Customer Reviews

A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's hard to classify "A Pitcher's Story" either as a straight sports autobiography/hagiography, or as a classic Roger Angell essay collection. This, the David Cone story, is Angell's first baseball "bio", so to speak, and it helps to have a strong working knowledge of David Cone's career before you begin. And yet if you go in expecting 300 pages of nothing but Cone, you may have trouble navigating Angell's short trips and side steps around the game he loves so much.

Angell's biggest strength, at least as I've always read him, lies in his descriptions of games and players. David Cone started some of the more memorable ballgames of the past decade, and Angell's game summaries are magnetic. I like the poetic way in which he visualizes players. Even the cameo by former Cone teammate Terry Leach becomes grand opera in the Angell tradition ("[he] made right-handed batters bend and weave like matadors.").

Equally fascinating are Angell's musings on the Yankees' frustrating 2000 season, and his attempts to solve a knotty baseball trivia question involving certain members of the 400 homer club (key hint: Cone is not a member).

Angell also loves technical descriptions, of the way pitches break and of the way Cone's right arm functions (or malfunctions). These are the paragraphs that held less of my interest -- but that's Angell's key asset. He looks at baseball from every angle, and writes something for everyone. You may even find yourself, like Angell, reaching for a baseball to see if you, too, can throw the Laredo.

David Cone is lucky to have found such a biographer as this. His career and his mentality deserve more than the standard cut-and-paste job, and this is a book to be proud of. Best, it's a loving book about the 2000 Yankees, as written by a Mets fan. One feels Angell's turmoil as Piazza pops up to second base to end the fifth inning of Game 4 (Cone fans know of what I speak), and yet this out is the book's climax, a moment of quiet triumph.

I wish "A Pitcher's Story" had received better ratings. It's as absorbing a baseball book as has been written this year, and instilled in me a craving to rush back to my long-untouched tapes of the 1996 World Series, when Coney was king. It's a book best read out loud, perhaps with the radio on and tuned in to a Boston Red Sox game this season. Cone fans wil know of what I speak.

I loved this book. If you are familiar with Roger Angell's baseball essays that appear regularly in the New Yorker, you know his love of the game and the people who play it. This book traces the year of David Cone, a very good pitcher, who just happens to have probably the worst year of his career. To the author and subjects credit, they go on with the project anyway, and it makes for a much different book than the author was planning on. You must pay attention while reading, because the author is often going back to the past of David Cone, shedding light on how he became a successful pitcher, and the ups and downs of his career, and in his life. It is a must read for anyone who enjoys great writing and loves baseball. I personally would love to see an update on what happened to David after he joined the Red Sox, and what he's doing now that he's no longer in baseball. Thanks, Roger!

THIS STORY OF DAVID CONE IS A DECENT READ. I FOUND MYSELF DAY DREAMING DURING SOME OF THIS BOOK FOR IT DIDN'T HOLD MY INTEREST ALL THAT MUCH. MR. CONE HAS OVERCOME A VERY SERIOUS BLOOD CLOT AND A VERY EMBARASSING LAST SEASON WITH THE YANKEES. (ALTHOUGHT HE PITCHED SOLIDLY FOR THE RED SOX LAST YEAR. HE HAS HAD SOME GREAT SEASONS AND IS ONE OF THE BETTER PITCHERS IN THE 80'S AND 90'S. BUT THIS COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MUCH BETTER. TOO MUCH TIME WASTED ABOUT HIS LAST SEASON. TOO BAD MR. ANGELL DIDN'T SPEND MORE TIME RELIVING HIS DAYS WITH THE METS AND MORE OF HIS GOOD YEARS WITH THE YANKEES. CONE DESERVES BETTER THAN THIS SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE BOOK.

I've been a fan of David Cone since I was a little kid growing up in New York as a Met's fan. Even as my team started to unravel after 1986 and 1988, Cone was stellar, leading the league in strikeouts and being the one constant quality player that the team had. When he was traded out of New York I still tried to follow his career and was happy when he returned to New York, even as a Yankee. It was with great disappointment that I read about his last season where he just fell apart and ended with a 4-14 record. It was a sad ending to a great pitcher.

I wanted to read this book about David Cone. The book was originally supposed to be about the craft of pitching, how a top level pitcher prepares and the mechanics of pitching. That is the book that Roger Angell intended to write. However, when Cone's mechanics broke down and his season fell apart, Angell stayed with him and realized that he had a completely different story. This is the story of David Cone's last season with the Yankees and the collapse of a talented ballplayer.

Baseball is a game of digression. Since the only action in the game takes place during frenzied bursts of motion between long periods of waiting, this gives the sportswriters and broadcasters time to talk about the game at hand as well as games and moments from years past. This is a good thing to think about as you begin to read the book. Roger Angell takes us through the 2000 season of David Cone. He also provides a biography of Cone as well as moments from different parts of his pitching career. This is just like a baseball game where everything is connected to history. What is happening in May might recall David's rookie year, or his high school days. This is how the book goes, from the 2000 season when Angell is spending time with Cone right to David's childhood and back again. It may feel at times that there is very little organization, but I felt that it had part of the natural flow of watching (or listening to) a baseball game.

Some readers might be put off by the lack of chronology to the book and that it jumps around quite a bit. It is a little distracting, but it wasn't bad at all in my mind. It just felt like this is the way you tell the baseball story. I was completely enthralled by this book and I'm glad that I got the chance to read about one of my favorite pitchers from my childhood.

This is a very good book but it ends up just a notch below Angell's other baseball books. I think the reason is that this book is essentially a biography and, thus, it gives the author a more limited scope. If your wish is to read a biography of David Cone, you could not pick a better author to do the job. If you want to enjoy the writing of Roger Angell, you may, at times, feel like David Cone gets in the way.

What an interesting turn of events; a world class baseball essayist picks an all-star caliber NY Yankee pitcher to follow through a season. They both agreed that this would turn into a book after the season. The problem is that this turns out to be the worst season of Cone's career. Lesser participants would have probably dropped the idea in mid-season. However, this book turns out to be more than the recap of a swan song. Angell gives us the beginning and the middle of Cone's career to go along with the end. We see the highlights and not just the low lights. David Cone makes for an interesting subject but the reader often enjoys the sidebar stories more than the Cone stories. The beauty of Angell's writing is how he takes us on journeys through Baseball and the reader is able to see through the author's panoramic view. We may start with the Red Sox and end up with the Padres. In this book we keep coming back to the ups and downs of David Cone. There are times we would have preferred to linger at other places and with other personalities that Angell introduced us to. Still there is plenty here to keep the reader's interest.

One last comment is on the publisher which is Warner Books. I am confused how it came to be that a lesser publisher would handle this project. The book may be well-written but it is of poor quality. My hardbound copy may not withstand another reading as it is already showing signs of coming apart. I recommend getting the paperback version (assuming there is one). I suspect the paperback will last longer than the cloth-bound edition.

The original premise of the book, in which the first few chapters dealt with the emotional chess game between pitcher and batter, and who better than from an emotional pitcher out of New York. But once Angell, got away from this, and wanted to write about the twilight years of a great clutch pitcher, he ended up with just another jock bio. But I must admit I did walk away from the book with more repect for Cone, and I really have no affiliation with the New York Teams.

I bought the Pitchers story at half price books for around $5.50, after scanning it I thought it might make a good read. The reality was that at times I had to labor to get through to the end of the book, sort of what David Cone's last year as a Yankee was. The book had some good moments but Angell who wanted to write about Cone's craft as a pitcher ended up instead being a recount of his last season with the Yankees and a reflection of his childhood and baseball life up to that point. Angell like Cone did the best he could and struggled to the end.

When I returned the book to half price books they gave me a dollar back. So I guess you can say it was not a complete lost.

Great authour, great pitcher, poor book.

I am a great ball fan and a regular at the Blue Jays games - especially when the Yankees or the A's or Seattle come to town. Cone was here when we (my team the Jays - I do not own the Jays, everyone here calls them his team) won the world series in 92 and we all loved him.

I was excited when the book arrived from Amazon.com, but very disappointed when I actually read the book. I never finished it. I thought it was slow and a bit light. The author cannot keep your attention and the book wanders. Waste of money only two or three stars. Sorry but that is my humble opinion. Read DiMaggios's book "The Hero's Life" for a good biography about life on and off the field.

David Cone once said he's a person who things happen to in life. You have to agree with him after reading about his life and career in "A Pitcher's Story."

Roger Angell is one of the more literary sports writers, and although he has chosen a friend as the subject of his latest work, he is honest and unprejudiced throughout the book.

As a lifelong Yankee fan I first became intrigued with Coney when he pitched for the Mets. It was exciting to have him with my beloved Yankees, and what a contribution he made during the years he was here - a no-hitter after coming back from his surgery for an aneurysm, his post-season gems, his perfect game.

His clubhouse role couldn't be matched. He was a stand-up team leader who could always be relied on for an honest assessment of situations on and off the field.

If you've followed David's career, or are just a casual baseball fan, you'll find yourself rooting for his success throughout the account of his hellacious last season with the Yanks. His last appearance in the World Series against his former team, the Mets, was a fittingly dramatic ending to his years in New York.

This book is a wonderful tribute to one of the most interesting boys of summer.

and your name is Roger Angell you turn them in the best lemonade you can make. Mr Angell's books are the heart and soul of my small baseball books collection and I need only take one of them on a trip away from the ballpark, to be sure that whatever happens the sounds, smell and feeling of the game are close at hand.
Reading this book, knowing already that the task at hand was not what either Cone or Angell had bargained for, I was at first not overly impressed with the story. It went several directions at once and with all due respect felt like the book by an older writer who was too respectfull of his subject. But I take it all back after having finished the book. How many writers would have written this book in the first place? And of those how many would have been able to write a book that shows an athlete, flaws and quirks and all, yet always painting the true picture of the man. The bad year Cone has had makes for a somber tone in this book and maybe that fits with the time we live in. I think you cannot help but admire Cone and his frankness in his talks with Angell. And we cannot thank Mr Angell enough for having the courage and craftsmanship to turn this story into a beautiful novel.