One Pitch Away: The Players' Stories of the 1986 League Championships and World Series

As a life-long Mets fan (I first drew breath shortly after the Mets finished their inaugural campaign), I remember 1986 quite well. Sowell does a very good job of capturing the intensity, frustration and joys of playoff baseball. Baseball is a game where thinking too much can do you in. Was Mike Scott scuffing the ball? Fear of having to face him again drove the Mets to great heights. The Astros were a very good team, and I don't want to think about what would have happened if a 7th game had been necessary. As for the Angels, they spent their time after game 5 of the ALCS wondering what on earth had happened. Being that close, and having it yanked away had to be heartbreaking, and they couldn't recover to win either of the last two games in Boston. One thing that surprised me was the treatment of Donnie Moore's situation. He was obviously a troubled man, and Sowell didn't appear to have much difficulty in making him seem a more sympathetic character than you might expect. I think this has a good deal to do with Sowell's conversations with Moore's wife, Tonya, who obviously loved the man in spite of his faults. I'm not sure I would have spent as much time on what the players were doing after their baseball careers, but it was interesting to read how the experiences of that postseason colored the players' approaches to life once they were out of the game (especially Buckner and Stapleton). By the way, I really wish people would leave Bill Buckner the heck alone. I'm glad he didn't pick up that ball, but for whatever reason, McNamara wanted him on the field, instead of Stapleton. Would it have made a difference?

The things I love the best in the ball game are its histories and the way a whole season may change in a eye blink. In this book, I found each of them: it's the history of the unbelievable 1986 baseball post-season, and the way a single pitch could change a whole season and, why not, a whole lifetime. Not only the Billy Buck ball, but also the Donnie Moore tragedy, the Red Sox curse, the Angels and the Astros: an unbelievable amount of puzzle pieces all in their place for the final picture. If you love the ball game, you'll love this book.

I watch this series when I was thirtten and the biggest (only) Red Sox fan in my Yankee & Met fan dominated high shcool. This book completely capture all of the suspens and heartbreak of what might be the best POST SEASON in history.

I loved this book. Even though I'm only 12 and was only a month old during the 1986 playoffs, this book made it seem like I was there watching every single game. It's one of the best books I've read in my short life.

As a young baseball fan, my memories of the 1986 postseason are fairly vague. This book makes me understand why so many say that the 1986 playoffs were so amazing. The book begins with recounts of the bad luck of Angel manager Gene Mauch who had already experienced 3 near misses with The Series. Here, we have the 1986 ALCS, with Mauch's California Angels being "one pitch away" from the World Series before losing Game 5 in 11 innings to the Red Sox, and then losing games 6 and 7 10-4 and 8- 1 respectively. Then the book moves onto the NLCS, telling the story of the Met's preocupation with the split-finger fastball of Mike Scott, who beat them in games 1 and 4, and who they believed to be illegally scuffing the ball. The Met's won the marathon game 6 in 16 innings, 7-6, preventing them from having to face Scott in Game 7. Finally, the story of the World Series, with The Red Sox being a pitch away in Game 6 before the Mets tied the game. Then the unfortunate error by Bill Buckner, which allowed the Mets to win in the bottom of the 9th, and go on to win Game 7 8-5. After the stories of the Games, it moves on to in depth looks at the players from the 3 postseason series : their memories from the games and what happened to them after 1986. For me, as an Astros fan, this book really brought to life how close a team can come to victory only to have it slip away. It happened to every team in 1986; only the victorious Mets avoided the heartbreak. As Sowell says in his closing, there are so many ways baseball can break a fans heart. But when a team reaches the top, nothing is greater.