Review: The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life

The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life by Joe Maddon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s a business book! It’s a baseball book! It’s a self-help book! It’s all three!!! Joe Maddon’s new book is like Saturday Night Live’s product – it’s a dessert topping! It’s a floor wax! It’s both! Maddon anecdotes his way through his life, starting with stories of school, then his early years playing and coaching baseball. But most of the stories here are about managing. At times, you feel you are reading a baseballer’s life story. At other times, you slip into management suggestions. And, given we’re talking about Joe Maddon, at times, often involving Maddon’s sloganeering, you feel you are deep in a self-help book. Those slogans work well on the team, but they also have some power over the individual. The reader will get whipsawed a bit as he goes through these stories, but readers of all these genres can get something out of the book.

A few other things I noted.

As you read, you will be accosted with an incredible amount of trivial details, many tangentially related to the flow of the text. It’s a bit overwhelming. Some of the trivia relates to things going on in the world at the point we’re at in the story. Other trivia is more personal detail, like what Joe had to eat on a certain day 40 years ago. Unless Maddon kept meticulous diaries, this feels like liberties were taken to tell the story. I can live with some of this, but this was more than I was willing to believe was remembered. When you start to realize you are asking yourself as you read “why does this matter?” or “how did someone remember this?” over and over, you start to wonder. Sometimes, less specificity tells the story better.

I received an advanced reader’s copy of the book. I won it in a contest, I believe. Like every other non-fiction ARC I’ve read (a few dozen), there were no photos in the ARC, while photos often do appear in the final book. I can imagine this could have some interesting photos when it comes out. But more intriguing, unlike all other ARCs I’ve read, this one has one chapter that was embargoed – pulled out of the ARC. And for those interested in Maddon’s tenure with the Cubs, it is the key chapter – the one about his last year. I suspect the embargo was to maintain some secrecy until Maddon could do a press tour behind the book, and this year in his career is probably of key interest to baseball fans, especially Cubs fans. Despite having read the ARC, I am really looking forward to reading the book when it comes out in November. (Yes, I’m a Cubs fan.) I don’t believe I’ve ever thought this with other ARCs. Note that the ARC doesn’t cover Maddon leaving the Angels. I wonder if something will also be added to address that, with lessons learned. Or perhaps that’s the beginning of the next book.

In the end, it's Joe Maddon. He's a character. He's a baseballer. He's a Cub. I'm gonna enjoy the book.

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