I’ve been making my way through this book on and off for the past couple of months.

It was a good book to read for the end of baseball season, which I guess is part of the reason I let it drag out until now.

I bought it back in late July - the full title of the book is Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter (And Always Will), by Scott Miller. It was talked up a lot by a lot of the sports podcasts I listen to and by many of the sportswriters I read.

They were all close with the guy who wrote it, who has had a long career in baseball…and who also passed away shortly after the book was published.

It’s a sad story, especially reading the acknowledgements and thinking about how many people crossed paths with him, let alone those with whom he was closest. He was too young.

As for the book itself, not a lot of it was revelatory to me, but there were some good nuggets in there.

He spends time watching a Yankees game and talking managing with Bob Boone, Aaron’s dad.

Here and there are good little bits like the fact that Mike Matheny was encouraged to take Spanish classes late in his career because people thought he would become a great manager and it would help him connect with Spanish-speaking players.

The author spends a lot of time with Dave Roberts - who he first covered as a high school senior in the San Diego area - and goes through his approach to managing.

If you’re someone who reads a lot about baseball, a lot of the stories are familiar - I didn’t really learn anything new about Terry Francona, for example, because I heard a lot about him in his years managing the Red Sox and then again when he was successful in Cleveland.

The book spends a lot of time getting into the changes over the years from managers who trusted their gut call into the way analytics has taken over the game - I like how the author stresses that the best guys are the guys who can find the balance between the two.

I like that I’m reading it at the same time as such a great World Series that involves a ton of important managerial decisions on both sides.

There is a lot in the book about what makes a good leader - that’s something that always interests me.

Writing a book is hard - I just got into that yesterday. I can’t even imagine how tough it is to write a non-fiction book like this. I liked reading in the acknowledgements some of the process, and who the author spoke to in person (and how and where) versus on the phone, and how he connected with certain people. I like stuff like that.

So there were some pretty good takeaways for me.

On the whole, though, I think it is a better book for anyone who is new to the game of baseball. If you have no idea what a baseball manager does, you will learn a ton from this book.