Darling, Ron. The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound. Knopf, 2009. ISBN 978-0307269843 288 pp. $24.95

***

Former Mets’ pitcher Ron Darling dishes on what it’s like to be a major league pitcher, approaching pitching holistically, from standpoints of stamina, science, mental focus, statistics and more … this as-told-to memoir is not intended to catalog Darling’s achievements, but to illustrate the lonely position that so much of America’s past-time hinges on.

The writing is straightforward but mundane, and the blow-by-blow didn’t hold my interest much past the 50 page mark, though the structure is interesting, with each chapter modelled after an inning in a key game to illustrate the author’s points.