Decent baseball book; mediocre inspirational book.
Passable baseball memoir by retired pitching ace Smoltz, centered around his efforts, at age 41 and after major shoulder surgery, to pitch just one more year.
The author knew at an early age he would find his fortune as a professional ball player. For 20 years he was a stellar pitcher, both starting and relieving for the Atlanta Braves as they won 14 straight division championships and a World Series. In 2009, however, age and injury seemed to catch up to him, and he moved on from the Braves to the Red Sox and then briefly to the Cardinals. While he enjoyed mixed success in his final year, Smoltz has more in mind than simply talking about success in baseball. He uses his success as a metaphor for how to succeed in life. While he overcame many injuries and obstacles to stay in the big leagues as long as he did, his advice is too often expressed in sincere but hoary bromides (“I always looked at [failure] as an opportunity to grow”) that do little to inspire. Similarly, his deep and honest profession of Christian faith (“I truly accepted Jesus Christ as my savior in 1995”) gets lost in odd juxtapositions. For example, at one point he writes, “the two things I can point to that kept me persevering year after year for so many years were my faith in God and golf.” Smoltz seems not to mean to give the two equal billing, but some readers may find it odd nonetheless. When Smoltz talks about baseball, the book comes alive. Whether he’s discussing the differences between starting pitching and relief pitching and the difficulties of switching from one to the other, as Smoltz did more than once, or why power pitching wins in the postseason, or why the Braves won only one World Series, it all has the ring of authenticity and wisdom.
Decent baseball book; mediocre inspirational book.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-212054-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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