1 of 1 copy available
it’s as if their ability to get there at all gives them the right to stay forever.”
There was a turning point in Michael Lewis’s life, in a baseball game when he was fourteen years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis’ ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. “I didn’t have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do.”
The coach’s message was not simply about winning, but about self-respect, sacrifice, courage, and endurance. In some ways, and even now, thirty years later, Lewis still finds himself trying to measure up to what Coach Fitz expected of him.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
May 10, 2005 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780739346310
- File size: 27721 KB
- Duration: 00:57:45
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
The turning point in his life, author Michael Lewis says, came in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. With the game on the line, his coach, an irascible man along the lines of basketball coach Bob Knight (but without the swearing and bullying), gave the young pitcher the ball. Lewis wasn't able to thank him then but does it with this book decades later. He describes the coach's life, the apocryphal stories that grew up around him, and the change in the atmosphere of youth sports today. It is this last point that is the author's strongest. While coaches like Fitz remain as stern taskmasters, parents no longer tolerate criticism of their kids. The author is adequate as narrator. His diction is crisp, and his pacing is good. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine -
April 4, 2005
Lewis (Liar's Poker
; Moneyball
) remembers his high school baseball coach, Coach Fitz, a man so intense a room felt "more pressurized simply because he was in it." At the New Orleans private school Lewis attended in the late 1970s, Coach Fitz taught kids to fight "the natural instinct to run away from adversity" and to battle their way through all the easy excuses life offers for giving up. He was strict, but he made such an impression on his students that now, 25 years later, alumni want to name a new gym after him. But the parents of today's students aren't as wowed by Coach Fitz's tough love. They call the headmaster with complaints, saying Coach Fitz is too mean to their children and insisting on sitting on his shoulder as he attempts to coach. A desire to set these new parents straight may be the underlying reason for Lewis's slight book, though he'd probably rather have readers believe he's just written it as a paean to a man who taught him some important life lessons. The book's corny subtitle, lack of heft and hackneyed images of kites flying and fireworks exploding may turn off some readers, but those who persevere will come away with a reminder that fear and failure are the "two greatest enemies of a well lived life." Agent, Andrew Wylie.
-