Over the Edge by Jay Johnstone and Rick Talley Contemporary Books, Inc., 1987 Over the Edge by Jay Johnstone fits a formula that was first perfected by former umpire Ron Luciano in his Strike Two and Rembrances of Swings Past.

Basically the formula works like this: 1) a former baseball player (or umpire) with a lot of help from a co-writer with a reputation for nuttiness writes a fairly humorous book on his own experiences in professional baseball, ie Temporary Insanity by Johnstone and The Umpire Strikes Back by Luciano. 2) The book is a publishing success. 3) Thus there is a call for another book but the player (or umpire) has already related all his funny stories in his first book. 4) So the player (or umpire) (or in this case probably the co-writer) gets the bright idea of rehashing the funny stories of his co-workers.

And that is the big problem with Over the Edge. It's not that it's not an entertaining book, but I had heard or read ninety percent of the stories in it before. I mean, how times do I need to read about Casey Stengel's funny comments regarding the hapless 1962 Mets?

Some of the players who Johnstone talks to in the course of the book include Mike Schmidt, Gaylord Perry, Tommy Lasorda, Joe Torre, and Davey Johnson. Not to be repetitive in my criticism, but most of the stories told by and about these players have been repeated in countless other baseball books and TV broadcasts.

The only chapter in the book that is truly original is the last one, in which the then-recently retired Johnstone talks about playing in Old-Timers Games at the age of forty after twenty years of playing competitive baseball for a living. "These guys remember all the remarkable things they could do, but now some of them can't do anything. Maybe the best way to hold an Old-Timers Game is to let everybody walk to the first baseline, wave to the audience, then go take a seat," Johnstone writes.

If you're a new student of baseball history, Over the Edge might, and only might, be worth reading. But more than likely, the average baseball fan will have heard the majority of the anecdotes in the book before from their original source. I'd recommend passing on reading this book, there are too many other baseball books out there that are much better written and more interesting.

Over the Edge may be available for purchase on the net at one of these sites.

--JingleBob, April 24, 1999