Quick Take
- Narration: L.J. Ganser captures Kelly’s irreverence and authenticity without caricature, the right fit for a memoir that’s equally funny and sincere.
- Themes: Baseball reform, player authenticity, insider exposé
- Mood: Funny and opinionated, with genuine emotional weight in the more personal sections
- Verdict: Devoted baseball fans who want an insider’s perspective on the game’s cultural problems will find Kelly’s voice compelling, casual fans or those indifferent to MLB politics may want to calibrate expectations.
I started listening to A Damn Near Perfect Game the afternoon after a particularly tedious nine-inning game that ended 1-0 with eleven strikeouts and no one on either bench visibly enjoying themselves. Joe Kelly’s book felt like the right antidote. By the time L.J. Ganser’s narration got to the famous pouty face confrontation with the Houston Astros, Kelly staring down players he believed had stolen signs, making faces at them from the mound during a game months after the scandal broke, I was laughing out loud in my kitchen while making dinner. The book earns that kind of response.
Kelly is a two-time World Series champion who pitched for the Cardinals, Red Sox, Dodgers, and White Sox over a twelve-year career that was at least as notable for its personality as its statistics. He is, by his own description and by ESPN’s official designation, baseball’s most memeable player. He is also, as it turns out, someone with specific and considered views about what has gone wrong with the sport he loves and what might fix it. A Damn Near Perfect Game is the vehicle for those views, structured as an insider exposé in the tradition, one reviewer specifically invokes it, of Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.
Our Take on A Damn Near Perfect Game
The comparison to Ball Four is worth taking seriously. Bouton’s 1970 memoir was controversial precisely because it broke from the unwritten rule that players don’t speak plainly about the clubhouse, the front office, or the sport’s internal contradictions. Kelly does something similar but from a contemporary vantage point: pitch clocks, defensive shift restrictions, the designated hitter debate, sign-stealing analytics, and SPAC-era front office culture. His critique of overused analytics is particularly interesting coming from a player who lived through the Statcast revolution, he isn’t anti-data, he’s anti-data-as-substitute-for-instinct. The account of his meeting with commissioner Rob Manfred is worth the full listen on its own. One reviewer notes that Kelly sometimes sounds like a hippie and sometimes like an old fart, which is probably accurate and is also probably what authenticity looks like in this genre.
Why Listen to A Damn Near Perfect Game
L.J. Ganser is an excellent choice for this material. Kelly’s voice, as it comes through in the prose, is direct, funny, and occasionally surprisingly tender, the letter to his children that one reviewer describes as making them cry is the emotional center of the book and earns its place there. Ganser navigates those tonal shifts without straining. The book is also genuinely informative for fans who follow the sport without access to clubhouse perspective. One reader describes stopping to think more before yelling at the TV after finishing the book, which captures the way Kelly’s insider knowledge recontextualizes things viewers take for granted. The bench-clearing brawl with the Yankees’ Tyler Austin, the mariachi jacket at the White House with the champion Dodgers, and the Astros confrontation are all told with the specificity that only comes from being in the room.
What to Watch For in A Damn Near Perfect Game
Kelly is opinionated in ways that some readers will find energizing and others will find rambling. The 2.0-star review in the batch, describing the book as the ramblings of an entertaining pitcher, captures the experience of a reader who wanted structured argument and got personality instead. Both readings are valid. This is a memoir built around a worldview, not a policy paper. The rule-change criticisms are sometimes contradictory, he wants more player emotion and less manipulation of outcomes, which creates tensions the book doesn’t always resolve, and his critique of analytics occasionally slips into nostalgia. These are real weaknesses. But the access and specificity of the insider accounts make up for the structural looseness.
Who Should Listen to A Damn Near Perfect Game
Devoted baseball fans who follow the sport’s cultural and structural debates closely will find this essential listening. Red Sox fans in particular, one reviewer identifies as exactly that and found Kelly’s account of the 2018 championship team illuminating in ways that go beyond the standard post-championship retrospective. Listeners who want structured reform arguments over personal narrative may find the book frustrating. Casual sports fans unfamiliar with Kelly’s on-field persona may want to watch a compilation of his highlights before starting, the book’s humor lands differently when you’ve seen the face behind it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does A Damn Near Perfect Game compare to Jim Bouton’s Ball Four?
Several reviewers invoke the comparison and it’s structurally apt, both are insider accounts that break from the unwritten rule of player silence about the sport’s internal politics. Kelly’s book is more focused on structural reform arguments than Bouton’s, which was more character-driven and clubhouse-intimate. The irreverence is similar.
Does L.J. Ganser’s narration capture Kelly’s distinct personality?
Yes. Ganser handles Kelly’s tonal range, funny, opinionated, and occasionally genuinely vulnerable, without overcooking any of it. The letter-to-his-children section that several reviewers highlight emotionally is narrated with the right restraint.
Is this book specifically about the Astros sign-stealing scandal?
The Astros confrontation is one of the book’s most memorable sequences, but it’s not the primary focus. Kelly uses the incident as a launching point for broader arguments about player authenticity, the culture of analytics, and the unwritten rules around how players respond to perceived cheating.
How much baseball insider knowledge do you need to enjoy this book?
Some familiarity with MLB helps, Kelly doesn’t explain who the Astros are or what the sign-stealing investigation found. But the book’s personality and humor work even for listeners whose baseball knowledge is general rather than deep. The more technical rule-change arguments will mean more to attentive fans.
