Assuming that Bismarck was correct in his judgment that citizens should not see how either their sausages or laws are made, baseball fans might be well advised to eschew reports like the absorbing one at hand—which documents the many ways in which the national pastime is, at the major-league level, more a commercial venture than a sport. In his eye-opening, behind-the-scenes account of how the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins earned the right to join the National League's roster, Whitford (Extra Innings, 1991, etc.) dashes any sentimental notion that crass realities are not top priorities for club owners. Apart from paying the steep price of admission ($95 million apiece), the winning entrants not only had to beat out rival groups representing other locales (Buffalo, Orlando, Sacramento, etc.) but also had to survive a rigorous screening by the arrogant and grasping proprietors of extant teams. In addition, they were obliged to enlist the aid of municipal, state, and national officials with variant agendas while convincing voters that the diamond game was worth higher taxes and/or public debt. As Whitford makes clear in his episodic, anecdotal narrative (notable for its vivid profiles of key players), the process went most smoothly in southern Florida, where immensely wealthy entrepreneur Wayne Huizenga became the area's leading investor once he'd satisfied himself that baseball could be a profitable proposition. By contrast, the Denver-based partnership that also landed an expansion franchise hustled for money, political support, and a stadium from its opening pitch. While Whitford does not focus exclusively on the megabuck finances that make professional baseball a risky enterprise throughout North America, dollars play the leading role in his text—whose redeeming characters are limited largely to talent scouts. A fine and revealing report on economic man at work and play on a field of dreams.
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42282-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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