An enjoyable tale of a storybook season.
A fond remembrance of a legendary baseball team and the teammates who kept in touch throughout the ensuing decades.
On Oct. 16, 1969, the New York Mets defeated the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series. Playing in right field for those Mets was Shamsky (The Magnificent Seasons: How the Jets, Mets, and Knicks Made Sports History and Uplifted a City and the Country, 2016), who—along with sportswriter Sherman (Kings of Queens: Life Beyond Baseball with the ’86 Mets, 2016, etc.)—offers a narrative of that season and later memories anchored by the teammates’ 2016 trip to visit ailing pitching ace Tom Seaver. On paper, the 1969 Mets were average. Outfielder Cleon Jones finished third in the National League in batting average, yet no one on the team hit more than 26 home runs or drove in more than 76 runs. The team succeeded because of two main factors: the guiding hand of their manager, Gil Hodges (“Sixty-nine would never have happened if not for Gil Hodges,” says Jones), and the fact that these Mets, in the words of first baseman and World Series MVP Donn Clendenon, “epitomized the word team.” Thus Shamsky, who hit .300 that season, split time in right field with Ron Swoboda, who made a key catch in Game 4 of the World Series. Neither Clendenon nor Swoboda had played a single game in the National League Championship Series. The narrative of the season itself, which takes up two-thirds of the book, is informative and entertaining, and Shamsky effectively places the team’s magical year within the social and political contexts of 1969, including the moon landing, the Vietnam War (shortstop Bud Harrelson missed time to fulfill his military obligation), and the now-all-but-forgotten rioting in York, Pennsylvania. Moreover, the author persuasively argues that the team helped unify New Yorkers during a turbulent time. However, the reunion itself is somewhat anticlimactic, and Shamsky probably overstates his case that the ’69 Mets inspired the nation as a whole.
An enjoyable tale of a storybook season.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7651-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
