Out of My League, George Plimpton
Out of My League, George Plimpton
List: $18.99 | Sale: $13.29
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Out of My League
The Classic Hilarious Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball

Author: George Plimpton, Jane Leavy

Narrator: Robert Fass

Unabridged: 4 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/26/2016

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

This baseball classic that Ernest Hemingway called "beautifully observed and incredibly conceived" includes a foreword from Jane Leavy and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton archives.

The first of Plimpton's remarkable forays into participatory journalism, Out of My League chronicles with wit, charm, and grace what happens when a self-professed amateur has the chance to answer every fan's question: could he strike out a major league star?

Plimpton's inspired idea -- to get on the mound and pitch a few innings to the All-Stars of the American and National Leagues -- begins as a fun-filled stunt and comes to a deeply hellish, nearly humiliating end. This honest and hilarious tale features Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Whitey Ford, Ralph Houk, and other baseball greats and is "a baseball book such as no one else ever wrote, and one of the best ever."-New York Herald Tribune

About George Plimpton

George Plimpton (1927-2003) was the bestselling author and editor of nearly thirty books, as well as the cofounder, publisher, and editor of the Paris Review. He wrote regularly for such magazines as Sports Illustrated and Esquire, and he appeared numerous times in films and on television.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Joe on November 18, 2019

Is this really well-written? Eh. Is this great journalism? Not really. But what it is, if you're a baseball fan, is a trip back in time to the way the game was played 60 years ago. If you're familiar with George Plimpton, you know that among many other accomplishments, he participated in sports against......more

Goodreads review by Cale on February 12, 2019

This book is pretty lightweight-- it's just an account of one day in one man's life, having what could easily be classified as "one of his goofy adventures." But the challenge here is pitching against the entire lineup, both leagues, of the 1959 All-Star Game. Mickey Mantle! Willie Mays! So who's th......more

Goodreads review by Du on August 06, 2013

I couldn't tell if I was going to like this at first. There is a smug style to the opening chapter, as if the book was an article by a sports writer you have been reading for years, which probably most of the readers have. After that rocky start though, the book switched gears and became nerd tries......more

Goodreads review by Mike on August 15, 2019

I'd been looking for this one for years, and was honestly a little let down by it. Unlike Paper Lion, Plimpton does very little preparation, and seems to take on the challenge of pitching to the NL and AL All-Stars as not much more than a joke...he even has to borrow a glove. Lovely writing, but not......more

Goodreads review by Dan on April 01, 2023

George Plimpton lived a life and spoke in an accent it is very difficult for me not to envy. Good dresser too. But while I would give any amount of money to be an urbane but funny magazine writer who pads around 50s literary New York and gets to pitch to Willie Mays I must say this by way of gentle......more

Quotes

"Beautifully observed and incredibly conceived, this account of a self-imposed ordeal has the chilling quality of a true nightmare. It is the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty."—Ernest Hemingway

"A baseball book such as no one else ever wrote, and one of the best ever."—New York Herald Tribune

"Out of My League copes with the problem of the imaginary nightmare of walking every batter and the glittering triumph (the shutout) of striking them out, one after the other."—Marianne Moore

"It's all there: the humor, the classical allusions and the verisimilitude that makes you feel that you were not only there to see it but suffered through it with George."—Allen Barra, Dallas Morning News

"A delight--more entertaining, if possible, than I remembered... the reader leaves George Plimpton's wide world of sports with deep reluctance.... His prose is as elegant and seemingly effortless as Ted Williams's swing or an Arnold Palmer iron shot.... His teammates recede--like the old baseball players vanishing into the cornfield in Field of Dreams, taking their magical world with them but living on in fond memory."—Edward Kosner, Wall Street Journal

"Sports memoirs, like humor collections, rarely outlive their authors, but Plimpton's books have aged gracefully and even matured. Today they have the additional (and unintended) appeal of vivid history, bearing witness to a mythical era."—Nathaniel Rich, New York Review of Books

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