index index index index A must read, ESPECIALLY if you are a Yankees fan (although you would think the opposite!). It gives you insight into all sorts of things about Game 7 (and the Yankees in general) that will have you saying "Wow!" to yourself. There are so many more little "what if's" that could have changed the outcome of that game, long before Torre's decision to play the infield in for Luis Gonzalez's last at bat. You'll also understand why the "winning the World Series is the only goal" attitude worked so well for the 1998-2001 teams, as opposed to the post-2001 Yankee rosters of All-Stars.

You might want to wait until closer to the release of the 2001 World Series boxset however... you will DEFINITELY want to see Game 7 again after reading this book!I loved this book. Olney does a tremendous job of providing background on the many significant parts that contributed to the Yankees success during the late 90s, interpersing them with the historic Game 7 of the '01 World Series. This is not only a MUST-HAVE for any sports and Yankees fan, but anyone who still thinks that baseball isn't the epitome of a TEAM sport.Buster Olney, one of the only sentient and honest people still at ESPN (now that Dan Patrick is gone), has written one the best, most comprehensive sports books of all time.

Proof of this is how accurate his prognosis for the next seven years of Yankee mediocrity has become. It takes insight to determine this, and Olney succeeds. The personal stories/flashbacks are great---as is this book. A must read for any baseball fan, and I am FAR from a NYY fan.A recent personal project required that I read a half dozen books on baseball over the course of about as many weeks. Buster Olney's cool, lapidary prose made a nice sorbet with which to chase down the overweening lyricism of one of the game's Grand Old Men of American Lettahs, and the pomposity of a second. (I resist, with difficulty, the temptation to name names.)

The first thing to do is to set aside that contentious title. Olney, who covered the Yankees for four seasons for the New York Times, is a nonpartisan, or does a fine impression of one. His book is neither the inflammatory crowing of a Yankee hater nor the pessimistic keening of a demoralized loyalist. He uses the seventh game of the 2001 Yankees/Diamondbacks World Series as the springboard for a close analysis of the franchise's history in the years approaching and following the turn of the 21st century, and the treatment is both dispassionate and compassionate. The book's structure has a cinematic quality, with players taking their turns in focused, background-providing flashbacks generated by the inning-by-inning action on the field. Olney's narrative is not an innovation, but with his scrutiny of the decisions (good and bad) that led up to this game, and his attention to the personalities involved, he achieves something rare and tricky. He reminds us that every big game, like every snowflake, is distinct from all others, and suggests that the outcome of Game Seven was foreordained by the confluence of circumstances and people (both on the field and at the executive level) representing the clubs on this night. Put another way, a big game is never one big story; it's a significant point within dozens of smaller stories -- the stories of the uniformed people you see on the field, businesspeople you may recognize in the boxes and clubhouses, and others whose names you might never have heard. If anyone were removed from the tapestry, the whole would be altered. All the obvious slides get their time under the microscope -- Roger Clemens, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Joe Torre, George Steinbrenner, et al -- but the author also finds space, in a crisp 355 pages, for pertinent and illuminating studies of relative peripherals: the intellectually brilliant but fatally detached former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette; the obsessive-compulsive early/mid-1990s Yankee manager Buck Showalter; the gifted, infuriatingly undisciplined former Yankee pitcher David Wells, whose "bloated body camouflaged exceptional athleticism," in Olney's words.

The book, as suggested above, casts a wide net, but every one of its portraits has the subtlety and finish of a fine aquarelle. Indeed, some of Olney's most eloquent passages are those devoted to men who were not on the field for the game in question, but who played important parts in seasons leading up to it. I think here particularly of the section on the gracious and articulate yet driven David Cone, a Yankee starting pitcher nearing the end of a distinguished career and attempting (sometimes successfully, other times not) to do with guile and sheer force of will what he could no longer do with velocity and power. And the chapter on substance-abusing Darryl Strawberry's many second chances, and many subsequent relapses, makes something poignant out of material grown hackneyed in both news and fiction. "[T]hrough addictions, incarcerations, and hearings, he had never lost the beautiful buggy-whip swing he'd had when the Mets picked him first in the 1980 draft," writes Olney, and that unshowy yet felicitous phrase (especially that splendid description of the swing) finds just the right note with which to begin a chapter on a man of prodigious natural gifts and abysmal judgment, a package made up of the extraordinary and the dismayingly, even tragically ordinary.

I have taken pains not to reveal my own allegiances, because they are not really at issue here. Whether one roots for or against the Yankees, this is an engrossing and educational book, a potent blend of anecdote and psychology from the perspective of an astute insider. Go along with the author or not on his central point that the seventh-game loss to the Diamondbacks in 2001 was, by itself, of epochal character; but he compellingly makes his case that this franchise, historically restless and overachieving from the top down, was in some way due for sobering disappointment, retrenchment and reevaluation. Though occasioned by a bruising postseason loss, this taking of stock need not have been an entirely bad thing. For baseball franchises, as in life in general, survival is renewal.

Likely to become a classic within its field. Buster Olney, a former beat writer for the New York Times, looks at the New York Yankees' run of baseball success from 1996 to 2000 from the vantage point of the night it all came to an end, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Published in 2004, the book's title seems overwrought. The Yankees haven't won a World Series in the last five seasons, but they have that in common with a lot of other good teams, and the Bombers remain impressive, winning the American League East every season since 1998, and well over .500 in 2006 as of this writing.

But something was lost in 2001, a spirit that departed along with Scott Brosius, Paul O'Neill, and Tino Martinez. One of the remaining Yankees, Derek Jeter, is quoted bemoaning at the end: "It's not the same team." Olney makes a convincing case for that non-quantifiable game element known as team chemistry, both its presence from 1996-2001 and its absence thereafter.

Olney seems to model his book, consciously or not, on the classic Dan Okrent book "Nine Innings," which focused on a single regular-season game in 1982, using each half-inning as an excuse to digress on different elements on the game and its players. The great thing about "Nine Innings," or one of them, was the fact the game wasn't that important, it was just another mid-season game and presented Okrent for a backdrop as he divided his focus between the two small-market clubs playing that day. Here, the game is the last one of the 2001 World Series, and all the focus is on the Yankees.

One weakness is instead of leading each chapter with the game, and then pulling the reader into the backstory, Olney starts with the story he wants to tell, whether it's about pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre fighting cancer or pitcher David Cone's ability to spin the media spotlight to the team's benefit, then throws in a half-inning's worth of business in the last few paragraphs, sometimes connecting it to the rest of the chapter, sometimes not.

While not a solidly constructed book, "Last Night" abounds with a lot of good behind-the-scenes copy, like Mariano Rivera's fatalistic locker-room speech before Game 7 and how George Steinbrenner's tirades caused his general manager, Brian Cashman, to think about wearing a mouthguard to bed, to keep him from grinding his teeth in his sleep.

There's also some funny dish on players ("It was taken as fact in baseball circles that Albert Belle was nuts") and nice insights on how they play the game (Cone's many different release points compensate for underwhelming stuff, Jeter's unorthodox playing style is re-examined by a former teammate who was critical but now thinks Jeter is right). If Olney comes across a little too kind to the Yankees' most vicious player, Roger Clemens, he is repaid by Clemens with some good quotes and worthwhile insights.

Overall, Olney is a sympathetic if not uncritical observer, and those expecting to read "The Bronx Zoo" may be disappointed. I'm not a Yankee fan, and I enjoyed it; I can only imagine how interesting it will be for those who bleed pinstripes and think five years without winning the World Series makes for some kind of drought.For six extraordinary years around the turn of the millennium, the Yankees were baseball's unstoppable force. With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers, they dominated the major leagues, earning the love of their hometown fans and the grudging admiration of players and spectators elsewhere.

For the players and coaches, baseball Yankees-style was also an almost unbearable pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. With owner George Steinbrenner at the controls, the Yankees money machine spun out of control, and as the team's revenues skyrocketed, salaries were inflated beyond belief and smaller teams were priced out of competition. With New York's unforgiving fans behind him, Steinbrenner let the Yankees know loud and clear that their big paychecks carried a clear obligation: win now, and win all the time. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a dynasty rose and fell.

In THE LAST NIGHT OF THE YANKEE DYNASTY, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these exciting and tumultuous seasons, giving intimate insights into the stars, the foot soldiers, and the coaches and managers. With unparalleled knowledge of the game, he also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable and ultimately harmful to the sport. suria review reviews analysis analyze