About the Book
"[It’s] Montgomery’s journalistic eye for distilling the humanity behind the unfulfilled athletic potential that makes this a real home run." - Booklist, Starred Review • A Booklist Top 10 Book on Sports 2024
Stories of baseball idols and heroes are oft-repeated, but what about those players who everyone thought would be the next “great one” and have since disappeared from the sport? What happened after they failed to meet the weighty expectations placed on them?
In Baseball's Great Expectations: Candid Stories of Ballplayers Who Didn't Live Up to the Hype, Patrick Montgomery brings out from the shadows nine of those players who were once poised for greatness. They include a player who received a then-record-breaking MLB Draft signing bonus, a left-handed pitcher who was ordained to be the next Sandy Koufax, the only catcher to go straight from high school to the major leagues during the MLB Draft Era, and more. Drawing from his extensive interviews with the players, family members, general managers, executives, scouts, and more, Montgomery shines a fresh light on these players and provides a candid perspective on the major leagues. Players reflect on their careers, what went wrong, how they feel about baseball now that their playing days are over, and, for many of them, how they have found new purpose in their lives.
Baseball’s Great Expectations reveals an often-overlooked side of professional baseball, of the struggles with injury, mental exhaustion, pressure, temptations, and sometimes just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The path to baseball stardom is not as glamorous as it is sometimes made out to be, and this book reveals just how difficult the journey truly is.
About the Author :
Patrick Montgomery is an award-winning writer. His most recent book, The Baseball Miracle of the Splendid 6, garnered 1st place for Sports Book at the 2022 Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Awards and was a winner in the 2022 Hollywood Book Festival. Montgomery is a youth softball coach, baseball historian, student of the game, and member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
Review :
This is not a book about failure. While the subtitle intimates defaulted promise, these are actually stories of players who, through some combination of happenstance or injury or simply poor timing, did not rise to their lofty scouting reports. The living players Montgomery profiles center their love of the game over regret as they look back on their careers, with most still being involved with the game today. In interviewing his subjects specifically about how they’ve navigated the hype that didn’t translate to success, Montgomery is able to expand beyond just the stats on the backs of their trading cards. In a standout chapter, Montgomery recounts the story of Brian Cole, who was being touted as an era-defining talent but died following a car accident just as his career was beginning. The memories collected from Cole’s family and teammates provide an especially affecting profile, representing that most tragic example of a life and career cut cruelly short. While there are plenty of what-if ponderings, positing how a player would have impacted the game if the baseball gods had had different plans, it’s Montgomery’s journalistic eye for distilling the humanity behind the unfulfilled athletic potential that makes this a real home run.
In baseball, even the greatest batters hit the ball safely only three out of every 10 times. For pitchers, it is equally hard to excel; perfecting the mechanics is as important as the mental aspects of the position. Baseball historian Montgomery (The Baseball Miracle of the Splendid 6) devotes this book to long-ago and recent players who were touted by scouts and media as the next superstars. With an insider’s verve, Montgomery discusses how, for various reasons, certain phenoms didn’t live up to the hype. In some cases, it was the fault of organizational mismanagement; with others, it was mere bad luck. With some athletes—Gregg Jefferies and Ben Grieve, for example—it could be argued that they had successful and lengthy careers. Their results, however, did not match the attention they received. Via interviews with former players and their scouts, agents, and families, the book reveals baseball’s stories and what-ifs. It includes stories of heartbreak that are akin to unrequited love; the majority of these players put their souls into the game only to have the sport repel their best efforts. A fascinating exploration of the unfulfilled dreams of pro baseball players. Will appeal to fans of the sport.
Baseball is the ultimate game of failure, and Patrick Montgomery delivers a fascinating inside look at how the sport can defeat even its most gifted prospects. A must read for any fan of the national pastime, and for anyone who cares about the profound human struggle to master it.
In this case, I defer to the noted baseball sage John Greenleaf Whittier: “For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’"
For every Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, or Albert Pujols whose career is a straight shot to Cooperstown, there are dozens of other top prospects who never fulfill their destinies—because of injury, bad luck, or the countless other obstacles the game can throw in their way. Patrick Montgomery tells their stories with passion, perspective, and an inquisitive eye in Baseball’s Great Expectations.
It’s been written that baseball is designed to break your heart, and that makes the almost-was and coulda-beens integral to the game and to understanding its fans. Patrick Montgomery builds an alternate Cooperstown out of the Dan Pasquas, David Clydes, and Brien Taylors by meeting them on their own terms—the accidents, tragedies, and swings and misses that define baseball every bit as much as walk-off-homers and October heroics.
It has long bothered me when I hear a baseball player dismissed as a bust. It's one of the cruelest labels in professional sports. Fortunately, Patrick Montgomery has written Baseball's Great Expectations. It's an insightful and compelling read that tells the complete stories of 10 once-exalted prospects. In Montgomery's excellent book, we learn about their frustrations and failures, as well as their glories and triumphs. It also offers an in-depth look at the post-baseball career of these resilient and ultimately inspiring athletes. It's one of the best baseball books I've read this year. I highly recommend it.
All the love and wonder you have for baseball is here, and it's transformed into something both recognizable and altogether new in this moving and highly enjoyable book. Many of the most powerful archetypal tales of the game—such as the flame-throwing teenager taking a major league mound and dominating, or the chiseled power-hitter blasting moonshots into the Yankee Stadium bleachers—are here, but rather than punctuating stories of the ongoing glory of a Bob Feller or a Mickey Mantle, these moments of astounding promise flash once and disappear. In doing so, thanks to Patrick Montgomery’s keen eye for detail, rigorous research, and gift for giving nuanced voice to the wisdom, regrets, and resilience of these flash-of-light players, Baseball’s Great Expectations reveals the vulnerable human heart at the center of the game. I devoured this book, and came away with new eyes for the miraculous flashes of light in the game I love.
