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Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan's Diary of the 2004 Season
by Derek Catsam
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Vellum (2005-09-20)
ISBN: 0976704269
EAN: 9780976704263
Dewy Decimal #: 796
Paperback: 288 pages
SKU: 070914015
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: This copy is in excellent condition. No markings, highlights, underlining, tears. There is a smooth-out reference crease on one page. Clean, tight, text and spine. No dust jacket. Soft cover is clean with light shelf/edge wear. This is a must have copy for the Red Sox Fan in you, at an affordable price. (I 54)
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
On October 27, 2004 the Boston Red Sox won the World Series by completing a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals, capping an improbable postseason run that saw the team exorcise demons and send its fans into paroxysms of joy. Catsams goal in writing this diary was to chronicle the day-to-day existence of an impassioned sports fan and to provide insight into what it means to root root root for the home team. Although Bleeding Red chronicles in great depth much of the 2004 season, it is truly a memoir about identity, unrequited love, and almost inexplicable loyalty to a team, to an idea. Even knowing the results, one cannot help but be caught up in Catsams emotions, a funny blend of humor and passion.
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Customer Reviews
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Bloody Good Fun
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-09-18
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I admit to losing my religion in 1986. With the ill-fated implosion by the Red Sox in that dark year, I realized that God did not love me or my team above all others. Since that time, I had followed the Sox with the detachment of an atheist or at least an agnostic. I was born again in 2004. Reading Catsam's "Bleeding Red" reminds us why we watch sports, why athletics are so compelling. Catsam's writing is passionate, gripping and often eloquent. A note of caution, his prose is more than occasionally "salty." But, anyone with the stomach to endure the agony of rooting for a professional sports team with no certainty of eventual success is likely prepared for some blue language. And, as in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, although we know how this story ends, reliving the experience through the writer is every bit as compelling. "Bleeding Red" is a great book for sports fans of every stripe.
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Red Sox Fans--this is for you!
Rating  (3)
Date: 2007-05-11
2 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Close your eyes and try to remember October 2004. If you are a sports enthusiast, you'll remember that this was the year the Boston Red Sox did the improbable: they came back from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Yankees and then went on to sweep the Cardinals in the World Series. This is the stuff that dreams are made of...that is, if you're not a Yankee or Cardinal fan. Don't we all like to cheer and root for the improbable to happen? Well, maybe if we aren't fans of the favored team.
This is one fan's journey. In Bleeding Red you will relive the whole year, from spring training straight on through the World Series, through the eyes of a Red Sox aficionado who gives a blow-by-blow account of some of the season's most important games. To say that author Derek Catsam is a Red Sox fan is an extreme understatement. In his short bio on the back cover it talks about when he is not "obsessing" about the Red Sox. That is a very apt description. He recalls his love for the team from a very tender age and some of the Red Sox Hall of Fame players.
It is also interesting to note that geography informs not only the author's choice of baseball team, but any sport. So not only do you get some history on the Red Sox, but also the Boston Bruins, Celtics, and Patriots.
Something else we learn from the back cover bio is that Catsam is a university assistant professor whom has many connections to other institutions. His choice of words at times can be very erudite and apropos. I found, though, that when expressing his anger or disgust at umpires, players, or teams, his vocabulary gets reduced to a very narrow and vulgar range. Given the learned individual that Derek Catsam is, the reader deserves better. Catsam himself deserves better. And certainly the hard-fighting and big-hearted Red Sox deserve better.
Overall, this story of an underdog team's amazing season definitely deserves to be told-- but not as it is, marred by incessant profanity.
Armchair Interviews says: Baseball fans--this is a good story (with an alert about language).
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Long Winded Red Sox Diary
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-05-18
8 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
With any new trend and any great sporting event, a proliferation of new books hoping to catch the popularity wave are usually found. The true test of time, however, remains the staying power of such notable works.
Unfortunately, in the case of Catsam's _Bleeding Red_, this is not a very good book. Unlike previous reviewers who praise the author's work, for this particular reviewer, the book failed to meet the expectations of a significant contribution to the Red Sox Nation. While acquaintances and supporters of the author might be captivated by what he was doing on specific occasion, it leaves the non-partisan reader little substance to cling to. The book truly fails to offer anything more than sophomoric stabs at humor and its descriptions of the author's own self-imposed trials and tribulations really is unsympathetic.
Readers can make their own judgments, but in this reviewer's opinion, _Bleeding Red_ falls short.
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Excellent Read!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-05-02
3 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
I got this book a few months ago, read through it immediately and really enjoyed it. It does a very good job of chronicling the incredible season of the 2004 Red Sox in a journal-like manner describing not only the day-to-day events of the team, but what is going on in Catsam's life at the time. I think there are two really strong points to this book. First, as a diehard Sox fan who just recently moved back to New England, I know first hand what it's like to try to follow a baseball team from afar and having to make the effort to listen to games on the internet or go to sportsbars to see big games because they aren't carried in your area. Catsam spends the season exclusively out of New England and it's fun to read about his devotion to the team and the lengths he must go to not only follow the team, but often times to just get the results of what happened the night before. I found this book to be most interesting when I was imagining what Catsam had to go through at the time to get an update than in reading the update itself. For the better part of this book, it's not about how the Red Sox are faring during the season, but what Catsam has to go through to follow the team and what he feels about the team. Anyone looking for a game by game exposition of what happened on a daily basis is better served reading King/O'Nan's book. Anyone interested in how a season like 2004 affects a real, devout Sox fan should read this.
The second strong point of the book comes in Catsam's essays concerning the big moments of the season. While the book chronicles the entire season, most of those entries, as previously noted, are more interesting to note what Catsam has to do to obtain such info about each game. But when you get to the end and you go through the Nomar trade and the run the team goes on the last 6 weeks of the season and then the playoffs...the 3 Angels game, the epic comeback against the Yanks, Schilling's ankle, Pedro in Yankee Stadium, Ortiz's heroics, Roberts' steal, Mueller's single and the sweep of the Cards...Catsam knocks it out of the park. He absolutely nails the feelings that Red Sox fans had during all these events. There are many books out there that tried to do this for Sox fans after this magical season, but the best known ones (King/O'Nan, Bill Simmons) were written by people with access the likes of which most of us will never have and while I found their accounts stirring because of the inside info that they could give by getting in to the park and getting access to team personnel, Catsam's is dead on in describing how most of us Sox fans felt during each of those events. It's such a good account that often times when highlight shows or something comes on TV that shows some of those moments, I find myself getting this book out again and rereading about those moments as this is the only book that gave an accurate account of what I was feeling during those moments. It's fun to read someone like Simmons discuss what it was like to be in the park for game 4 against the Yanks, but those of us that get to go 2-3 games at Fenway a year, watch the rest on TV or have to follow the team through the internet, radio and sportsbars, this is the book to have to relive that magical season. It will make you remember what you felt like during the greatest Sox season in history
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Very funny book
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-11-22
2 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Funny and witty. The book is a great read for any sports enthusiast (even if not a Red Sox fan) or for any person who has experienced all-cosuming passion for something. Yankee fans beware!
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