An authoritative treatment of a true baseball immortal.
A fine biography of the legendary baseball Methuselah.
In 1945 Brooklyn Dodger’s general manager Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, breaking a color barrier that had held for more than 75 years. Though revolutionary, Rickey’s selection overlooked a generation of Negro Leagues superstars, none bigger than Satchel Paige (1906–82), quite possibly the greatest pitcher ever. After a lengthy Negro Leagues career, tours barnstorming against the likes of Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller and seasons played in Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, by 1944 Paige had become the biggest attraction and the highest paid player in the game. Starting out as a blazing fastballer, he later developed an array of pitches that baffled hitters and delighted fans. He matched his on-field showmanship with a larger-than-life persona as a comic and aphorist. Along the way, he also developed a reputation as a contract jumper, crazy driver, mad fisherman, womanizer and all-around fast liver who bridled at Jim Crow’s rules. Although Paige had proven that white fans would come to see a black ballplayer, his age and reputation disqualified him as the impeccable figure Rickey needed for the tricky role of “first.” Journalist and biographer Tye (Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, 2004, etc.) conducted more than 200 interviews with Paige’s former teammates to reconstruct this amazing career, in which the facts, including such basics as Paige’s birth date, the spelling of his last name and the origins of his sobriquet, require careful sifting from the mistakes, misinformation and myth. Tye never quite convinces us that Paige consciously constructed “a brilliantly defiant parody” in order to combat racism, but he’s correct that Paige knew his value and put himself first in a way that anticipated the superstars of today’s game. Well past his prime, Paige finally got a shot at the Majors with three teams—including an appearance for the Kansas City Athletics at age 59—and a plaque in Cooperstown in 1971.
An authoritative treatment of a true baseball immortal.Pub Date: July 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6651-3
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
