Three Nights in August shows thrillingly that human nature-not statistics-dictates ballgames' outcomes. We watch from the dugout as a spectacular series unfolds between the Cardinals and their archrivals, the Cubs, and we uncover surprising truths about the pathology of slumps, the psychology of the clutch, the complex art of beanball retaliation, the rise of video, and the innumerable eccentricities of pitchers. The greatest players of our time grace the lineup: Albert Pujols, Sammy Sosa, Scott Rolen, Mark Prior, and more.
Through twenty-five years of managing, Tony La Russa has won more games than any current manager. He's the most strategically adept, and arguably the smartest, man in a baseball uniform. For all his intellectual attainments, he's also an antidote to the number-crunching mentality that has become so modish in baseball. As this book proves, he has built his success on the conviction that ballgames are won not by the numbers but by the hearts and minds of those who play.
Three Nights in August is underpinned by La Russa's forty years in baseball and by Bissinger's swinging prose and laser-beam focus. Drawing on unprecedented access to a manager and his team, Bissinger brings the same revelatory intimacy to major league baseball that he did to high school football in the classic Friday Night Lights.
