For baseball fans, Law offers a smooth combination of erudition and his obvious love of the sport.
A former Major League Baseball statistical analyst who now writes for ESPN shatters myths about how to accurately measure a baseball player’s ability and then explains modern criteria that offer better results.
Law—who served as a special assistant to the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays and now is a senior baseball writer for ESPN Insider and an analyst for the network’s show Baseball Tonight—provides a spirited exploration of statistics sure to start arguments among devoted baseball fans. Not all the explanations of statistical measurements, computer programming, and sophisticated technology developments are easily understandable, but the author’s detailed explanations are as jargon-free as possible; readers need not comprehend everything to enjoy the book. In the chapter likely to cause the most passionate debate, Law relies on extensive statistical analysis to examine the Baseball Hall of Fame. The author names worthy players who were never voted in and calls out less-worthy players who achieved entrance. Law clearly explains the reasons for the poor decision-making by eligible voters. For position players, there is an overreliance on outmoded metrics such as batting average, runs batted in, and stolen bases as well as the lack of an effective method for measuring defensive prowess. For starting pitchers, voters focus too much on games won and earned run averages; for relief pitchers, it’s games saved. For all pitchers, the author stresses the lack of criteria regarding the nature of the stadiums when they enter games and the quality of their team’s defense. Law also shatters the conventional wisdom regarding “clutch hitters.” Rather than leaving readers with utter negativity, the author explains persuasively how and why the new analytics are likely to improve the performances of individual players and entire teams.
For baseball fans, Law offers a smooth combination of erudition and his obvious love of the sport.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-249022-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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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