A captivating account from one of baseball’s most formidable pitchers.
Gibson relives in detail, and with many asides, the brilliant first game he threw against the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series.
A tumultuous year politically and culturally, 1968 was also the Year of the Pitcher. Denny McLain, pitching for the Tigers, won 31 games, and Gibson, unfurling on the mound like a mad stork, compiled a staggering 1.12 ERA. Fortunately for baseball fans, the two would face off in the first game of that year’s World Series. Gibson, working with veteran baseball writer Wheeler (Intangiball: The Subtle Things that Win Baseball Games, 2015, etc.), writes with both brio and control, in perfect imitation of his pitching. One moment he sounds lawyerly—“the pregame machinations on the Cardinal clubhouse were mostly beyond the pale of my cognizance”—while the next, like the menacing presence he showed his opponents: the button over his locker read, “I’m not prejudiced. I hate everybody.” But that is not true, as the vest-pocket profiles of his teammates attest: Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Orlando Cepeda, Tim McCarver, and Roger Maris. Nor does the level of particulars slow the swiftness of the narrative. Simply, this is a fun book to read. The game was not much of a contest; Gibson was in complete command, masterfully working his backdoor slide and the four-stitch fastball. The author works plenty of local color into the story, as well: Al Kaline’s high school baseball talent, Gibson playing for the Harlem Globetrotters, why American League umpires have a better look at the strike zone, finding a hole in the swing of Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews, “whose swing had been described as perfect by no less than Ty Cobb.” One of the best parts of the book is the author’s evocation of the atmosphere of a big-league game—e.g., “sometimes you just have to go with the currents of the game.”
A captivating account from one of baseball’s most formidable pitchers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1250061041
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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