Day 22: 30 baseball books in 30 days of April
The book: "Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston's Rise to Dominance"
The author: Michael Holley
How to find it: HarperEntertainment, 207 pages, $25.95.
Where we'd go looking for it: Our pals at Powells' online has it.
The scoop: Holley, the former Boston Globe reporter who used to get a lot more airtime as a talking head on EPSN's "Around The Horn," comes through with a book that really tries to defend Francona's part for the Red Sox's ability to win two world titles in the last four years.
Holley points out that Francona, in 2007, was only fourth in the AL manager of the year voting. In the last four years, he's never received a single first-place vote for that award.
For Dodger fans, there's plenty of commentary on J.D. Drew, Julio Lugo and Eric Gagne, for the parts they played in last year's title run. All of them were underachieving, Holley points out. More scathing stuff on Grady Little, as well, as if he's still on anyone's radar.
There's even some retro look at when Francona managed Michael Jordan's minor-league baseball attempt with the Birmingham Barons in 1993.
It's a nice timeline of material on Francona's arrival in Boston, through to the current season.
How it goes down in the scorebook: 1-to-3 to end the game and finish the curse ... hey, who has the game ball?
If you're really into Bosox dominance books, Tony Massarotti, a columnist with the Boston Herald, also has knocked out a book out called "Dynasty: The inside Story of How the Red Sox Became a Baseball Powerhouse" (St. Martin's Press, 320 pages, $24.95). It even has the endorsement of current commissioner Bud Selig, who writes: "Red Sox Nation comes alive in this thoughtful and penetrating look at one of the most famous teams in the country by an expert journalist who was there every step of the way.”
But again, calling the Red Sox a dynasty at this point seems only as a function of selling books.
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