Customer Reviews

Wrecking Crew: The Really Bad News Griffith Park Pirates

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've never done hard jail time, and I've also never slept with a stripper, but this book opened a window into a life many of us have chosen to either forget or never look through. It really forces one to think about the realization of dreams and ambitions in ones life versus the things that we do to get there and the lessons we are willing to forget in order to keep those dying dreams alive... there are simple joys in life, like baseball, good sex, and good friends, this book shows that despite our failures as human beings, we are still capable of redemption to some degree and some realization of happiness.

This book was totally cool. Baseball, sex, drugs and punk rock. Finally a book about what makes American great! This is a book about me and MY friends. Old punks, bad tattoos, weak livers, the usual.

This book really does have it all. John Albert invites you into a world filled with drugs, sex, personal demons, and what we all want in our lives, some sort of purpose. This is Less Than Zero with a conscience.

I'm not a big sports fan, in fact I can't stand most of it. That said, this is one of the coolest and most hilarious books I have read in a while. A friend gave me an advanced copy saying she thought I would like it because I love writers like Charles Bukowski, Jerry Stahl and Bret Easton Ellis. I totally loved it.

I won't say this is what major league baseball would look like without steroids, but it is what baseball looks like to everyone who plays for the love of the sport rather than the money. If your friends are transvestites, dope fiends and a group of misguided ex-everythings hitting 40 and wondering what life is really about for the first time. This is LA at it's finest, writing at it's finest, and baseball as it should be.... Real, Hard and full of passion.

I started to write triple but come on, hey, that's the toughest hit in baseball. This was a a screaming line off the wall in the gap that rolled back to the infield while the lumbering, nearly washed up DH chugged in without a slide.
Don't ask me where that came from.
This is a great read for anyone who has:
A. lived in the margins around Hollywood (both the neighborhood and the business)
B. Been or known a 70's-80's SoCal "Suburbia" type punk
C. Once been a part of that peculiar phenomenon known as the "Team"
D. Gotten a semi while fantasizing about swiping second base
Kudos to an excellent debut from John Albert.

loved this book! i'm not a reader and this book was such an easy read.

Great book - read this book. Funny stories about junkies and a few bits about playing baseball as well.

I'm a picky reader and I normally don't dish out five stars for delightment. Well, here's my two cents:

I never liked baseball that much. Now a book about baseball would frighten me away. I've never been interested in reading about people involved with drugs, cross-dressers, call-girl romances, alcoholics, and even crazy sexual exploits.

I learned about the book through a friend and thought to myself, "oh what the heck. If I hate it after the first three chapters, I'll sell the book."

I read the first page, then the second and for some reason, I found myself on the fourth chapter. After that, I couldn't put the book down. It has practically everything that I mentioned above (drugs, sex, cross-dressing etc) and with a dollop of baseball. Perhaps the fact that it is a memoir that makes it all the more of a page-turner. I kept thinking to myself, "wow, this is an entirely other world with people trying to survive Hollywood." And throughout the book, I sympathize for all the characters (well, they're real-life people). Also, Mr. Albert gives the truth about "Hollywood's Wasteland": people who dream of making it big but fall short. Baseball becomes their road to recovery.

Because Mr. Albert was able to hold my attention for all those pages, I must give him five stars. (btw, I'm keeping the book!)

I read this book a few weeks ago and have been pondering how to phrase my review ever since. At first, I wanted to say simply that I couldn't put the book down. I read it in a 24-hour period, losing sleep in order to get to the end. How often has that happened in my life? First time was with Witch of Blackbird Pond when I was 10. Then Outsiders at 12. And Exorcist at 14. But as an adult? I think the last time was Ironweed.

The writing is that good. The story that engrossing.

But there's more to it. I've been a baseball fan forever. And one of my most memorable dates was in New York, watching the sun setting over the stadium, wrapped in a boyfriend's arms and sneaking sips of beer from his plastic cup. It was romance in motion, set at the ballgame.

This book is nothing like that.

Flash forward to same boyfriend in L.A. We'd both moved to Los Angeles within months of each other, and were inseparable. Until he took me to a Dodger game and explained that he still wanted to see me, but now that he was trying to be an actor, he wanted to be available to f*ck some starlets, too. Same game. Same man. Different coast. Different setting.

This book is much more like that.

I'm giving it to my friends this year on their birthdays. I'm reading it over again when the images start to fade. And I'm writing gushing fan letters to John Albert to tell him that he pulled me in from start to finish.