Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball

Hillarious & Great

This was one of the funniest and most heart felt books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The author does an excellent job of weaving in and out of a day at Wrigley and stories about the relationship with his family, mostly his father. The last baseball book I read had me worried that I might never read another baseball book again (see my review on the summer of '49.) For my reading life, this book saved baseball. It makes you wish you were at a game yourself pounding beers and singing "take me out to the ball game" despite the fact that Will Leitch is Cardinals fan and refused to in the book becuase its a Cubs tradition at Wrigley! Either way, he definitely makes this book work, and does it well.

"Buy it if you like baseball and/or have a father." - Ken Tremendous

Gave it to my father for Father's Day. He is well above Deadspin's target demographic, while I am very much in it. The first Will Leitch book I buy, ironically enough, isn't even for me.
Anyways, Leitch does a great job of weaving stories of baseball of fatherhood together, as well as into the telling of a Cubs-Cardinals game he attended with his father and a college buddy at Wrigley, the Leitchs being die-hard Cardinals fans. A trip he had planned months in advance, and it just so happens to be the Cubs' first opportunity to clinch the NL Central. (Keep in mind that this took place in September 2008.) And yes, that college buddy is a Cubs fan. Seeing as though the Cardinals are long out of playoff contention, it makes for a perfectly dreadful day of inevitably watching Cubs fans celebrate an October trip on St. Louis's behalf. Or, a perfect day to reflect on baseball, fatherdom, life, all that stuff. Don't get more wrong, it's still as hilariously funny as you'd expect anything that Leitch writes to be (or more).
So, Father's Day 2011 is still 50-ish months away... He still celebrates birthdays, right?

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