Still Pitching: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Michael Steinberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

Still Pitching is a coming-of-age story about growing up in New York in the 1950s. It details how a passion for baseball—a passion fueled by New York’s “golden age of baseball,” during which one of New York’s three baseball teams made it to the World Series for ten consecutive years—transformed the author from an introverted outsider into a popular high school pitcher. Readers will cringe at schoolyard slights, root for Mike to figure things out, rejoice in his triumphs, and above all, remember how confusing and exciting life is on the route to adulthood.
     Baseball makes everything possible. Steinberg’s love of the game fuels his first success as a writer and then teaches him about discipline, persistence, and hard work. As if by accident, Steinberg learns exactly the skills he needs to become a confident adult and subsequently learns to follow his passion to become a writer.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

A insightful and engaging memoir...a wrenching examination of what it meant to be an adolescent male in the 1950's. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 29, 2003

Almost heart breaking at times, a brave little book, one of the two or three best I've read this year. -- Blue Ridge Business Journal, November 3, 2003

This elegant little memoir presents a middle-aged man's recollections of his coming of age through baseball, friendship and conflict. -- Library Journal, September 2003

This is a stunning debut memoir...a virtuoso performance by a writer of the very first order. -- ForeWord Magazine, September 2003

From the Author

Still Pitching is not just a book about baseball, or being a die-hard Dodger fan, or even about growing up Jewish in New York in the 50’s. Those are the facts, of course. But the book is about yearning and striving. About wanting and not getting. Everything you want in life is a tradeoff and a struggle. In order for a goal to be meaningful, you have to earn it. It doesn’t matter if it’s making the high school baseball team or wanting to sing lead soprano at the Met.

Talent is important, of course. But it won’t get you anywhere without determination, preparation, and rigor. Still Pitching focuses not on defeats or heroic results, but on doing the hard work. That’s where the real achievement and satisfactions are.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press; 1ST edition (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870136976
• ISBN-13: 978-0870136979
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,667,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memoir of a Teen-- Making the Dream Come True, January 14, 2004

By 

Trisha (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Pitching: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Just because the title refers to baseball doesn't mean this book is strictly for baseball fans. Anyone who delves into this sincere memoir of high school days filled with dreams, ambitions, and the opposite sex will recall their own bittersweet recollections. For most of us, high school was like being exposed and trying like hell to cover our insecurities, and fein the confidence that 'everyone' else seemed to have. Truth is, we were all in the same situation, just different levels of adolescence. This book will take the reader back to days of classes, competition, the cliques, the teachers, and delight at the author's belief in himself.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Still Pitching" is a perfect game, December 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Still Pitching: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Michael Steinberg's "Still Pitching" is a terrific book, filled with the excitement, energy and determination of youth. He skillfully re-creates the quality of adolescent life in the 1950s and 60s. There are so many memorable scenes and moments captured in these pages, but I would like to point out for special emphasis his remembrances of the last game played at Ebbets Field,and the subsequent demolition of the field, both scenes rendered with such tender and heart-breaking precision we feel we are right there beside the author witnessing the events. Another striking moment occurs when he discovers a photo, taken by his girlfriend, of himself taped to his locker. For the first time in his life he sees himself as he's always wanted to be seen, handsome, confident and desirable. It is a transformative moment in his emotional development. Perhaps the most striking element of the book is that the author's determination to succeed--at baseball, at life--actually enables him to achieve the success he was in search of. This book is not only for those who love baseball and 50s nostalgia, but for anyone who has struggled to realize the dreams of youth.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Simply a Story About a Game, November 19, 2003

By 

Paul Graham (Canton, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Pitching: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Michael Steinberg's, Still Pitching, is set in New York in the 1950s, against the backdrop of Ebbets Field, home to yet another team of loveable losers, the Brooklyn Dodgers. The boy we meet in Still Pitching is sensitive, thoughtful, and inward, someone for whom baseball quickly becomes synonymous with longing. His entire body and mind yearn to play and understand the sport. For the boy in Steinberg's memoir, the accouterments of the game -the rules, the statistics, and, finally, the delicate science of pitching-offer order and meaning in a time made trying by the indifference and distance of his parents, institutionalized anti-Semitism, and an oft-thwarted desire to be admired by his peers. And this is the triumph at the heart of Still Pitching: that Steinberg gives us not simply a story about a game, but a young man's life with a moving emotional honesty and clarity reminiscent of the works of Tobias Wolff and Frank Conroy.

While it would not be fair to say that the art of pitching is the young Steinberg's salvation, his love of baseball leads to other gifts, as it fuels his development as a writer. Like so many boys-present company included-for all his desire, Steinberg would never toe a major league pitching mound, but his prose, like the games he pitched in his youth, is characterized by the same finesse, precision, and gentle pacing.