Saturday 8 March 2014

Book Review - Bigger Than The Game by Dirk Hayhurst

After reading Dirk Hayhurst's The Bullpen Gospels, I was looking forward to reading more of his work as it came out. Bigger Than the Game is his newest book and the second I have read of his. I was excited to read it.

After nearly a decade in the minors, Dirk Hayhurst defied the odds to climb onto the pitcher's mound for the Toronto Blue Jays. Newly married, with a big league paycheck and a brand new house, Hayhurst was ready for a great season in the Bigs. 

Then fate delivered a crushing hit. Hayhurst blew out his pitching shoulder in an insane off-season workout program. After surgery, rehab, and more rehab, his major-league dreams seemed more distant than ever. 

 From there things got worse, weirder, and funnier. In a crazy world of injured athletes, autograph-seeking nuns, angry wrestlers, and trainers with a taste for torture, Hayhurst learned lessons about the game-and himself-that were not in any rulebook.

I'm glad that it was a quick read, as I found myself really not enjoying many of the stories he told. Some chapters just went on and on about nothing. In fact, in his first book I saw a likeable person with drive and humour but in this book, I did not like him at all. I realize that there is a lot of mental as well as physical healing needed when a pro athlete injures themselves but I found him quite whiny. There was also an air of arrogance that came through that he never showed in his first book.

There were some interesting things about life in baseball that he wrote about but not much. Near the end of the book, he said that after the success of his first book that he got a two book deal from the publisher. This book seems thrown together just to satisfy the terms of the agreement.

I highly recommend The Bullpen Gospels but recommend that you should avoid Bigger than the Game!

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