A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone (Hardcover)

by Roger Angell (Author) "The shortstop, Orlando Cabrera, up at bat for the third time, swings and lifts a little foul fly off to the left of the infield..." (more)
Key Phrases: pitching hand, disabled list, New York, Kansas City, World Series (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
For the four decades he's been writing about baseball for The New Yorker, Roger Angell has led all shortlists of the game's most astute and elegant chroniclers. With A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone, he attempts, with thrilling command, something he's never tried before--devoting a whole volume to one player by spending an entire season at his heels. In pitcher David Cone, a cerebral student of his game and articulate practitioner of his craft, Angell finds a subject as perfect as the perfecto Cone hurled against the Expos on Yogi Berra Day at Yankee Stadium in 1999. Better still, he finds in Cone a partner unwilling to shrink beneath the hot light of what would prove to be an agonizing and introspective year.

One of the game's premier pitchers, Cone came unglued in 2000; his 4-14 season was a disaster. The "wizardly old master" Angell had intended to extol was suddenly "Merlin falling headlong down the palace stairs." There's gold to be spun from that, though, and Angell, the essayist as deft alchemist, spins away. The more Cone struggles--the more he battles age, doubt, injury, and the various curves baseball fate can throw--to regain what he's lost, the more valiant he seems. It gives A Pitcher's Story its depth, its heart, its spirit, and its honor. If Angell entered into the project with the intention of getting a grip on the delicacies of pitching, he does, but he comes away with so much more. Like good battery mates, Cone and Angell work with, and off of, each other. Together, they evoke a canny portrait of a career at the crossroads, and a meditation on the powers of an elite athlete's pride. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly
This is not the book that master baseball chronicler Angell set out to write, the author acknowledges midway through what is essentially a biography of the well-traveled Cone. Angell had planned an "inside look at a wizardly old master at his late last best," but instead found a "Merlin falling headlong down the palace stairs." Neither Cone nor Angell could have foreseen that after the Yankee pitcher gave Angell full access to him during the 2000 baseball season, Cone would have the worst year of his career, finishing with a 4-14 won-lost record. Although Angell's focal point is Cone's last year with the Yankees, he covers all of Cone's life and career, tracking his baseball journey from his days as a star athlete in Kansas City to his stops with the Mets, Blue Jays, Royals and Yankees. Cone had success with each team he played for, including being one of the core players and unofficial team spokesman for the 1996-2000 Yankees with whom Cone won four World Series. Angell (The Summer Game) not only details Cone's highs and lows on and off the playing field, but does a superb job in recording Cone's anxieties and frustrations as the two men move through the disappointing 2000 season. The combination of Angell's love and knowledge of baseball and his truly fascinating subjects makes for another win in Angell's long list of hits about the American pastime. (On-sale: May 2)Forecast: Given the Yankees' recent dominance, this book will attract a lot of fans despite Cone's disappointing last season and his off-seasonn move to the Red Sox. In addition to radio spots in New York and a TV satellite tour to 25 other markets, fans of America's team of the century will call this book a keeper, not only because of Cone but also because of Angell's deservedly high reputation as a sportswriter.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books (May 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446527688
• ISBN-13: 978-0446527682
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #565,674 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Angellic game descriptions, July 11, 2001

By	Jason A. Miller (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brought back memories about a great pitcher, June 19, 2003

By	Joe Sherry (Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If life gives you lemons....., July 30, 2002

By	olav grotenhuis (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

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.