Mr. Book just finished The Franchise: Minnesota Twins, by La Velle E. Neal III.

This is the fifth book in The Franchise series that I have read in the last two years. I’ve found the series to be very good, with one exception. Mr. Book gave the Yankees’ version in C, followed by an A for the Red Sox version (despite his life-long love of the Yankees and lack thereof for the Red Sox), while the Cubs and Braves both got a B+.

The book contains 22 chapters, almost all of them about a specific player, manager, stadium or season.

The chapter on Bert Blyleven did an excellent job describing not just his pitching accomplishments, but the great character that he is. The chapters on the history of baseball in Minnesota from about the 1950s through the late 1970s, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew were also excellent.

I have to give the author credit for not avoiding the dark side of Kirby Puckett. I also liked the fact that, even though the book was about the Twins, for chapters on players like Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Jack Morris, the author also gave good coverage of the players’ entire career and didn’t just limit it to their time in Minnesota.

One of the great things about baseball and history books is all of the great tidbits that are found in them. A great example from this book is the story about the day Metropolitan Stadium had to be evacuated due to a bomb threat in 1970.

It was very difficult to find a chapter that wasn’t very good in this book.

One does not have to be a Twins fan to enjoy this one. It so enjoyable that I give this an A+, which means it is inducted into the Hall of Fame. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 16, 2024.