Entertaining and highly readable, though it lacks the fireworks to satisfy casual fans.
McCarthy’s debut recounts his brief pitching career with the Provo Angels.
His well-told, insightful memoir should brighten the off-season for serious baseball fans. It provides a colorful, inside look at the distinctly unglamorous life of the minor-league ballplayer, complete with shabby hotels, 17-hour bus rides and little hope of making it to the majors. A 21-year-old lefty out of Yale, McCarthy had a less-than-meteoric start to his pro career in 2002. Drafted in the 21st round, he received a $1,000 signing bonus and a salary of $850 per month, out of which the team deducted fees for laundry detergent for uniforms and snacks for those long bus rides. Readers expecting tales of hard drinking and rolls in the hay with minor-league groupies à la Bull Durham will be disappointed. Provo, Utah, was dominated by the Mormon Church and Brigham Young University, where alcohol was contraband and the co-eds were squeaky clean. McCarthy had no casual flings on the road, and he doggedly abstained from the steroids used by many of his teammates. The clubhouse did shelter a few memorable characters, chief among them the team’s veteran manager, who occasionally unveiled a large black dildo as a good luck charm and wasn’t above showing his displeasure by stocking the players’ lockers with tampons and diapers. The author offers some sociological insights. Dominican and white players rarely interacted, he notes, and teammates often found themselves secretly rooting against each other—a byproduct of too many players vying for too few roster spots. We meet rising stars like Prince Fielder, Howie Kendrick and Bobby Jenks, and plenty of lesser-knowns on the way down. But mostly we meet wide-eyed young recruits like McCarthy, struggling to cling to a dream that deep down they know will never be realized.
Entertaining and highly readable, though it lacks the fireworks to satisfy casual fans.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02070-6
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
Spitz attempts to cash in on the 25th anniversary of the New York Knicks' first NBA championship in 1969 in a style that combines the worst elements of rock criticism, celebrity tell-all, and all-sports radio. To read this book cover to cover, one would think Spitz (Dylan: A Superstar, 1988, etc.) was the 13th man in the Knicks rotation. However, a quick glance at the sources tells a different story: This is nothing more than a cut-and-paste quickie in a classy cloth binding. It's not that he gets his facts wrong—after all, he's cribbed from the best in describing how general manager Eddie Donovan built the squad; how the team grew as a unit, especially after adding power forward Dave DeBusschere; how they finally surpassed the Boston Celtics (league champions in 11 of the previous 13 years); and the unfolding of their 196970 run at the NBA crown. But the way he tells this story, implying a familiarity with events and people that he seems not to have had, will get under the skin of anybody who's even seen a photograph of the Knicks' championship team. Spitz's character studies—of Rhodes Scholar, small forward, and future US senator Bill Bradley; stoical team captain and center Willis Reed; superfly guard Walt ``Clyde'' Frazier; role players like Dick Barnett; and rookie benchwarmer Johny Warren—are long on detail but conspicuously lacking in substance. A similar cursory approach makes the author's windy explanation of the realpolitik of the City Game (as urban playground hoops is known) fall somewhere between pathetic and unintentionally hilarious. Further compounding this lazy effort are the numerous anachronisms (such as referring to a 747 taking off in 1969, when 747s didn't go into commercial use until 1970). A curious footnote, considering the author (who has profiled Woodstock I as well as Bob Dylan) appears to be stuck in 1969.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-193116-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
For a sport that promotes itself as ``the game for a lifetime'' for everyone, golf has a pretty sorry record where women are concerned, and Chambers recounts some of the key battles. When the second US Open was held in 1896, the United States Golf Association's leadership bravely allowed John Shippen, who was half black, half Native American, to play. Regrettably, the sport has had a less brilliant track record over the rest of its American history; but in the wake of the Shoal Creek scandal surrounding that country club's exclusionary membership policy, things have begun to improve for minority men. Not so for women. Chambers, whose unusual credentials (contributing editor to Golf Digest and a columnist for the National Law Journal) make her uniquely qualified to tell this story, recounts the various ways in which private country clubs have traditionally given women golfers the shaft. Providing a wealth of anecdotal evidence, she shows how women are excluded from full membership by many clubs. Barbara Litrell, publisher of McCall's, found that the prestigious Wykagyl Country Club would allow her husband to be a member but not her, even though her company was paying the initiation fee. We also see how women whose marital status changes are unfairly discriminated against (unlike men, widowed or divorced women who remarry must often pay new initiation fees), and how determined individuals have fought back with mixed results. At a time in which the sport is experiencing a continuing boom, with 37% of all new players being female, the issue is one with a growing impact in the sports world. Unfortunately, although the book is well researched and reported, it is rather drily written and awkwardly structured, with an uneasy mix of history and activist how-to. Despite its shortcomings, a useful study of one of the less examined dark corners of American sport. (First serial to Golf Digest)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-50151-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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