Book Review: Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series...

In this review, we will take a look at the book Mind Game, How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning, written by the writers of Baseball Prospectus and edited by Steven Goldman.

The book is actually a series of essays, in which the authors take a look at the Boston Red Sox run to the 2004 World Series title; what worked, what didn’t, and how those things that didn’t work were fixed. While a little heavy on Sabermetric-style statistical analysis, this is a book than can be enjoyed even if you don’t have a strong interest in the numbers, and the “new age” stats it does use are well explained both in context and in the extensive index.

The book begins by looking at the Red Sox futility from 1919 to 2002, the famous stretch in which they failed to win a World Series. In an attempt to debunk the “Curse of the Bambino”, the book looks closer at what the Red Sox did during that time period, their relative successes and failures, and ultimately, the real reasons why they didn’t win a World Series during those years.

Interspersed among the chronological essays that bring us though the 2004 season are several short pieces that examine different well known baseball “truths” from a statistical analysis outlook, and give us additional history and background. These include looks at former Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette, the value of a team’s best player, the draft, on base percentage, and Calvin Schiraldi, just to name a few. These do a good job of providing extra information without pulling the reader away from the flow of the chronological run through the season.