A treasure trove of characterizations and insights bound to entertain any MLB fan.
The longtime Major League Baseball general manager covers the bases in a chatty memoir.
Alternating among declarations of his unabashed love for baseball, neutral reportage, and score-settling (usually with a smile and a subsequent peace offering), Colletti, whose career on the administration side covered decades with the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, and Los Angeles Dodgers, provides a variety of insights—among other subjects, about putting out fires as a GM accountable to a wealthy team owner, negotiating contracts with and making trades for players, getting a handle on illegal steroid use, and second-guessing field managers without seeming to interfere. The author, who began his career as a newspaper sportswriter, offers unforgettable, candid profiles of hundreds of players, including Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, and Yasiel Puig. Regarding the last, the immature, reckless behavior of players barely old enough to drink legally is a reminder of how much fans expect of athletes whose brains might not be fully formed yet. Superagent Scott Boras, a legend in his own time for his negotiating tactics on behalf of players, shows up in the text frequently, as do superstar players and managers that Colletti has hired and fired, a list that includes Joe Torre and Don Mattingly. Because the author grew up in the Chicago area, worked for area newspapers, and began his career with the Cubs, the book is larded with Cubs’ anecdotes, including the breaking of the century-plus curse to win the World Series in 2016. During his decade with the Dodgers (2005-2015), Colletti’s teams never won the World Series, but they finished strong during most of those seasons. The author could have broadened his memoir to discuss his mingling with celebrities beyond baseball, but he refrains from doing so except for a section about Frank Sinatra.
A treasure trove of characterizations and insights bound to entertain any MLB fan.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1572-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
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