They Bled Blue Audiobook By Jason Turbow cover art

They Bled Blue

Fernandomania, Strike-Season Mayhem, and the Weirdest Championship Baseball Had Ever Seen: The 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers

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They Bled Blue

By: Jason Turbow
Narrated by: Jason Turbow
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They Bled Blue is the rollicking yarn of the Los Angeles Dodgers' crazy 1981 season, a watershed campaign that cemented the team's place and reputation as fitting thoroughly within the surrounding LA culture. That it culminated in an unlikely World Series win - during a split season demarcated by a strike, no less - is not even the most interesting thing about this team.

The Dodgers were led by the garrulous Tommy Lasorda, whose office hosted a regular stream of Hollywood royalty. They had Steve Garvey, the first baseman with the movie-star good looks. Garvey was teamed with Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, and Bill Russell in the most durable infield in major league history, with 1981 presenting their final chance to win a championship as a unit. The difference maker was an entirely unexpected 20-year-old nearly straight out of Mexico, with a wild delivery and a screwball as his flippin' out pitch. Fernando Valenzuela didn't speak much English, but his baseball ability broke down cultural barriers and helped fill Dodger Stadium to the brim with a Southern California Latino population that had been thirsting for just such a success story.

©2019 Jason Turbow (P)2019 HighBridge Company Americas Baseball & Softball State & Local United States Sports
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I purchased this book for a road trip with my husband - a true Dodger fan. i really enjoyed it.

Great Book for Dodger Fans

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Really captured the time period and learn a lot thing about that team and era. Very enjoyable

Very enjoyable

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Great book on the Dodgers and the infield very detailed list of fun interviews.Go Dodgers!

Piece of Dodgers History

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Great job by the author to take me back to my high school days when one of my best friends to this day and I first found our mutual love of the Dodgers, and it all came together in 1981. Great job by the author for profiling, separating fact from fiction and lore from reality, and giving a well -detailed account. I would probably subscribe to the view of other reviewers that the author probably should not have been the narrator, because there were plenty of times that he sounded like he was reading his own prose, but that is the difference between a narrator & a reader. With that, said, though, I can certainly understand why the author would want to deliver his own words in his own voice.

Well-researched recollection

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The author narrates the story and does really well, but he seems more interested in all the negatives surrounding the 1981 season and our heroes than placing them among the greats of World Series lore. Full of back-handed compliments, tales of prostitutes, cocaine use and other such darkness, you'd think that the author meant this book as a psuedo-persecution instead of a championship story. When he admits to growing up a San Francisco Giants fan, you begin to realize his motivation for trying to smear the Boys in Blue. Totally unimpressed and a little angry as well.

Dodgers history smeared by a Giants fan...

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