Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way

By Daniel R. Levitt and Mark Armour

Book Overview

An essential experience of being a baseball fan is the hopeful anticipation of seeing the hometown nine make a run at winning the World Series. In Paths to Glory, Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt review how teams build themselves up into winners. What makes a winning team like the 1900 Brooklyn Superbas or the 1917 White Sox or the 1997 Florida Marlins? And how are these teams different? What makes each championship team a unique product of its time? Armour and Levitt provide the historical context to show how the sport's business side has changed dramatically but its competitive environment remains the same. Utilizing new statistics to evaluate a player's value and career patterns, Armour and Levitt explore the teams that took risks, created their own opportunities, and changed the game. How did the Washington Senators achieve the unthinkable and blow past Babe Ruth's Yankees in 1924 and 1925? How did the 1965 Minnesota Twins quickly rise to the top and why did they just as suddenly fall? Did Charlie Finley assemble the last old-fashioned championship team before free agency, or was the Moustache Gang another example of winning by building from within? Why did the star-laden Red Sox of the 1930s keep falling short? In exploring these teams and more, Armour and Levitt analyze the players, the managers, and the executives who built teams to win and then lived with the consequences.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574888056
• ISBN13: 9781574888058
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Potomac Books
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A "must-read" for professional baseball fans

Paths To Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way is a close study of how championship baseball teams came to be assembled. Focusing on both teams as a whole and the stories of great individual players, and also with an intriguing spotlight on stellar teams expected to win that didn't, Paths To Glory delves into extensive statistical research as well as logic, speculation, and wisdom from the players and coaches themselves to offer a composite portrait into what truly makes a winning team tick. A "must-read" for professional baseball fans and anyone seeking to learn team-building tips from the pros.

One of best Baseball books I have read!

The writers have explored baseball in a unique format that really works. I really enjoyed how they followed teams and explained why they achieved their success and maintained it (or did not). For a student of the game or a casual baseball reader, this book is a must. It is on one hand very informative, but also well written so not so analytical that impacts your enjoyment. I would hate to compete against these guys in a fantasy league. Hope there will will be a part two that follows other teams, like the Tigers of the late 1960's.

Paths to Glory

Outstanding book. Great analysis and insights. The writing is very good. Interesting stories of a number of significant teams and how they were built with chapters of various topics, such as the changing role of relief pitchers, mixed in.