For die-hard Lasorda or Dodgers fans only.
A lightweight biography of former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, from Los Angeles Times columnist and ESPN contributor Plaschke (Plaschke: Good Sports, Spoilsports, Foul Balls and Oddballs, 2002).
With the help of Lasorda, Plaschke chronicles the beloved Dodger’s life and career, from his humble beginnings as a poor child in Norristown, Penn., to his career as a left-handed pitcher, to the position which solidified his legacy—Hall of Fame manager of the Dodgers. Plaschke portrays Lasorda as a rotund, likable, noncerebral leader who loved his job, the Dodgers and food. The author goes to great lengths to explain that Lasorda was an incredibly inspirational speaker and witty storyteller. But Plaschke hamstrings this characterization with descriptions of the manager’s run-of-the-mill speeches—such as Lasorda “inspiring” a pitcher to throw strikes by telling him, in no uncertain terms, that he needed to throw strikes—and corny jokes. Although Lasorda managed some of the Dodgers’s greatest heroes—Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser, among many others—here he passes up a worthwhile opportunity by spending little time describing their great careers with the Dodgers, aside from taking what he thinks is due credit for their successes. Mike Piazza—one of the most beloved Dodgers of the past 20 years—merits little more than a mention, as Lasorda merely points out that he was the man responsible for identifying the talent that so many other scouts and managers ignored. Ultimately, the book suffers from Plaschke’s attempt to simultaneously portray Lasorda as both a player’s manager who would never say an unkind word about a member of the team, and a tough-as-nails field general who would never back down from anyone and who would, if necessary, use his fists to make his points. Still, there’s no denying that Lasorda decorated his trophy case with plenty of hardware, including two World Series titles and, after departing the Dodgers as manager and against long odds, a gold medal in baseball at the 2000 Olympics.
For die-hard Lasorda or Dodgers fans only.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-65387-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
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