No comments about Mickey Mantle: The American Dream Comes to Life.

4 comments about I Love This Game!: My Life and Baseball.

1. KIRBY PUCKETT WAS AND STILL IS ONE OF THE BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS EVER (AND MAYBE ONE OF THE BEST AUTHORS). THIS PARTICULAR BOOK WAS A DISPLAY OF PURE ABILITY, BOTH ON THE FIELD AND IN THIS BOOK. I WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ANYBODY,ANY AGE,EVEN IF THEY DON'T ENJOY BASEBALL.HE TALKS ABOUT NEARLY WORKING AT FORD MOTOR COMPANY THE REST OF HIS LIFE AND HIS INCREDIBLE JOURNEY INTO THE BIG LEAGUE. THIS BOOK SHOULD BE PLACED IN THE LITERATURE HALL OF FAME. BUY THIS BOOK IMMEDIATLEY.



2. this was a great book i would recomened it to any on



3. I Love This Game Kirby Pucket

   Kirby Pucket's hard work and persistence has allowed him to be a superstar in major league baseball. Kirby Pucket started playing baseball as a little boy in Chicago. There he played third base, not outfield. In Chicago he played in his neighborhood. His family didn't have much money so he would just throw and catch a ball against his apartment building as much as possible. But when there were enough kids to play a game he would play against them. Sometimes he played with his older brothers and their friends. He held his own playing with them. Kirby soon became good enough to play varsity baseball at his local school. After that, he went through a long and hard trip to the majors. This trip included practices on hot summer days and having to settle for sports facilities that didn't even have bathrooms! It was along that route that he met people that impacted his career a great deal. Among those people there was Kent Hrbek and Bob Symonds, the man that taught him all of the fundamentals of the game. It was people like them that made his career interesting and exciting. Overall, I think that this book was interesting and it is something that a person with a dream can relate to. The book was writen well and that made it easy to read.




4. This book details the life of Kirby Puckett straight from the man himself.If your a twins fan i reccomend it to you. We Miss you Puck

1 comments about Jackie Robinson.

1. This is a good book for kids (i.e. 3rd graders with good reading skills, up to 6-7 grades). My 9-year-old boy loved it, he couldn't put it down. We are white and it really helped him understand and empathize with what segregated America was like, and what a young black man had to go through to break baseball's "Color barrier". Great book for elementary school research papers. At 230 pages it's a substantial (not a quick) read, but the type is large and he motored right through it. It really kept his interest---he was very absorbed!

No comments about Rafael Palmeiro : At Home with the Baltimore Orioles.

No comments about Native Sons: Philadelphia Baseball Players Who Made the Major Leagues.

No comments about National League West (Behind the Plate).

No comments about All My Octobers: My Memories of Twelve World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball.

No comments about Batboys and the World of Baseball (Studies in Popular Culture).

5 comments about Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman.

1. This insightful, well-written book is a must-read for the sports fan interested in a personal, inside view of the multi-faceted personality of the immensely talented Barry Bonds.
   
   Bonds has provided few people with the access and insight he provided Steve Travers, the author. History will prove it to be the definitive work on one of baseball's greatest players.
   
   Frank McCormack



2. I have lived overseas for many years but was an avid Giants fan in the 60's & 70's. Steven Travers' book on Barry Bonds was a welcome gift. I had read various news articles about the "controversial" Bonds and feel that Travers' book puts things right. I especially enjoyed the insights into the life styles of high powered sports figures. The build-up to Bonds' record setting home run season was handled in an excellent manner. This book is a great read for any baseball fan.



3. With the multitude of books written regarding the sport of baseball, Steven Travers writes with a unique insight into not only the sport, but the day to day lives of Bonds and his peers. As a former professional baseball player, Travers touches on the subject matter with a unique insight and perspective. Additionally, Travers attended and graduated from USC during the time Bonds played at Arizona State (Pac-10). As such, Travers is not only a writer, but a fan. Travers not only documents Bond's achievement of becoming baseball's all-time single season homerun champion, but he touches on Bond's trials and tribulations with his peers and the media. Ultimately, the reader soon realizes that Travers was able to do what many has tried and failed at; that is, he was able to garner the respect and support of Bonds in the ability to tell his amazing story to the whole world. As a former Pac-10 pitcher at USC who battled Bonds on many occasions, I found Traver's insight very refreshing and commendable. I found the book a very easy read that kept me entertained throughout.
   '



4. I am one of the few Barry Bonds fans around, so when I decided to find a book on him, I was disappointed to find that there were surprisingly few. Noticing that "Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman" was purported to be in-depth, not just another glossy biography and had good reviews on Amazon.com, I decided to make the purchase. Now, after reading it and piecing a few things together, I must say that I am thoroughly let-down. A few observations:
   
   1) The cover and title are cheesy. I know that the book's author may not have had any say in this, but using "Baseball's Superman" as a title makes it sound like a cover story for Sports Illustrated for Kids.
   
   2) The book is not written well. It is very choppy and author Steven Travers has a tendency to ramble off-topic for pages on end.
   
   3) Not that I'm some avatar of morality, but what's the deal with all the sexual references? [...]
   
   4) There are contradictions sprinkled throughout the book. For instance, on page 36, Travers quotes Bonds as saying: "My father and I were never really close when I was growing up." Then, just five pages later, he quotes Bonds as saying: "My father and I have always been very close." Sure, Bonds is the one contradicting himself, but Travers never points this out, just one example of the multiple occasions where I almost laughed out loud at the book's inconsistencies.
   
   5) How many times are we to hear that Travers played pro ball? Big deal, you struck out 15 guys in a minor league game. There are minor-leaguers who have hit 60 homers, thrown perfect games, etc. and they are nobodies. I do not mean this as a slight, just a point that we do not need to hear incessantly about things such as "Stan Javier played with me" or how you sat in Randy Johnson's recliner, or how an interview subject calls you "Trav." The book is about Barry Bonds, not Steven Travers.
   
   [...]
   
   The bottom line is that Travers squandered a golden opportunity. Rolling the dice early in 2001 that Bonds would break the home run record, getting permission to do a book, and then seeing him acutally do it is akin to hitting the lottery for a sports journalist. Unfortunately, the finished product seems hastily thrown together, poorly edited, and foolishly out-of-bounds in many areas. Too often we hear about sexual hijinks that have nothing to do with Bonds, and we also get Travers's opinions on a multitude of subjects that I don't care to know his thoughts on. The fact that I'd never even heard of this book should have been enough of a red flag, but it wasn't, and therefore I got what I deserved. This book isn't terrible, but it also is not good, and therefore I would not recommend it. Fans of Barry Bonds should just wait until a comprehensive biography comes out on him when his playing days are over.



5. This one is interesting to read now that we know more about Bonds. It holds up well and is very well written. I loved it!

2 comments about Hideki Matsui: Sportsmanship, Modesty, and the Art of the Home Run.

1. This book wasn't very informative. While I did learn some stuff about Matsui, most of it I already knew. I thought it was going to go into detail about his childhood, playing with the Giants, and coming to the Yankees. It sort of glossed over all of those, not really exploring any one thing in depth.
   
   The author knows Hideki personally, and therefore spends a lot of time talking about himself. While some of these stories are interesting, most are not. Ijuin's narcissism gets old after a while. If you've been waiting for a good Matsui biography to come out, keep waiting.



2. The term "hagiography" was coined for this book. It was absolutely glowing about Matsui in a fawning and sort of obsessive way. I don't know if it's due to cultural differences or what, but this reads like a Junior High School girl's diary entries, without the "LOLs." One of the author's quotes sums up this biography's tone: "For Hiroko [the author's wife] and me, middle-aged and childless, the appearance of Matsui in our lives was magical. It was as though a sprite had breathed a kind of radiance into us." Come on, get a grip, Shizuka.
   
   Not to mention, the book's title should have been "My Life as an Obsessive Matsui Fan." This was more of an autobiography of author Shizuka Ijuin than a biography of the Japanese Yankees slugger. I will never regain the time I lost learning about Ijuin's wife, dogs, frustrated baseball ambitions, and literary accolades. Matsui is mostly mentioned as the guy at the other end of the dinner table from Ijuin.
   
   All accounts I've read of Matsui portray him as a decent and charitable human being, which is why I risked my hide reading about a Yankee from Red Sox country: he is a philanthropist without ulterior motives, donating mostly anonymously (until later discovered); he has a tireless work ethic; he respects both his native Japan and the United States, visiting Ground Zero in a snowstorm his first day in New York; and he in general embodies the modesty that Japanese are traditionally known for. However, this stuff was touched upon so briefly and shallowly in this book. Did you know that Matsui earned a first-degree black belt in judo and won a citywide sumo tournament as a youngster? Or that he credits his tremendous professional restraint to a severe public slapping he received from his junior high school coach for throwing a bat in anger at an opposing pitcher who intentionally walked him? No? Well, you wouldn't have learned it from reading this book, either. It omitted these and other stories from the biography while describing the temperaments of the author's wife and dogs.