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Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top ReviewIn general, I enjoyed this book; Seth Mnookin is a good writer, if a little bland, and the book flowed nicely. But it had plenty of problems. Let's make a list:The Good
1)It's easy to understand, even if you don't know too much about baseball. I consider myself an avid Red Sox fan and a baseball connoisseur, so explanations of ERA and batting average bored me, but it does make the book more inclusive to a wider audience. It also includes a brief history of the team for those that are less familiar with it.
2)There are plenty of entertaining anecdotes and side stories in here. The sections on Nomar are particularly well-done. I now have more background information on the Red Sox ownership troika than I would have ever thought possible. What an interesting group of people.
3)The section on the sale of the team would make a new book in and of itself, and is very well-done and interesting, providing you have a rudimentary understanding of economics and finance. If you don't, or hate numbers, prepare to be bored silly and skip about 75 pages.
4)There is a lot of new information on the process that brought about the Schilling trade. I found the tale of Jed Hoyer's ugly Thanksgiving stomach virus to be two of the funniest paragraphs in the whole book, though I'm sure Jed would disagree.
5)And, of course, the famous Epstein/Lucchino rift is very well-documented and traced, to the point that I found myself getting frustrated with the characters for not noticing that Theo was acting increasingly bizarre and doing something about it months earlier. If Mnookin noticed, somebody else should have. A very nice job leading into the final explosion.
The bad:
1)I said there is a lot of background information that makes it more inclusive for casual fans. This is true, but the corollary is that if you are a true Red Sox fan, many parts of this book will drive you batty. The entire history of the team section at the beginning is largely irrelevant to the rest of the book, and Mnookin spends way too much time rehashing information that most respectable Sox fans already know, like descriptions of games and whatnot. It really slogs at times.
2)For a guy who spent all this time with the Red Sox front office, he sure didn't include as much revelatory material as I thought he would. It was a disappointment. Casual fans may be impressed, but hard-core Red Sox fans will recognize many of his insights as already being common knowledge from Boston Globe or even AP stories.
3)The style is easy to follow but also fairly pedantic and dry.
4)Mnookin does a good job with the Epstein/Lucchino fiasco right up until Theo quits, and then after that his analysis is severely lacking. I realize that he was not with the team much after this point, but given that this was one of the most momentous things to occur in the history of the ownership group, which was exactly what he was writing about, you'd think he might put things off a little bit to try to gain more insight into what was going on.
5)The book gives a very sympathetic portrayal of pretty much every character except Dan Shaughnessy. Not that there is a problem with portraying Shaughnessy as a jerk, because he is. But John Henry is not a saint. Tom Werner is not a saint. Larry Lucchino sure isn't a saint (to be fair, his portrayal was more negative). And I got the distinct impression that Mnookin didn't have nearly as much insight into Epstein as he did into the ownership troika. That's not to say there wasn't any, because there was, and I understand that Epstein is not, by nature, eager to open up to someone like Mnookin, but it was noticeable.
5)The pictures. Funny thing to get upset about, I know. But he spent a year there. Did he bring a camera? There isn't one single picture of the Fenway offices or any of the characters at work or with Mnookin or any such thing. No pictures of Joe O'Donnell or any lesser characters. I recognized every single photo from the Globe or AP except the one of Theo against some graffiti-covered wall. Visuals would be nice, thanks.
I'd recommend the book, but be prepared for it not to be quite what you thought it was going to be.Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top Overview
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