also think that's probably the target audience and that's fine.