Diz was a very interesting book about an era in baseball that I really don't know that much about. Diz was a heck of a character, who I think would be slayed in today's media. He led a very interesting life and if you enjoy baseball and real life characters this is a great book, especially if you don't know much about baseball's early years. This book makes me want to read up more about the Cardinals Gas House Gang years, and maybe one day, when I get through all the books I still have in my queue, I eventually will. ( )

5080. Diz Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression, by Robert Gregory (read 29 Oct 2013) It being October, i thought I should read a book on baseball and this 1992 biography of Dizzy Dean I found to be just the answer to my baseball interest. I came to be a fervent baseball fan in 1938, and many of the players talked about in the years before 1938 were still playing in 1938 and thus I thought I knew them. And of course Dizzy Dean became a Cub in 1938--to my great delight, though of course as it turned out he was not worth the $185,000 and three players which the Cubs paid for him. But Wrigley knew that might turn out to be true and one can admire Wrigley for his daring. Dizzy was of course often obnoxious when he was a Cardinal--but the Cardinal management was not admirable either. The book tells the exciting story of those amazing baseball years very well, and I always thrill to read again the story of Gabby Hartnett's home run against he Pirates in September 1938--the greatest day in baseball so far as I personally am concerned. There is so much interesting baseball history in this book that I found it a joy to read, even if there were sad events related--as is inevitable in baseball books. ( )

Solid bio of Diz and Depression Era baseball. ( )

Robert Gregory tells Dizzy Dean's story with all the fervor and flaming vocabulary 'ole Diz' used during his career as one of baseball's best pitchers ever. More than just a story you learn how Dizzy Dean became the celebrity that he was and discover little known facts about his wife Pat who stood behind Diz during his career both in baseball and in radio. Pat is Diz's rock and is the reason he survived the ignorance of his youth. It is a story of baseball and one of its heroes but told with a graceful ebb and tide just like Diz's career.

Read this one if you like biographies. You will enjoy it. I did!

This is a nicely written and pretty well detailed biography about a fascinating figure in baseball history and a fascinating time, as well. So, before I go on, I want to say that I do recommend the book. It does include some flaws, though.

For one, the book suffers the almost unavoidable flaw of baseball biographies in that at times it reverts from a true biography of Dean to a recitation of the progress of pivotal baseball seasons. So, pretty close to 40% of the book consists of a close look at the 1934 National League pennant race that represented Dean's, and that Cardinal team's, finest hour. That's fine, and many of the anecdotes related do focus on Dean, but a lot of the narrative of this section becomes a game by game breakdown of events, during much of which Dean becomes simply one of the players rather than the focus of a biography.

Secondly, there are other periods of Dean's life that are rushed through. For example, once Dean receives the injury that ends up ruining his arm, he spends several frustrating although sometimes heroic years pitching through pain on the Chicago Cubs. During these years, which could have been quite fascinating to read about, Dean's voice virtually disappears. Other than occasional quotes about how his "old soupbone" is either primed to bounce back to former glory or just about finished, there is no effort to illuminate what Dizzy Dean, the man, was going through at that time. Whether there is simply no material to go by (although it seems there should have been some printed interviews to look at or some of Dean's contemporaries to talk to), or the book's editors removed the material, or the author simply had no interest in this investigation, it created a void in the story that I felt pretty keenly.

Finally, Dizzy Dean was kind of a jerk, and therefore difficult to read about. Although most of his contemporaries said that he was so charming in person that it was impossible not to come away liking him, Dean was a self-centered braggart, and the anecdotes and quotes illustrating that fact eventually wore down any admiration I might have harbored for Dean as a great pitcher. That's not the author's fault, but simply a by-product of the nature of his subject.

There are also frequent unattributed quotes and I also wondered at the absence of a bibliography.

But we do get a good, if incomplete, look at the conditions of baseball and its relation to the country at large during the Great Depression. I do love being transported back to the baseball of that era. So I would say this is a good, if flawed, baseball biography. Baseball fans with an interest in the history of the sport will enjoy it. ( )