A Damn Near Perfect Game: Reclaiming America's Pastime

Big Joe Kelly fan!

Very interesting book about a MLB journeyman relief pitcher. He has a lot of insight of our national pastime and how the game is played. He writes about his upbringing and tells intimate details of his life. Good read for Joe Kelly fans or if you’re just a fan of baseball.

I admired Joe Kelly for being so authentic, raw & real. I felt I learned a great deal about baseball, a whole new prospective, I stop to think a little more prior to yelling at the tv. I Still do it though. Lol I also found myself laughing out loud, he’s very funny. I cried when I read his letter to his kids. So touching.Overall I thought it was a brave, honest, touching book. I think anyone who loves baseball should read it. So much depth to it.Joe Kelly, you have a fan for life! Great job!

I have not been able to put the book down since I started reading. Joe and Rob absolutely killed it and flawlessly delivered such an important message. Learning about the mindset of Joe and his story is eye opening, and as a Red Sox fan I am so thankful I had the opportunity to learn more about the guy that made an everlasting impact on the historical franchise that I love.

Joe tells it like it is & describes the history, wonder & superb natural humanity of the game. He also tells what MLB is doing to destroy the game that has withstood so many generations. I'm sharing it with all my friends!!!

What we have here is the ramblings of an entertaining pitcher.I like Joe Kelly. He’s a good pitcher and he is unique and he is quite hilarious. This book is simply a collections of his thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Some make sense: market players better, make games more accessible to the fans, let players have emotions, umpires suck, etc. But he also dabbles in nonsense at times.Sometimes Kelly sounds like a hippie, wanting to change everything. Other times he sounds like an old fart who wants to be pitchers pitch 8 innings while batters bunt and steal more. Don’t get me wrong, I get it. There are some aspects of the game that has fallen out of style. But there is a very good reason: the goal is to win games. And if you look at the data, bunting rarely helps. It’s a business and it’s good business to win.It’s a good book. Not the best, not the worst. I was entertained.Also, I am adamantly against beaning guys on purpose and fighting on the field. You are grown adults. Stop it and stop encouraging it.Also, the last chapter or so is just quotes from other players and individuals, so that's not Kelly's ideas there, just there to pad the book.

Joe Kelly is a man who clearly loves the game of baseball and all it has done for him and his family. He is rightfully concerned about the state of the game today in this attention deficit world we live in. Kids are being attracted more to sports that seem to have more action than baseball - but "seems to" is the important thing to remember. Joe offers a few recommendations to help speed up the game a bit, and I agree with most of them. One or two, to me, are simply absurd. Baseball is a mind game, a game for thinkers, more than any other pro sport. It's chess, not checkers.I do like the idea of things like robo-umpires, doing away with the shift (or greatly restricting the way it is deployed), his modification idea for time clocks, etc. What I despise is his contention that all games should be shortened to only seven innings or his approval of starting extra-inning games with a runner on second base. Those two ideas, in my opinion, have/would fundamentally changed the game of baseball that Joe loves so much into a cheap imitation of the original.As for Joe's obsession with the Astros...fine. But it's all a little hypocritical of him in my opinion because on the very first page of his book Joe admits that all/most teams were already using video equipment to swipe pitch signs. So is he OK with one level of cheating and only angry at the Astros because they took it one step farther than the other cheaters? That and his overestimation of the impact of his "pouty face" are revealing to me in a way that Joe probably didn't intend them to be.All that said, this is a pretty good book and gives fans a lot to think about. It's short - 228 pagers, not 288 as I've seen in the official book ads - and much of the content is written by others. Something like the last third of the book is made up of only direct quotes from players and coaches explaining why and how they fell in love with baseball in the first place. It becomes a little tedious because there are so many - bit of overkill because the point was made long before the last page.Overall, I enjoyed the book and found it to be a good way to ease into the 2023 MLB season. I've been slow to come back to MLB since the steroid era destroyed the credibility of the home run records. What the Astros did - and the rather hypocritical reaction of so many teams - was definitely a step backward for me. (But maybe that's what was needed to expose and end that kind of cheating.) I learned to love the DH rule, but I don't think I will ever think that a runner should be automatically placed on second base to begin the tenth inning of every game. But I'm ready to see for myself where baseball is headed. I just hope that college baseball never adopts that runner-on-second garbage.If you're a fan, take a look at this one. It adds a little to the conversation.

Much better than I thought it would be

I met Joe Kelly while working a security detail in the visiting bullpen at Rogers Centre in Toronto in 2017. He took it upon himself to talk with me, asking many questions, and conversing back and forth. So much of this book felt so real and true and honest because I’d heard the same words before. I guess now, it makes sense why he’d taken the time to engage with me (when most players are aloof and “focused” on the game) seeing as he acknowledges that he thrives from the infiltrators of the microcosm (the bullpen) and from human interaction.As someone who’s always been a bit of an outlier in my own profession, but also true to myself, it was a comforting experience reading that Joe also strives to be 100% authentic. This book radiates authenticity.This was a pleasure to read as a baseball fan and someone who earned a deep respect for a professional athlete, who, with no ego, showed an interest in a commoner such as myself.The back portion of the book is interviews with players and celebrities who love baseball. It’s interesting to see how baseball affects people individually.Way to go Joe!

I’ve always been a huge baseball fan, but over the past several years I’ve been learning players’ backstories, showing who they are on and off the field, and it has opened up the whole league for me in a fresh new way. Personifying the athletes adds so much depth to the great game of baseball.A Damn Near Perfect Game by Joe Kelly and Rob Bradford nails a lot of these points by addressing Joe’s past AND by highlighting baseball’s hopeful direction. Baseball isn’t boring; this book and the podcast (Baseball Isn’t Boring) continuously find reasons to prove that point.