Drinking Coffee with a Fork chronicles Carlton‘s extraordinary and improbable ’72 season. Drawing on interviews with Carlton’s teammates, coaches, opponents, and the writers who covered the team, as well as newspaper accounts and box scores of the games, Bucci and Brown recreate the phenomenal performance by the man called “Lefty”—his early season duels with superstar pitchers Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal, his brilliant shutout against the Expos in a game marred by a bench-clearing brawl triggered by a retaliatory beanball thrown by Carlton, and a remarkable and exhilarating 15-game winning streak, achieved while the Phils rarely won on days that he didn’t pitch.   

 

Throughout the book, the authors intersperse memorable conversations and anecdotes

involving Carlton—from the dugout, the locker room, and the team hotel—which illuminate Lefty’s eccentricities, including his intense pregame preparation, his uncanny focus and concentration on the mound, and the sage and sometimes offbeat advice that he imparted to his fellow Phillies.

 

After recounting Carlton’s amazing season, Bucci and Brown rely on statistical analysis and

opinions solicited from some of the country’s foremost baseball experts—including Bob Costas, Jayson Stark, and Tom Verducci—to dissect this thought-provoking question: Is Carlton’s 1972 season the greatest ever for a pitcher?