In the Time of Bobby Cox: The Atlanta Braves, Their Manager, My Couch, Two Decades, and Me (review)

In his introduction, Lang Whitaker offers a telling statement that resonates throughout the rest of In the Time of Bobby Cox: “Bobby is my sanity” (9). Indeed, in the following chapters, Whitaker measures his growth as an athlete, a writer, and a family member against the qualities he sees embodied in Bobby Cox: emotion, faith, persistence, consistency, failure, greatness, adapting, communicating, patience, and hope. Throughout the book’s ten chapters, each named for one of the qualities from the previous list, Whitaker narrates facets of his own life, simultaneously connecting his personal experiences to specific Braves players, games, and decisions he has seen on television and in person from his youth through adulthood. While the “baseball is life” cliché remains an unfortunate staple of “coming of age” stories, Whitaker instead offers a different spin on this oft-repeated maxim: “Some of us learn from history, some of us from books, some of us from our families, some of us never learn. The thing is, lessons are all around us, just waiting to be absorbed. It’s all about where you look to learn. Even if you’re not looking to learn” (4). As a passionate Braves fan, I found that the biographical elements of In the Time of Bobby Cox offered no revelations or facts I had not previously heard or read. But after I finished and had a chance to digest the book, its lessons clarified—in particular, Whitaker’s intent to cast Bobby Cox as an omnipresent figure in his growth from insecure adolescent to adulthood. Or, as he puts it, “Bobby Cox has been the single most important person in my sporting life” (10), as the manager has indirectly imparted lessons about family, job, happiness, and other adult concerns.

Whitaker maintains a chronological narrative, relating defining aspects of his adolescent and adult lives to specific moments from Cox’s tenure as Braves manager. These moments individually define the above list of qualities, each within its own chapter. While some of the connections seem tenuous—for example, his paralleling the experience of traveling with his grandparents to Greg Maddux’s pitching abilities, or his relating David Justice’s sometimes-controversial Braves tenure to a commercial Whitaker shot for Speedway—Whitaker concludes each chapter (or rather, lesson) with a Bobby-related story or parable taken from his extensive observations. This organization raises In the Time of Bobby Cox above the standard, purely chronological fan memoir.

Whitaker’s approach works best in the book’s later chapters, as he intertwines the manager’s insights within narratives from his own life, including his grandmother’s death and a safari trip he took to Africa. Describing a peaceful moment at the end of this safari trip, for example, Whitaker muses, “by finally allowing myself to be patient with an experience, I was rewarded with one of the greatest trips of my life. I felt like I’d found myself, thousands of miles from home” (203). This sense of self-discovery informs Whitaker’s narrative over the course of his two-decade association with Bobby Cox, thus enabling him to reconsider his life with a healthy dose of hindsight, as well as with the acknowledgement that Bobby and the Braves have remained constants in his journey. And let’s face it, most of us live lives full of unplanned divergences; but as sports fans, our favorite teams and players remain the constant presences that help us measure our lives. Whitaker makes this point in chapter three, “How Mark Lemke Is Like Managing a High School Baseball Team,” observing that “you can run, but life persists. The only way around it is to go right through it” (69).

The book’s final chapter details the Braves’ improbable return to the post-season in 2010, as well as the deeply personal account of the travails Whitaker and his wife face in attempting...