DSB Review:

On the surface, Are We Winning? is about Leitch’s devotion to baseball and more specifically the St. Louis Cardinals. On closer examination, though, it’s less about baseball than it is about parenthood, friendship, winning & losing, family, and growing up. But more than anything, this book is Leitch’s love letter to his father, Bryan, and it’s his way of expressing his feelings for his dad that up until now have remained unspoken. I understand that...it wasn't until recently that along with the hugs the "I love yous" became a constant of my conversations with my father, too.

In different hands, this kind of subject matter could have turned into a nostalgic, cloying piece of crap. Instead, Leitch is his usual deprecating, profane self and it serves the book well to read like it was written by your best friend or brother instead of an insufferable windbag like Mitch Albom or Mike Lupica romanticizing the way things used to be, but never were.

Most of the book is laugh out loud funny, but the parts that stay with you long after you finish are usually poignant and insightful (the author sympathizing with Steve Bartman, ruminations on his father’s inevitable death, and the rooftop conversation about marriage and kids) that is the result of skilled storytelling.

My one complaint surrounds the very first thing you encounter when you crack open the book. To set the tone and direction of the story, Leitch has written a letter to his not-yet-conceived son. It's a hokey and unnecessary device that is neither funny (the corresponding Knowledge You Now Have sections at the end of each chapter are the book’s lone source of cheap jokes) or inventive.

But that is a small complaint for an otherwise fantastic book that has a lot to love about it.

One tidbit of local interest: In the book, Leitch determines that former Harrisburg Senator Josh Labandeira might have had the least successful major league career of any player in the last decade. Labandeira went 0-for-14 (with a double play) at the plate and one error in his six chances in the field over his auspicious time in the majors. Leitch is intrigued by him because in 2008 he was signed and released by three different teams and because the author is even taller than the 5’7" shortstop. My memories of Labandeira and his time in Harrisburg are of his scrappy play on the field and banging a hot bartender who worked at a popular (now defunct) downtown sports bar off the field.

Thanks for coming and suckling Daddy’s Sugar Ball…