Looking back late in his baseball career, a one-time dominant phenom tells of his life at both the center and fringes of the game. As a young fireballer for the New York Mets in the mid-1980s, Dwight “Doc” Gooden was on top of the baseball world. He had success—by his early 20s, he had won Rookie of the Year honors, a Cy Young Award, and a World Series ring—and, as a superstar in the Big Apple, he had the most exciting lifestyle imaginable. Surrounded by his brash Mets teammates and Manhattan nightlife, Dwight the shy teenager quickly matured into Doc the confident party animal. Eventually, Gooden’s attention wandered from the game to the pursuit of good times, and his golden arm began to betray him just as the Mets’ presumed dynasty began to falter. (A talent-rich juggernaut in 1986, they were expected to rule baseball for years.) Serious fun off the field soon began to eclipse Dwight’s achievements on it. He was twice suspended for drug use, in 1987 and again in 1994. With the help of friends, family, and solid professional advice, Dwight reclaimed some of his glory in May 1996, when he pitched a no-hitter for the New York Yankees, who later that year went on to win the World Series. Gooden movingly describes the giddy joys of being young, rich, and seemingly invulnerable. He provides powerful insight into the mind of a pitcher, illuminating several elements of baseball that normally escape all but the most knowledgeable fans. When discussing his professional reversals, particularly his plunge into the gutter, he is brutally candid; he also seems to genuinely understand how his failings affected those closest to him. Assisted by Klapisch, one of the best sports scribes in the game, Gooden vividly re-creates for readers a roller- coaster ride of disparate emotions, from triumph to loss and shame. An honest, sincere, and affecting memoir.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16339-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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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