The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History

The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History by Jayson Stark Excellent book, Thoroughly enjoyed reading it, I'm a big Jayson Stark fan!!

The subtitle of this book is "The Most Overrated & Underrated Players in Baseball History". Stark lists the 5 most overrated and underrated players at each position, splitting pitchers into right-handed starters, left-handed starters and relief pitchers, and splitting the outfield into their three different positions. As always, Stark's baseball writing is both entertaining and informative. He makes sound arguments on the players he put on each list and it is a breeze to read. The one player on his list that surprised me most was Dizzy Dean, who was fourth on his list for the most overrated right-handed pitchers. I looked up Dean's career statistics, and it turns out Stark was right on. I never realized that Dean had such a short career. His career may have been cut short due to injury, but even so, it certainly does not look like a Hall-of-Famer's career. I enjoyed this book and I recommend it to baseball fans interested in light reading.

So the reviewer MR Kay from Georgia says this book isn't worth the paper it's written on. Gee, I wonder if that's because he's an Atlanta Braves fan and loves Andruw Jones? Come on. You can't separate your fandom from your evaluation of a book? Put your bias aside and read the book. It does exactly what it should do--spark debate among people. He's not saying overderrated players are bad players. He continually says the overrated players are excellent players. His question is, does their reality as a baseball player (Stark's take on their reality, of course) match what he perceives to be the public assessment of them? Who cares if someone writes a book noone cares to respond to? How boring. Books that do not provoke strong, negative reactions don't produce strong POSITIVE reactions either. Anyway, this is just a great book about baseball. His arguments--whether you disagree with them or not--are well put-together. He makes his case for each argument, and he's so good at it that you find yourself engaging with the book. I can't tell you how many times I actually said aloud, "Is that really true?" and found myself really excited to get to the part where he tries to convince me he's right. It's a cliche but it's true: if you like baseball you will love this book--even if one of your favorite players is considered "underrated" by Stark. Then you can come on here and argue with him--but still see why it's a good book.

With The Stark Truth, Jayson Stark has begun more arguments than he has settled. Stark has committed to writing a game played regularly by all serious students of baseball: determining what players are overrated and, more importantly, what players are underrated. And Stark delivers these arguments with his trademark wit. Stark sets out to separate the myth from the reality. Why, he properly asks, is Stan Musial not treated with the same reverence as Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio? Why is Frank Robinson rarely brought in to the discussion when the names of great ballplayers are bandied about? Or why, when we think of Graig Nettles, do we have a fixed image of an all time great in spite of his career numbers? The list of overrated players is more likely to spark controversy than underrated players, as proven with the first review posted here. Do I agree with all choices? No. There are at least four most overrated selections with which I disagree, but Stark makes his arguments and supports them. Is Andruw Jones the most overrated centerfielder? I'm not convinced but, considering the greats at position, I'm not certain who is a better choice. Jones is definitely not the player that he was, but he's still awfully good. Which Stark acknowledges. Any fan of baseball will have a great time reading this book. You might not agree with every choice but you'll have a good time reading Stark's arguments and a chance to debate the selections with your baseball fan friends.

I totally disagree with Kays. This book was very well written and one of the best and most fun baseball books ever written. I haven't enjoyed a book like that in a long time. You have to go in realizing you may not agree with everything Jayson writes but I think that is obvious when you have the overrated underrated discussion. I definitely recommend this book to anyone!