The more things change, the more they remain the same in the world of baseball—that’s the lesson that emerges from this exemplary look at the game of a century ago. Baseball was a mess then, too: players’ salaries were skyrocketing, cheating and hooliganism ran rampant, owners pondered schemes to “protect” the game (mainly from themselves). No team was safe; even the reigning world champion was dismantled, with the pieces going to the highest bidders. Solomon’s crackerjack account chronicles the game’s coming of age, both for better and for worse, through the story of the National League’s Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s—1900s. The archetype for modern baseball, a team built on speed, fielding, and smarts, the Orioles were powered by a core of future Hall of Famers that included “Wee Willie” Keeler (whose hitting mantra isi evoked in the book’s title) and hot-tempered John McGraw, later a great innovator in his own right. They executed revolutionary plays: the “Baltimore chop” (hitting a ball downward and running out the hop) and the hit-and-run, to this day a strategic mainstay that was devised by manager Ned Hanlon. Beloved by Baltimore, the Orioles stitched together a run of campaigns that earned them the mantle “the greatest team ever” from writers of the day. About the only thing that could sink this juggernaut was a greedy owner, who came in the guise of Harry von der Horst, a profligate brewing scion with a huge ego and legal bills to match. Like his counterparts, Harry loathed the idea of paying salaries commensurate with players’ performance. Long story made short, he and the other owners tried several schemes to keep salaries in check and control the game, including syndicate ownership (simultaneous ownership of more than one team by a single ownership group). The result of this was the merging of Brooklyn’s nine with the Orioles, with the southern team serving as a virtual farm club. The inevitable losers in all this, naturally, were the fans. Baltimore soon folded its National League tent. A club in the upstart American League took its place, only to move a few years later to New York, where they eventually became the Yankees. An outstanding blend of lore, social history, and canny insight, redolent with detail and the language of the day. Tonic, albeit a bitter one, for fans who think baseball today is at its nadir. (Radio satelite tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85451-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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