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CONFESSIONS OF A BASEBALL PURIST

Play-by-play man for ESPN’s highly successful Sunday Night Baseball, Miller, with Baltimore Sun reporter Hayman, has slapped together a casual record of his career and a friendly look at the game’s recent history as seen from the press box. Once derogatorily described as a —baseball purist— by Bud Selig, baseball’s acting commissioner, Miller goes on record to try to show that he is anything but. He got his start in the big leagues at the age of 22 in 1974 when he was hired by Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s, he remembers fondly. He would later spend 14 —wonderful years— with the Baltimore Orioles (two separate chapters are devoted to Cal Ripken and his record-breaking streak) and then the Red Sox. He cites current ESPN partner Joe Morgan as —the premier baseball analyst.— Miller lists among his favorite people in baseball former manager Ralph Houk, one of those who left the game —a better place that when he found it.— Reggie Jackson, Kirby Puckett, Joe Carter, and Eddie Murray also rate highly in his book. Miller’s protestations against being dubbed a —purist— yield mixed results: While he grudgingly admits to liking interleague play, he—d like to see it limited to —natural rivalries— such as the Yankees vs. the Mets, or the White Sox vs. the Cubs. At one point, he decries the suggestion that the game needs to be speeded up; at another, he suggests limiting catcher visits to the mound and giving each team four time-outs. And one nearsighted contention should bring on a shower of boos and catcalls from the stands: The fans, he claims, —don—t read salary lists, and they don—t care who wins or loses arbitration,— he writes. —So don—t bother baseball fans with that nonsense.— It’s a good thing Miller keeps this informal and anecdotal, and presents his arguments with a light touch. Otherwise, purists and other fans might feel they—ve been underestimated, if not sold short.

Pub Date: April 6, 1998

ISBN: 0-684-84518-0

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998

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DUMB LUCK AND THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.

The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.

As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”

In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020

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PERSIMMON WIND

A MARTIAL ARTIST'S JOURNEY IN JAPAN

A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich...

A reflective and entertaining journey through Japan, as the author seeks to reconnect with his martial arts sensei.

Lowry is a student of koryu (not to be confused with kendo), a style of Japanese classical swordsmanship. Koryu is a medieval art, like Noh and the tea ceremony, a style of combat born on the battlefield–but more importantly, it’s a way to address the world (though an esoteric one: Lowry may well be the only American practicing the art in the United States). Indeed, present-day practitioners refrain from exercising its fatal possibilities. Lowry’s sensei left the U.S. to return to Japan, urging Lowry to follow. Though his life headed in a different direction, he never forgot his training–when the time was ripe, he journeyed to Japan to join his sensei. The narrative revolves around this pivotal decision, and it provides a warm center from which the author expounds on such topics as the glories of a Japanese bath; the evolution of the Samurai caste; the peculiarities of Japanese landscape architecture; the elements of proper sandal-tying; the custom of the premarital shenanigans called yobai; and the teachings of mikkyo Buddhism. He also includes the vital story of the sword–what it reveals about Japanese life and technology, social structure and aesthetic values, etiquette, apprenticeship and the process of education. Lowry’s seriousness lends an earnest cast to the proceedings, but he’s not without a sense of humor–commenting upon his accomplished slurping of noodles, a friend’s wife notes, “He really sucks!”

A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich tradition.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2005

ISBN: 1-890536-10-5

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

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