THE Review: “Doc,” by Dwight Gooden
While his teammates were parading down the Canyon of Heroes celebrating their 1986 World Series victory, Dwight Gooden was holed up in his apartment watching the proceedings on television, too high to attend after partying all night and doing large amounts of cocaine in a housing project on Long Island. This low moment — Gooden […]
THE Review: Mike Piazza’s “Long Shot”
Much like Michael Jordan’s bitter, angry Hall of Fame induction speech in which the second greatest basketball player of all time (Wilt Chamberlain is still number one in my view) felt the need to lash out at those who said he’d never make it, Mike Piazza’s new book “Long Shot” is further proof that overwhelming […]
THE Review: “Steinbrenner”
You don’t have to be a Yankees fan to read “Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball.” Any baseball fan, especially those in New York who lived through George Steinbrenner’s reign of terror in The Bronx, will likely enjoy an inside look into perhaps the most controversial owner in baseball history. The book, written by longtime Daily […]
THE Review: “Gil Hodges”
I have written previously about how Gil Hodges has been an idol of mine since I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn. So imagine how excited I was when a new biography of Hodges was published in August. I would say “Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of […]
THE Review: “Forever Blue”
I just finished reading Michael D’Antonio’s love letter to Walter O’Malley called “Forever Blue.” He all but nominates O’Malley for sainthood while claiming that the former Dodgers owner really, really wanted to keep the team in Brooklyn but he was thwarted at every step by the evil Robert Moses, who was the true villain in […]
THE Review: “The Baseball Talmud”
Jews have a certain obsession with finding out if other people are Jewish. I once read a good explanation as to why this is so: unlike other minority groups (like blacks or Asians, for example), you can’t tell if someone is Jewish just by looking at them. Hence asking the question: I wonder if he […]
THE Review: “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend”
Willie Mays is a towering figure in baseball — arguably the best player ever. Yet up until recently there was no definitive biography of the man, in part because the very private Mays would never cooperate on one. But now there is James Hirsch’s “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.” Hirsch was able to convince […]
THE Review: “Bottom of the Ninth”
I just read a book with the unfortunately long title of “Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself” by Michael Shaprio that is a must-read for Mets fans. While the book does not talk about the team hardly at all, it does tell the story […]
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