Freelance sportswriter Rosenbaum offers a breezy look at possibly the least successful champions in team sports history. Despite being in a large media market with a baseball-mad fan base, the refuse-hauling and video-rental tyro Wayne Huizenga’s Miami-based Florida Marlins had trouble drawing and sustaining interest. Prior to the ’97 season, Huizenga bet the farm, spending $89 million in contracts to get the best team money could buy. Huizenga signed a manager, Jim Leyland, who led teams to three division titles in the early ’90s; some hefty bats, problem child Bobby Bonilla, and the quiet superstar, Moises Alou; and a couple of good arms, including Liv†n Hern†ndez and Alex Fern†ndez, to round out an already strong pitching staff. Standing in the way of the Marlins— success were a few obstacles: first, the Atlanta Braves, National League champions for four of the five previous years. The second, and to Huizenga the most formidable, was Pro Player stadium, a venue woefully ill-suited to the realities of baseball in the late ’90s. Simply put, the stadium was pitifully short of amenities such as deluxe concessionaires and luxury boxes that were deemed essential to garnering corporate support. Perhaps most damning of all, however, was the lack of a roof—a must for keeping southern Florida’s summer rains out. By building his team, he hoped to bring in fans, and in turn obtain financing for the new baseball stadium that could make the Marlins profitable (writes the author, “If they come, maybe they’ll build it”). During the season, the Marlins battled to a wildcard playoff spot, getting leadership from the unlikeliest places, notably from Bonilla. Despite finally vanquishing the Braves, winning the World Series, and being embraced by Miami’s diverse communities, the Marlins still finished millions of dollars in the red (and no closer to a new stadium), thus necessitating a fire sale to dump star player salaries. An unflinching primer of sports economics and its new definitions of success.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-9653846-8-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
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
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