An okay history of the hapless but beloved Chicago Cubs, a baseball team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908 or played in one since 1945. Though this takes the form of an oral history, Golenbock (Wild, High and Tight: The Life and Death of Billy Martin, 1994, etc.) has to borrow heavily from long-published sources to tell the story of the early years, starting with Albert Spalding's 1876 desertion of the Boston club to pitch for Chicago's White Stockings. He would eventually own the ball team and lead it to a dynasty in the 1880s. They became the Cubs in 1902, and in 1906, under player/manager Frank Chance, they won 116 games. The Cubs lost to the crosstown White Sox in the World Series, but won back- to-back world championships in 1907 and 1908 against Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers. It would be their last World Series victory, though they won pennants in 1910, 1918, and again in 1945. Veterans of that WW II team—Phil Cavaretta, Len Merullo, Dewey Williams- -recall the series for Golenbock, still second-guessing manager Charlie Grimm's selection of a pitcher for the seventh and deciding game. Some great and memorable ballplayers have been Cubs, and Golenbock introduces them throughout his narrative: Gabby Hartnett, Hack Wilson, Ferguson Jenkins, Dizzy Dean, manager Leo ``The Lip'' Durocher, Bruce Sutter, Lou Brock and, of course, ``Mr. Cub,'' Ernie Banks, a two-time MVP, with 512 career home runs. (Curiously, the affable Banks, an executive with the Cubs, is not among Golenbock's interviewees, a serious omission.) The Cubs' woes in recent years culminated when future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg walked away from a $28 million contract in 1994 out of sheer frustration. (Sandberg has recently rejoined the team.) Anecdotally interesting, but Golenbock could have done more legwork in some crucial areas, most notably Banks's outstanding career. (50 b&w photos)
Pub Date: March 4, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14079-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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