A string of pearly anecdotes that reverberate far beyond the diamond.
Affectionate, informed, and smooth-as-cream portrait of four Boston Red Sox greats and their abiding friendship over many years.
Even back then, it was “something unusual for baseball: four men who played for one team, who became good friends, and remained friends for the rest of their lives.” Now, writes Halberstam (Firehouse, 2002, etc.), with free agency creating volatility in the rosters and salaries serving to lessen the connection between teammates, this story of Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, and Johnny Pesky is especially poignant. All four were Bosox stars in the 1940s and Halberstam re-creates many of the great moments of that decade, though perhaps even more enjoyable here are the sweet nuggets and inside observations of the men—of Pesky taking the fall for a bad play by Leon Culberson that lost the 1946 World Series because of the code mandating one player never point a finger at another, and reminiscing of Yankee pitcher Spud Chandler, “God, he was mean. He'd hit you in the ass, just for the sheer pleasure of it,” and tuning in to excerpts from the Ted Williams Lecture Series. As ever, Halberstam, always a welcome sportswriter, finely delineates the personalities: Doerr's preternatural emotional equilibrium, the guileless Pesky, Williams’s contentiousness, animal energy, and generosity. He also provides enough family history to give a sense of how extraordinary it was these four men came to be such great players, and how each in turn readily acknowledged their great good fortune at having been able to be part of the game at all. And the story lightly revolves around a car trip by Pesky, DiMaggio, and humorist Dick Flavin for a last visit with the rapidly dwindling Williams, highlighting the fact that all of the men may soon be gone and with them a classy style of play no longer in evidence.
A string of pearly anecdotes that reverberate far beyond the diamond.Pub Date: May 14, 2003
ISBN: 1-4013-0057-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
In a frustrating parallel to the national pastime's recent history, Panek's exhaustive look at the Class A Diamonds' 1992 season spends more time in meeting rooms than in the locker room or on the field. The business of minor league baseball is the focus here; the game itself becomes incidental. The Midwest League affiliate of the San Diego Padres, the Waterloo (Iowa) Diamonds were owned by 15 area residents. Municipal Stadium was owned by the city and needed a half-million-dollar renovation to meet the minimum requirements of the 1990 Professional Baseball Agreement with the major leagues. The city wouldn't budge, despite the club's estimate that baseball pumped $2.5 million annually into the city's economy. All of the fundraisers and promotions dreamed up by general manager David Simpson and his assistants scarcely covered the team's $300,000 annual operating budget. Valued at about $1 million, the team was threatening to sell itself to outsiders. Against that unstable background, manager Keith Champion tried to motivate young players to play good baseball, in spite of often primitive living conditions and inadequate facilities. As Panek astutely observes, ``Champ'' had a dual responsibility: to win, but also to develop players for his real bosses, the San Diego Padres. He took his orders from the big-league club regarding who to play where, how many pitches a pitcher was allowed to throw, and so on. PEN awardwinning fiction writer Panek is at his best in this nonfiction debut when portraying the players' youthful and often crude behavior on and off the field, whether hooting at a young woman in a halter top or playing tic-tac-toe with their spikes in the outfield grass. His looks at the hopes and dreams of individual players are his most effective passages. Well written, but too much behind-the-scenes and background stuff and not enough baseball.
Pub Date: July 9, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13209-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
A slim, mildly inspirational book suggesting that you have to risk getting lost in order to find yourself.
A memoir about living in the wilderness, withstanding the elements, seeing no one, and doing almost nothing but running.
Swedish author Torgeby was always an indifferent student beset by anxiety and itching to get outside. “I don’t understand why I should be stuck inside doing something I don’t want to do,” he writes of that boyhood. “I don’t bother with my homework and always have the lowest marks in my class in every test. I just want to run.” His life got worse when his mother was diagnosed with a serious illness and he undertook her care. Though he had begun running competitively early on, he was always better in training than he was in a race, for reasons his coach said were all in his head. When he was 20, he left his home and family to live in the woods and run. Though he would interrupt this seclusion for a six-month training sojourn in Tanzania, he ended up spending four winters battling the elements, running daily, and taking odd jobs in the countryside when his money ran low. A journalist wrote some articles about him, but he wondered why people were interested. Some readers may be tempted to agree with him, as he doesn’t come across as particularly perceptive or reflective. Yet the articles sparked the attention of a documentary filmmaker, toward whom his subject was also ambivalent, not wanting the bother of attention but enjoying a bit of celebrity (the book was a bestseller in Sweden). Other runners found inspiration in his story, and he made his re-entry into civilization, with a wife, a family, and a message about how little you need to live life to the fullest. You don’t need expensive shoes or special socks or any consumer trappings. “You only need to put on your shoes and get going,” he writes. “Let the blood circulate. Then everything becomes much clearer.”
A slim, mildly inspirational book suggesting that you have to risk getting lost in order to find yourself.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4729-5497-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bloomsbury Sport
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
