For the love of the game summary

Members Reviews Popularity Average rating Mentions 4 , 3. Now, at the end of an amazing career, he finds himself playing his most crucial game. He has one last chance to prove who he is and what really matters in life.

A taut, compelling story of one man's coming of age. No current Talk conversations about this book. Michael Shaara has written a touching story that combines true love with the poetry of baseball. It was Thanksgiving weekend, , and Mike Shaara and I were crusing the east coast US1 trying to find a restaurant that was open. Fuego48 Feb 4, You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep. Chapel checked into the usual hotel just after dark. Will, George F. References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English None. It's the last game of the season, Billy Chapel, a seventeen season legend and guaranteed Hall-of famer, has always played for the love of the game, never money nor fame.

No library descriptions found. Book description. Haiku summary. Add to Your books. Add to wishlist. Quick Links Amazon. Amazon Kindle 0 editions. I found it very fascinating and incredibly well done, the way Shaara weaves the lyrics of songs that I was familiar with into the actual story.

Shaara builds tension throughout the book, surprising in a sharing of feelings and thoughts book which is a fiction with a great deal of psychological depth. The tension starts slowly with primarily character development at first, but then builds into a fast moving plot. By the end, the tension builds to such a climax that it was almost impossible to put down.

I really wanted to know the ending. Shaara really swept me along and involved me in the story with well chosen words, plot and great writing skill.

Even the punctuation, especially the commas added a great deal of emphasis and focus and seemed to create time for pause and reflection. The book was definitely written in layers with a slow building to a climax — almost like a crescendo in many great pieces of music. All along I was considering rating the book 4 stars because although it was very well written, it seemed too brief a story. The entire reading experience, the writing style coupled with the ending, is 5 star worthy.

This is not just a simple story of a baseball pitcher and one very important baseball game. It is a moving and compelling book with character depth and visceral tension.

You need to know very little, if anything at all, about baseball to appreciate the book, but baseball fans in particular, should really enjoy For the Love of the Game.

View 2 comments. Sep 12, Joe rated it really liked it. I really wish this author had written more than two books, since the two that he did write are two of the best stories I've ever read. His son has done a good job continuing with the Killer Angels story and historical fiction novels, but I think For Love of the Game will have to stand on its own. The movie version is excellent, maybe even better than the book although I saw the movie first, so I don't know.

Regardless, it's worth reading. The novelist who wrote the brilliant historical novel Killer Angels was ill-served by his son in publishing this posthumous novel about baseball, made, I realized too late, into a conventional but somewhat more nuanced and credible but still saccharine movie with Kevin Costner. Nor does the encouraged comparison to Hemingway help.

It is not totally unwarranted but not as intended. The late in life near miss, The Old Man in the Sea, has its moments and is both daunted by comparisons to his best and helped by flashes of brilliance.

And the posthumous memoir A Moveable Feast is just great. For the Love of the Game has the pigeon-toed prose walk of very weak Hemingway think Across the River into the Trees : short sentences, clipped dialogue, awkwardly empty understatements, and, like The Old Man and the Sea, internal monologues that fail way too often to rise above self-parody.

So yeah think Hemingway at his most sentimental and least successful or, more accurately, think about the annual bad Hemingway imitation contest held in Key West: Not good enough. Good enough for that. Can try. Must win. Mar 10, Ed rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Sports Literature fans. Shelves: reviewed , contemporary-literature. This is a lovely story. Written in a Hemingway-esque style, it covers the last two days in the baseball career of a future Hall of Fame pitcher.

The characters are well drawn and believable. The inner ramblings of pitcher Billy Chapel are particularly well done. The book takes us into the heart of baseball where time is an illusion and the past and the future somehow are joined. It's basically a one day read and yet, I suspect, it will stay in my mind for a long time. The love story is done in a This is a lovely story.

The love story is done in a totally understated manner which the plot, such as it is, requires. Like Harris' novel, even though the story is ostensibly about baseball, it is also about friendship, commitment, growing up and honoring yourself by doing the best you can no matter the circumstances.

I saw the movie based on the book years ago. It starred Kevin Costner and was an admirable attempt to capture the spirit of the book but it didn't quite make it. I would suggest strongly that you read the book before you rent or buy the movie.

This book wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. The constant sentence fragments were a stylistic choice that I found annoying and distracting.

I didn't like Carol, and the attempts at writing people's accents was irritating. We're told a great deal of things instead of shown, which isn't effective. Billy Chapel wasn't much of a character, really, and at the end, I wasn't really sure what the point was. At least it was short. Still, it wasn't nearly the worst thing I've ever read, and if This book wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. Still, it wasn't nearly the worst thing I've ever read, and if you don't take it as a story but instead as an ode to baseball, then it works.

Still, the movie was better, because characters were fleshed out and given motivations and there was more to the plot than simply 'this guy pitches the perfect game and decides he loves this girl'. I would recommend this as a filler book while you decide what to read next, but not really for any other purpose. View 1 comment. Or maybe that was Kevin Costner? Usually on opening day, you'll find me watching it, and I'll probably catch it a few more times throughout the season. I just LOVE this movie.

The suspense. The romance "Clear the mechanism. The romance. The hard-work. The insight. The GAME. It's one of the greats. Yet, I had never read the book. And I'm here to tell you, the book doesn't disappoint. I think anyone who is a fan of the movie will be a fan of the book, too. And I'm super impressed with how the screen adaptation turned out after reading Shaara's work.

It's like you're inside Chapel's mind the whole time, and the sentence structure choppy sentences, thoughts that run off and never continue , it's completely how we think. We're constantly jumping from one thought to the next, and if anyone was ever in anybody's head, it would look just like that. I loved it! It makes for a quick read, too. But I'll tell you what, I was right there on the mound with Chapel the whole time, just like in the movie.

The suspense! Holy crow the book was giving me goosebumps just like the movie, and even though I know the outcome, I'm still overcome every time. Reading the book was no different. Before you ask, yes, there are some things that are different.

Some flashbacks were more enhanced on screen, there's more "showing" in the movie than the book, which I am completely okay with And Costner was THE perfect man for this role!

He brought so much to this character; it was perfect. And the book can be summed up in the few quotes below: "Why does it matter so much?

You ever notice that? Long as you don't notice the crowd, you're all right. Sep 26, Mark Stevens rated it really liked it. He understood the purity of the game, the simple and the complex, and he understood that no matter how often the game changes, or how many records fall, we will still be there, still watching, for the love of the game.

He knows it. The season is winding down. There's a growing weight to the season. Billy Chapel pitches for the last-place Hawks. He thinks about baseball but mostly because fans and hotel employees all ask him about it.

Is he done signing that bucket of baseballs? You okay? Golden blonde. But they figured it was better not to break the news now.

Just as they do so often with … Willie Mays, fellas like that. Did you? Chapel had seen this coming, knew it was coming, and had planned nothing, nothing at all. Carol, who was married once and no longer thinks Billy needs him, is thinking of getting married again.

Better now. How much reserve? No way to know. From the back of the brain … a slow dark signal from deep down there, way back where the dreams formed and much of the work was done. For Love of the Game loves ellipses. Billy Chapel even contemplates his own dilemma in the context of The Old Man and The Sea—lone, wounded man on a singular, gallant, last-gasp mission.

That Billy Chapel makes the Hemingway comparison and not us readers might be a little too on-the-nose, but For Love of the Game is an often poetic portrait of veteran pitcher, alone on the mound, playing a mystifying, beautiful sport.

One of those books I'd like re-read. Billy Chapel, 37, pitching for the last-place Hawks, has been Carol Grey's lover for four years. The first half of the story is slow-moving but necessary foreplay before the big game and its play-by-play: Billy, amidst a slew of faces and One of those books I'd like re-read. The first half of the story is slow-moving but necessary foreplay before the big game and its play-by-play: Billy, amidst a slew of faces and voices--fans, mostly, and hotel employees--waits fruitlessly in his room for Carol but, instead, gets a visit from an in-the-know sportswriter: Billy is going to be traded, it seems, after 17 years with the same club.

When he finally meets Carol, he finds her at the end of her own midlife crisis: "I was drinking too much. You know, Billy, honest, I sometimes drink too goddamn much. Billy's stunned: "Parents can't trade you," he manages, and then Carol walks into the sunset while he heads for the ballpark. He's decided he's pitching his last game that day, then going home himself--and the rest of the book is very good on mound-strategy and rising tension. A direct allusion to The Old Man and the Sea is too much, but, still, Shaara finds a taut rhythm, juxtaposing the game to flashbacks--Billy's affair with Carol, the death of his parents--as Billy pitches a perfect game.

After celebrating, he calls Carol, tells her he loves her--she reciprocates--and salutes his God. Fade to black. Shaara the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Killer Angels, writes in the morally uncluttered spare style of the genre: it's not The Natural or Shoeless Joe, but it stands above most staples on the sports-fiction racks.

Jul 23, David rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobooks. Meanwhile, with Vin Scully announcing, one Yankee batter after another fails to reach first base. Can Billy pitch a perfect game, and if so, what does it matter if he loses Jane? It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet.

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