Swing Kings

The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution

By: Jared Diamond

Narrated by: Joe Farinacci

""This is the best baseball book I’ve read in years. Swing Kings is a love letter to small people with big ideas."" — Sam Walker, author of The Captain Class

From the Wall Street Journal’s national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into a new age.

We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process.

These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium.

Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.

I had a front row seat to most of this book

I was fortunate to becomes good friends with several of the “swing kings” in the book that I first met on Twitter. I watched as much of this book happened before my eyes. I heard many of the insider stories that are shared as they were happening. Jared does an amazing job letting the story unfold, of helping you understand this cast of characters and the impact they have on the current game of baseball and the understanding of the swing.

As a follow up today, I am a co-founder with Bobby Tewksbary and Chris Colabello in a new player development platform called Pelotero. Bobby and Chris’ impact to the game has only just begun. Thank you Jared for a great read/listen.

Interesting

I try to read at least one baseball themed book at the start of each season. I learned a lot from this book, so I was happy with that. However, it was slow in some parts and felt repetitive at times; in audio format, it was a little bit hard to keep track of who is who at first. Overall, I’m glad I listened to it and it gave me a better understanding of the hitting side of baseball.

Hell of a book

Great listening to Jared tell the story of the people who transformed the way baseball is taught and played. looking forward to the sequel in 5 yearz that recounts what pitchers did to strike back.

Great story

I loved the story of the men (and now women) who are changing the game of baseball. Craig Wallenbrock, Doug Latta and Robert Van Scoyoc are pioneers in the baseball field and Jared does a fantastic job of portraying their stories

Great Documentary

I have studied everyone of these gurus never thinking someone would Chronicle them as a story