A flawed yet unique, personal story of an athlete's anguish at the end of his career.
A revealing yet occasionally tedious, seasonlong account of a major league pitcher on the outs.
Toronto Blue Jays broadcaster Hayhurst (Out of My League, 2012, etc.) began what would be his final season in 2010 training "like a beast" and anticipating the publication of his book, The Bullpen Gospels, on opening day. However, he had to win over skeptics who believed anyone who wrote from the inside violated the locker room code and therefore could never be trusted as reliable. Furthermore, talking to the press corps during spring training to garner publicity for his book caused teammates to question his motives, particularly a cocky, malicious pitcher who nicknamed him "Media," and encouraged several teammates to turn against him. Hayhurst wanted to prove he belonged, but he started the season relegated to the training room on the 60-day disabled list with an arm injury—and it only got worse. The combination of prolonged pain and social ostracism made him panicky, and the author admits, "it was a delicate balance of trying to get healthy physically and not unraveling mentally into some anxious, why-am-I-not-healthy mess.” Rarely does an athlete admit publicly to feeling anxious, afraid or depressed, but Hayhurst candidly shows readers that he was fraying both emotionally and physically. (One line sums it up nicely: "Arm pain can make your whole life hurt.") However, the author draws out his emotionally honest story with unnecessary, lengthy accounts of interactions with coaches and trainers, as well as intimate conversations with his wife. Several chapters devoted to his rehabilitation program lend no insight or deeper understanding of his pain.
A flawed yet unique, personal story of an athlete's anguish at the end of his career.Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3487-9
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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