In 2006, Roy Green published 101 Reasons to Love the Yankees and 101 Reasons to Love the Red Sox. Released by Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, these were nice little books (a similar book about the Mets also came out that year), full of pictures and brief texts about the author’s favorite moments and people for each team.
This year, he has evidently changed his mind, adding, rearranging, and deleting some of the “reasons,” which are mostly listed in chronological order.
I won’t go into detail, won’t list every one, but let’s just look at the top 10 for the Yankees:
| 2006 edition | 2008 edition | |
| 1 | Pinstripes | Pinstripes |
| 2 | The Highlanders | The Highlanders |
| 3 | Jack Chesbro | Jack Chesbro |
| 4 | The Polo Grounds | The Polo Grounds |
| 5 | Babe Ruth | Babe Ruth (including his numbers) |
| 6 | The Babe’s Numbers | The Curse of the Bambino |
| 7 | The Curse of the Bambino | Bobby Veach |
| 8 | Bobby Veach | Yankee Stadium |
| 9 | Yankee Stadium | The Bat (in front of the stadium) |
| 10 | The Facade | The short porch |
2008 edition |
2006 edition |
The author obviously wants to update the books to include events and personnel from the last couple of years, thereby juggling the rest of the content, but is this really worth the effort, not to mention warranting the expense for those who bought the first edition? The differences aren’t that great; the cynic in me sees this as merely an attempt to wheedle more money from the book-buying public. These are not not one of those statistical encyclopedias that are updated annually (and even those aren’t 100 percent necessary these days, thanks to the availability of data on the Internet).
Buyer beware! Fortunately, 101 Reasons can be read quickly enough at the bookstore, although the reader/buyer can’t be expected to remember every detail of the previous version when deciding whether to plunk down the $14.95 (at least they didn;t increase the price).
is available on Amazon.com,
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