A wry look at the perils of coaching Little League baseball in suburban New Jersey, this sporadically funny report by CBS correspondent Geist is a composite of ten seasons with unpredictable eight-to-ten-year-olds, rabid parents, and knavish rival coaches. Describing the March tryouts, when boys and girls are rated by the often conniving coaches, and the eight-team league draft, held in Commissioner ``Barney Foozle's'' family room, Geist reveals the chicanery and double-dealing that go into putting together the best team. Not everyone, it seems, thinks the kids are out just to have ``good, clean fun'': some coaches believe that they should learn ``sound values''; others think that winning is essential to the players' emotional development and future careers. And still other coaches ``picked kids with the best-looking mothers.'' Geist, a former New York Times columnist, showed his savvy by picking a kid with a pool in his backyard, perfect for the postseason party. To Geist, playing for fun ``is a value,'' and he sees to it that his Curl Up N' Dye Hair Salon team has a good time beating teams like the Victoria's Secret Wildkids and the Stool Concepts. His players include his own son and daughter; Emily Change, whose leadoff hits demoralized opposing pitchers; hotshot Byron ``Bad Ass'' McCarthy; and Anand, whose family shows up wearing sarongs and saris. Game by game (one is won on a homer by a young lady still in her ballet- class tutu), Geist's charges march to a showdown with Coach Knavery's Chem Lawn team, win on a late-inning, sugar-induced rally, and proceed to the Ridgewood (N.J.) World Series, where they lose a heartbreaker. Mildly amusing but more often strained or contrived; for a more serious, detailed look at Little League coaching, see Paul B. Brown's My Season On the Brink (reviewed above).
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-02-542921-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
Another work of Boston sports hagiography from one of the jock beat's leading home teamers. For nearly 40 years, Arnold ``Red'' Auerbach ran the show, trademark cigar in hand, for the emerald-clad Boston Celtics. Serving as coach from 1950 to 1966, then as general manager and unopposed despot until 1990 or so (he is still on the payroll as a consultant), Red guided the Hub's beloved Jolly Green Giants to 16 NBA championships, including an amazing streak of titles running from 195966. So successful was the team that Auerbach's effective coaching and astute talent assessment—he acquired many of the game's greatest players, including Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, and Larry Bird (who wrote the book's foreword)—were dismissed by foes as ``The Celtics Mystique.'' During Red's time at the top, the NBA grew from a barnstorming curiosity to a multi- billion-dollar global enterprise, and it would be hard to overstate his influence on the game—but Shaughnessy (The Curse of the Bambino, 1990) very nearly succeeds. While he does show Auerbach's cantankerous and occasionally pig-headed side, the author essentially presents to readers little more than a mash note loaded with anecdotes about Red's cigar-chompin', ref-baitin', hell- drivin' virtuosity. Not merely a great x's and o's guy (the NBA annually presents the Red Auerbach award to its outstanding coach), he is in Shaughnessy's presentation basketball's Moses, the man who led the game out of darkness. Non-Celtics fans might want to skim many passages to get to the parts where Red sagely catalogues the game's changes—for example, his observation that ballplayers ``used to come to practice with gym bags; now they come with attachÇ cases.'' At 77, Red has slowed a bit: He's no longer the preeminent judge of talent, and he's down to two or three stogies a day. But as long as guys like Shaughnessy can hold a pen, it's always Red's game; anyone else just came to play. (8 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59680-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Exquisite photographs and 97 essays, ranging from dubious to exemplary in quality and relevance, trace the 125-year history of professional baseball. Major League Baseball lends its logo to the fan's ultimate coffee-table book. By having unmatched access to various baseball archives, including those belonging to Major League Baseball, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and the New York Public Library's Spalding Collection, Wallace has compiled a powerful visual account of the sport. Photographs of legendary players—including Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, Frank Robinson, and, in one especially riveting still, Yankees' catcher Thurman Munson bracing for a collision at the plate—beautifully, almost eerily, preserve these heroes at the height of their youthful powers. Other effects, including uniforms, endorsements, cartoons, and trading cards, forcefully yet subtly demonstrate baseball's far-reaching cultural impact. While Wallace (The American Museum of Natural History's Book of Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Creatures, p. 1116) intends to show the game from all angles, the text occasionally struggles to meet the estimable standards set by the illustrated sections. Laudable is Wallace's inclusion of reports from the Reach and Spalding baseball annuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other noteworthy items are a 1955 scouting report on Brooks Robinson, who later became one of the greatest infielders ever, and Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey's explanation of his choice of Jackie Robinson as major league baseball's first black player in over 60 years. But the impact of such documentation is somewhat mitigated by the inclusion of ghostwritten autobiographies and ``flack'' pieces of questionable objectivity, and by Wallace's own introductory passages, which, with their boosterish tone, gloss over some of the game's less obvious undercurrents. But above all, baseball is a fan's game, and this book, compiled lovingly by a fan, deserves notice as a beautiful and enjoyable baseball time capsule.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8109-3135-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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