Regular marked price: $14.95Discount Price: $11.21
Cost Savings: $3.74 (25%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357
EAN num: 9781572437159
ISBN number: 1572437154
Label: Triumph Books (IL)
Manufacturer: Triumph Books (IL)
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 248
Printing Date: 2005-03
Publishing house: Triumph Books (IL)
Sale Popularity Level: 170747
Studio: Triumph Books (IL)
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Relief Pitcher Sparky Lyle was the 1977 American League Cy Young Award winner for his role in helping the New York Yankees to their very first World Series championship since 1962. The following winter, the Yankees - who changed the face of baseball in those early years of free agency - went out and aquired Pittsburgh closer Goose Gossage, relegating Lyle to an observer's role for the 1978 season. As it turned out, Lyle proved to be a more astute observer than anyone could have predicted. And, as luck would have it, the Yankee's 1978 season turned out to be as sensational, controversial, and colorful a season as there have ever been - a real zoo, in fact. The Bronx Zoo is Lyle's best-selling, highly acclaimed collaboration with author Peter Golenbock that, when originially released in 1979, was favorably compared to Jim Bouton's groundbreaking Ball Four as a hillarious - but scathing - baseball tell-all. Lyle had an insider's view like no other in a season for the ages, and the 1978 Yankees remain the biggest sideshow the game of baseball has ever seen.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Certainly this book starts off great and is compulsive reading - a little biography and some juicy stuff there on spring training and contract negotiations with Steinbrenner. Later we have some amusing anecdotes of various Animal House type ballpark pranks, many of which are pretty funny (the old nail the shoes to the floor comeback for instance) and which might have you reminiscing back to your teamsports days. And then - boom, nothing more. Just more of the same, in more abbreviated form, until we get to the playoff with Boston and then five pages later it's "We won the World Series, I'm glad we did, book over". What this book is really a testament too is that Sparky was a bit of a strange cat, who mailed it in halfway through a season, because he didn't want to be used as a long reliever, even thought he was being paid a handsome wage and playing on the best team in baseball, for the most famous club in baseball. And then he wrote a book about it, as a kind of therapeutic justification for being an 'ss.....
Rated by buyers 
-
First, the problems with the reprint of the best-seller that opened up a wealth of first-person accounts of those wild years with the Yankees:
* Sparky Lyle was not in favor of having the book reissued;
* There is not any new material and the typographical mistakes remain from the very first edition;
* Unless you followed baseball in the 1970s or have an appreciation of baseball history, you may have trouble following the personalities and situations chronicled.
My rating is based on the controversy that exploded surrounding Lyle's candid accounts of the crazy 1978 season. Lyle does not shy away from the seemingly daily madness of The Boss, Reggie, Billy, and the closer wars of Goose and the co-author. It makes the stuff that swirled around the 2006 Yankees seem like agate type for the tabloids.
In the spring, Peter Golenbock was pushing the book pretty hard on local and national sports talk shows. I wish he would have done more than just put a nearly 30 year old sports book back in print.
But even the professional laziness of Golenbock cannot lesson the importance that book had in chronicling the Yankees and on Lyle's pitching career. The following season, Lyle was on the mound for the Texas Rangers.
Rated by buyers -
Who knew that Sparky Lyle could be this funny? "The Bronx Zoo" is hilarious, but it's also a voyeuristic glimpse into the genuine, human world of baseball. Our sports figures are so lionized, it's easy to forget they are men with strange superstitions, nervous habits, and sometimes hysterical traits they try to hide when the eyes of the world are upon them.
Lyle writes with a surprisingly crisp and engaging style as he describes the behind the scenes chaos of the Yankees 1978 season. Here are the famed Yanks in all their human nature, sometimes ugly, sometimes odious, almost always entertaining.
Even casual baseball feels will get a sinful thrill out of viewing these superstars in the less than glorious world of the locker room. Baseball greats are humanized as Lyle tells the story of strange behavior with socks, devious practical jokes, and teammates struggling with language barriers.
As the Yankees go, so goes baseball, it sometimes seem. This is a book that will titillate fans of the game yesterday even though the names have changed. And in a day when scandal and big money seem to be the themes of the sport, "The Bronx Zoo" is a refreshing reminder that the game is played by grown up boys and it is, after all, only a game.
Rated by buyers -
Though I grew up a total Yankee Hater (and was 15 yrs old when this season took place), the book ranks right up there with "Thin Ice - A Season in Hell with the New York Rangers" as a top quality read for a baseball focus. Probably the best thing about this book is how Golenbock and Lyle are able to put a real personal touch to some of the Yanks that played on that team that year. Nettles is a total cut-up, Munson is a real gamer, Jackson is a media hog, Billy Martin is part psychotic and part genius, and Ron Guidry is the quiet, yet dominating athlete that just goes out and does his job. Some of the more amusing antedotes are the ones involving Fritz Peterson in Lyle's earlier days, and Rawley Eastwick's escapades in the present day. Previous reviews talk about Lyle being "whiny", and I can agree with that perception. It's kind of hard to relate to someone complaining about his stature in life as a professional baseball player, when Joe Schmoe is out there trying to eeke out a living doing whatever. But I have to admit that if you had won a Cy Young the previous year before and all of a sudden was relegated to "mop-up" status, it would be a blow to one's pride. But the book does hit its mark on one thing . .the perception of George Steinbrenner is TOTALLY dead-on.
Rated by buyers -
Great inside info on a great season. I was surprised however at Sparky's constant complaints throughout the book. He keeps talking about all he wants to do is pitch, but spends the very first half of the book complaining he is underpaid. Also talks about how he just wants the team to win, but at various points, refuses to go into games or leaves the team completely for a game. This is a good read and I would recommend it, but Sparky really moved down a notch or two in my eyes.
Find other books like this one:
