Pleasant essays—five of which won first-prize awards from the Outdoor Writers Association of America—on a youth spent fishing and canoeing the lakes and rivers of northern Michigan, by Dennis (It's Raining Frogs and Fishes, 1992—not reviewed). Having grown up in the 1960's in the vicinity of Michigan's Silver and Long lakes and Au Sable and Boardman rivers, Dennis is able to write of waters once teeming with fish but now barren—and, happily, of once-barren waters now full of fish. He seems to have done a lot of his fishing at night, claiming that nocturnal angling offers ``your best hope of deceiving a large brown trout with an artificial fly.'' In one piece, he and his teenage buddies jump a fence in the dark of night to fish a string of farm ponds in the middle of a pasture filled with grazing buffalo. In others, like ``A New-Moon Bass'' and ``Night Paddling,'' Dennis recalls fishing with his father and floating ``through the darkness on muggy summer nights.'' In 1970, he tells us, he observed hundreds of lake trout circling hypnotically in the glow of dock lights. Though a pilgrimage to the Fox River (Hemingway's model for ``Big Two- Hearted River'') disappoints him, Dennis is pleased to meet Robert Traver, the late author of Anatomy of a Murder. Traver, a former state supreme court justice, delights Dennis by taking him into the back woods to his favorite fishing hole. Dennis also hunts for a legendary huge ``old brown'' living in a dark, still pool of the Boardman. He never catches the fish, but, as he notes, ``catching a trout like that isn't the point. The point, of course, is believing that he's there.'' Smooth, with a gently impressionistic touch—like easy- listening radio for anglers. (Line illustrations—some seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09811-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
An altogether balanced, revealing and enjoyable study.
A meticulous, heartfelt chronicle of a baseball minor league's struggle to return to the game the fun and intimacy that's all too often missing from the major league game.
Fatsis, an AP correspondent, followed the Northern League, an independent six-team circuit with franchises in Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Manitoba, and Ontario, over the course of its second campaign. Unlike most minor leagues, which enjoy financial and developmental support from the 28 major league clubs, the NL teams relish their privateer status and relative freedom from the corporate world of pro ball. Founded by Miles Wolfe, an experienced baseball executive who had wild success as general manager and owner of the class AA Durham (N.C.) Bulls, the league was dedicated to one goal: to return the game to the fans. It is a thought echoed by Marvin Goldklang, chairman of the league's St. Paul (Minn.) Saints franchise. His message to the majors: "You don't own baseball...Nobody owns this game.'' Although the teams are comprised primarily of cast-offs and also-rans (and a few aging former major leaguers, including former Chicago Cub All-Star slugger Leon "Bull'' Durham and mercurial Boston Red Sox hurler Dennis "Oil Can'' Boyd), some still harbor dreams of getting a shot at the bigs. Through his profiles of such hopefuls as Stephen Bishop, an unpolished outfielder with great athletic potential and personal charisma to match, or Vince Castaldo, a fiery third baseman, Fatsis reveals who truly owns the game: the players, who on this level possess only the hope that they can make a major league team notice them—or else leave the game on their own terms. Fatsis scores another point by demonstrating that fun (for the fans, not the players or management) is the real name of the game.
An altogether balanced, revealing and enjoyable study.Pub Date: June 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-8027-1297-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ryan does for women's gymnastics and figure skating what Suzanne Gordon did for ballet a decade ago in Off Balance: The Real World of Ballet. Ryan, a sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, strips away the graceful facade to expose the harsh, often destructive, training regimes to which elite female gymnasts and figure skaters are subjected. She argues that these sports are distorted by ``our cultural fixation on beauty and weight and youth'' and the drive to win at any cost. ``Skating was God,'' says one mother of two former athletes. ``That's what we prayed to: First Place.'' Top athletes—pressed into competition as young as age six and reaching their peak in their teens—fall prey to a vicious cycle of eating disorders, exhaustion, stunted growth, injuries, burn-out—and sometimes death. Ryan presents horrifying tales of their physical and mental abuse at the hands of leading coaches: Christy Henrich died at 22, unable to conquer her anorexia years after quitting gymnastics; 15-year-old Julissa Gomez died after landing head first on the horse during a difficult vault that her coach knew gave her trouble. Craving approval, the girls are victimized by the very people who claim to care most about them: coaches such as Bela Karolyi (trainer of Olympic gold medalists Nadia Comenici and Mary Lou Retton), who berated a girl after forcing her to compete with broken toes; sporting associations that turn a blind eye to abuse and lack power to enforce standards of treatment; judges who value image over accomplishment; and worst of all, parents who expect their children to bring them glory (one father decided his daughter would be a figure skater before she was even born). Ryan calls for government regulation as a means of bringing these abuses under control. Never again, after reading Ryan's book, will one be able to watch those tiny, lithe silhouettes—whether on the ice or the balance beam—without thinking of what they may have suffered to get there. (author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-47790-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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