For baseball fans (and perhaps I should say "For Yankees fans") only. This very recent book provides some background into the development of the current Yankees team with a core of very young and talented players like Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge and Luis Severino. The book tells about the work Yankees scouts and general manager Brian Cashman did finding these players and others, and the trades that have been made along the way, as some top prospects have been kept and some dealt away in order to bolster the team's recent playoff runs. Hoch also goes into the life stories of a few of these players, particularly those mentioned above. There's lots of interesting information about the ins and outs of the development of a major league baseball team in the current era.

Unfortunately, perhaps because Hoch is a Yankees beat writer and so reluctant to damage his relationship with the team and the players, the whole thing is pretty bland. Particularly in Judge's case, the book is filled with the sort of inoffensive quotes that players are taught to feed interviewers. In quote after quote, we're told things like, "Our job is to go out there and battle. We were just battling every game and good things happened." Also, at the end of the 2017, the team decided not to renew the contract of their longtime manager, Joe Girardi. The book mentions Girardi's inability to communicate with the younger players and his high-pressure approach, but there are essentially no examples given, no anecdotes told, of the sort of events or feelings that would lead team management to conclude that Girardi's ouster was required. So while the book was fun and basically well written (although evidently Diversion Books' editors don't know a dangling participial phrase when they see one), I was left wanting more. That said, I still recommend the book to, as noted up top, Yankees fans. ( )