MLBBC February 2021 Pick: Lucky Bastard by Joe Buck

MLBBC (MLB Book Club) is the unofficial book club of Major League Baseball, hosted by Alyssa Cohen. Each month, a baseball-focused book is selected to read. Members are able to participate in discussions about the book on the MLBBC twitter account throughout the month. 

For the month of February, we will be reading LUCKY BASTARD by Joe Buck. 

Sports fans see Joe Buck everywhere: broadcasting one of the biggest games in the NFL every week, doing the World Series every year, announcing the Super Bowl every three years. They know his father, Jack Buck, is a broadcasting legend and that he was beloved in his adopted hometown of Saint Louis. 
Yet they have no idea who Joe really is. Or how he got here. They don’t know how he almost blew his career. They haven’t read his funniest and most embarrassing stories or heard about his interactions with the biggest sports stars of this era.
They don’t know how hard he can laugh at himself - or that he thinks some of his critics have a point. And they don’t know what it was really like to grow up in his father’s shadow. Joe and Jack were best friends but it wasn’t that simple. Jack gave Joe his broadcasting start but it wasn’t that easy. And Joe’s childhood as the son of a famous broadcaster was not as idyllic as it seemed.
In Lucky Bastard, Joe takes the reader into the broadcast booth and into his childhood home. Hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking, this is a book that any sports fan will love. (Synopsis from Goodreads.com)

On a personal note, this book is my all-time favourite memoir! I read it several years ago, and am very excited to re-read it right before the baseball season begins. If you are participating, please share a picture of you reading the book on twitter, and be sure to mention the MLBBC twitter account!