The Diamond Fan

Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back by Josh Hamilton

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love baseball, but I have to admit that baseball autobiographies are often not the greatest, most well-written books. This one is different. The first part of the book was not so good, as Josh talks a lot about how great a player he was as a kid. So much so that I’m thinking, “Oh, no, another boring ‘I’m thankful that the Lord made me such a great player’ story.” But once he gets into the truly harrowing tale of his slide into drug addiction, this become a can’t-put-it down story of tragedy and redemption.

Josh pulls no punches in telling just how bad it got before he found strength in his faith in God and, with help from his family, pulled himself out of the pit of drug addiction. This is a frightening but ultimately uplifting book that many people would benefit from reading. Thanks for telling your story, Josh, and for sharing your faith in a way that is both realistic and compelling.

Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-Experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks by Zach Hample

I had fun reading this book. Hample writes in a lighthearted, accessible style and does a good job of explaining the basics of baseball. It is not, however, for the “deeply serious geeks” as the subtitle claims. Anyone who follows baseball even halfway closely will already know 95% of what he talks about. Still, as I said it is a fun read, and there are a few tidbits here for more serious fans.

This is a very good book for anyone who doesn’t know much about or understand baseball. If you are a baseball fans and know someone in that unfortunate predicament, this little book would make a great gift. It is not as good the more erudite classic 1950s book, How to Watch a Baseball Game by Fred Schwed, to which it is very similar. It is a worthy successor to it, though, and the more contemporary treatment Hample gives the topic makes it more appropriate for most current-generation readers.