Hot Hands, Draft Hype, and DiMaggio's Streak: Debunking America's Favorite Sports Myths

The author has an entirely different take on evaluating sports accomplishments. Very, very smart. The best part deals with baseball, but all sections are enlightening. My favorite? A convincing argument that Mickey Mantle was the greatest of all time, considering all facets of the game.

The book has three sections, baseball, basketball and football. I'm a big baseball fan, and loved the baseball section. There's a good discussion of some of the new baseball stats like BABIP, and the weakness of stats like WAR. Asking questions like "Who was the better player Mantle or Mays? or how to compare a player from the 1930s to a current player are the stuff of baseball and may never be answered satisfactorily. But Hirsch shows some different ways of looking at such questions, which at least, point out why such comparisons are difficult.Basketball is my least favorite sport and I don't know much about it. The baseball and basketball sections are about the same length and I ended up skipping most of the basketball section as it was getting technical and I don't know the players or situations he was writing about. There was some interesting stuff. I never heard of the controversy concerning 2002 NBA Finals, that the league conspired to fix the 6th game of the Lakers-Kings series to force a 7th game. This seems absurd on the face of it, for any and all the reasons Hirsch describes.The football section was the shortest, and more general in tone, and an interesting read for a casual football fan like me. Hirsch spends little time on football injuries, such as concussions. As a medical doctor I'd have expected more. He seems to think that the data isn't in to conclude that long term injuries are a problem with football.I'm giving this 4 stars because I thought the baseball section was excellent. I don't know enough about the game to evaluate the basketball section but if it was as good as the baseball part, then the book deserves 4 stars. The football section was comparatively weak, so I can't give 5 stars.

The 56 game hitting streak overrated? That never occurred to me, but the author provides a good argument for that unusual claim. He offers unconventional ideas about other debatable topics like Mantle vs Mays, Cabrera vs Trout, Buckner's error, Billy Beane's ups and downs, Tommy John surgery, Jon Lester's fear of pick offs, Joe Maddon's oddities, and much more. The book got me thinking about these things in ways I hadn't before.

I received this book in a Goodreads First-reads.Great book full of myths and facts brought to light to the enjoyment of the reader. I got this knowing it would be a great book for my grandsons. Alot for them to learn about their favorite teams in this book.

The Dallas Morning News calls Hirsch "one of the shrewdest and liveliest of baseball analysts". I agree. I'm not sure what I liked more about Hot Hands: The many cool stories about stolen bases, home runs, heroes and goats... or the detailed explanations of why so many things we think about sports, well, maybe we ought to stop believing them.

This is the second book I've read by Hirsch and he delivers an entertaining perspective while undressing what we believe to be conventional wisdom in sports. The book is thought-provoking and fun. It is an interesting ride considering that there's a reasonable guarantee that he might be going after a fan's favorite -- Ichiro in my case.

Extremely clever book which challenges common beliefs about important athletes, events and feats in the three major sports, particularly baseball, from Babe Ruth to recently. I loved it and I'm recommending it to friends so I can argue about it with them. You can read about the book in a comprehensive book review recently featured at the realclearbooks and realclearsports web sites.