by John G. Coulson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 2018
A meticulously researched account of baseball history.
A debut biography focuses on one of the most successful pitchers in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals franchise.
William Henry Sherdel, or Wee Willie as he came to be nicknamed in the 1920s, may not be a household name among baseball fans today, but when he retired from the Cardinals, he had the fourth most wins of any pitcher in the team’s history. Born in 1896 in south-central Pennsylvania, Sherdel was always obsessed with baseball—he was paid to play for the first time when he was 14 years old, a whopping 25 cents for a game (the two-horse wagon trip to the field in a nearby town cost the same). A natural athlete and high school star—he was originally a catcher—he earned a local reputation and, in 1915, was recruited to play for the Hanover Hornets in the newly minted Blue Ridge League, class D minor league baseball. Coulson painstakingly chronicles Sherdel’s meteoric rise—he had a stellar inaugural year and even led the league with the highest batting average (.368). In 1916, he graduated to class AA ball—just one step below the majors—joining the Milwaukee Brewers. In 1918, Sherdel, only 21, realized his ultimate aspiration, making it to the majors. He signed a contract with the Cardinals, where he would remain for most of his professional career. He established himself as a formidable southpaw and played a major role in the team’s victory over the New York Yankees in the 1926 World Series. In his ambitious work, Coulson combines journalistic thoroughness with an infectious enthusiasm for the subject. He captures not only Sherdel’s athletic success, but also the history of the sport’s development and the nation’s embrace of it. But some of the microscopic details the author provides can be numbing, not only of the pitcher’s career, but also the organizational machinations of the teams for which he played. As well-crafted as it is, this biography won’t likely appeal to a wide audience. But it should be a treat for bookish, die-hard Cardinals fans.
A meticulously researched account of baseball history.Pub Date: June 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-1743-3
Page Count: 402
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
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
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