This is probably 4.5 stars due to the fact that the time travel aspects are pretty weak and the ending could be stronger, but I couldn't bring myself to knock a whole star off because, as a writer, the research Brock put into this novel absolutely floored me. If you love baseball and the 1800s and nostalgia, that will get you in the door, and you could simply stay there and enjoy this book, but if you want to delve a little farther, maybe run a few Google searches on the topics the main characte...

I accept that not everyone may enjoy If I Never Get Back as much as I do. This wonderful book has many of my favorite things: Baseball, historic pre-National League baseball, American History (especially nineteenth century history), Mark Twain, Irish history, paranormal activities, ghosts, time travel, and more baseball.Our hero, with lots of current time troubles including divorce, legal problems, anger management and alcohol abuse, finds himself flung back in time and space to 1869 where he me...

The ol' sudden trip back in time blends with baseball in this very entertaining tale by Darryl Brock, which spawned a sequel. Throwing the modern man back into an earlier age to see what happens hardly is new, from Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" onward.The Twain reference is appropriate, because the main character in "If I Never Get Back," Sam Fowler, does in fact meet a young Twain on a twain — er, train — after he's inexplicably transported from the late 1980s to 18...

Darryl Brock's If I Never Get Back is not and also does not in any way ever claim to be either a literary classic or a masterpiece. But reading does not always have to be a chore or an academic undertaking, and for the sheer pleasure of entertainment, for an appreciated escape from reality into the pages of a novel, not only does If I Never Get Back always and continuously grab the reader and hold his or her interest throughout, there are concurrently and furthermore both enough history and enou...

Old-school baseball, time travel, Mark Twain, Irish gangsters, and, naturally, romance - what more could you ask for? I've read this book several times and never get tired of the post-civil war setting as the baseball teams, still quite the novelty, travel the country by train. The colloquialisms specific to the period are entertaining. This would make a great movie.I love how at the end the title takes on greater meaning..."if I never get back"....to which time period? Where does he really wish...

This is a time travel baseball book as Sam Fowler finds himself traveling with the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869 as they complete an undefeated season playing from coast to coast. I found the baseball sequences very entertaining with some wonderful detail on how baseball was played during that era.It is a bit of a male fantasy book, as every woman finds Sam Fowler irresistible, and he gets to fight lots of men with both bare knuckles and firearms. Historical figures are included in his advent...

Wonderful book by Darryl Brock. It is a combination of Time Travel and Baseball as our narrator takes a spill in present day and wakes up in 1869 Cincinnati where he becomes associated with the first professional baseball team - the Cincinnati Red Stockings. While many baseball folks seem to bow down in homage to Kinsella for his time travel works of "Shoeless Joe" and "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" this is a far superior book. It is filled with rich historical people, places and things and for...

"You'll love this! My favorite book, given to me by my son. Send it back when you are done." said my friend Jim during my recent trip to NE Georgia, handing me a well read hardback novel. We had been discussing baseball as Yankee fans (him) and Red Sox fans (me) are often wont to do, so this book which depicts a time traveler zipping back from 1980's San Francisco to 1869 upstate NY in the presence of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional team. Interesting how the game was played ...

I’d heard a lot of good things about this book, and there are plenty of positives, but what jumps out at me now that I’m done is just how long it took me to get through it. A friend referred to it as “If I Never Get Finished” in a comment and it seemed to fit. For 424 pages, it felt a lot more like 600+. I’ve always liked stories about time travel, from “Back to the Future” to “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” Daryl Brock really nails this history here, particularly regarding the 1...

I've read this book several times over the past decade and it always entertains me, ingnites a momentary interest in baseball, and I get an insatiable desire to wear lace up boots. The book is well-written and fun to read, very descriptive with lots of tasty details about Victorian minutiae. The main character runs into a great many famous people and though quite unbelievable, it's never ridiculous. A fun summer read regarding time travel, a bit of love story, a bit of corrupt gangstery, and the...