Havana Heat: Library Edition

Rating:
Summary: Havana Heat
Review: As with his first novel, "If I Never Get Back", Darryl Brock again takes us into baseball's historical past. This time it is back to 1911, where we meet deaf pitcher Luther 'Dummy' Taylor. Taylor was a real-life pitcher who played for John McGraw's Giants. The story introduces us to Taylor at age 36, having been forced to the bush leagues due to an arm injury. Claiming his arm now healed, he convinces McGraw to include him on a team headed down to Cuba to play local teams. Brock has done a fantastic job of researching major league baseball in the early 1900's. Fans of today who look back fondly at baseball's 'Golden Age' should read this book. They will find that todays players are surprisingly more loyal and stable characters compared to their counterparts of yesteryear. Brock also gives us a glimpse of what life for a deaf man was like in those days. Due to birth defects and prenatal illness, deaf people were much more common than they are today, and were treated better than we of today might think. We also get to see what life in Cuba was like. We find that governments and the political climates may have changed, but life for the people has stayed much as it was then. Those who read "If I Never Get Back" will also be pleased to know that a brief reference is made to two characters from that story. Overall, I found "Havana Heat" to be a thoughouly entertaining book. Fans of character study will enjoy it as much as history and baseball buffs.

Rating:
Summary: "Havana Heat" Shines
Review: Darryl Brock's "Havana Heat" is a fine novel about many things. On one level, it is a book about communication -- in this case communication between a deaf baseball player (the real-life Luther Taylor) and the world around him: his wife, the folks who live in his town, and his teammates on the New York Giants. The real Taylor was a superb, but now unknown, pitcher for those Giants, and Brock brings to life his career, his robust life, and his relationships to other players. However, the book is more than that as well. Brock's acute attention to detail gives us a sense of what baseball and baseball players were like in 1911. Those were the colorful Giants of Christy Mathewson and the pugnacious John McGraw -- each worthy of his own book. A third element of the book is the trip the Giants take to Havana for a series of exhibition games against the excellent Cuban ballplayers, players who love the game as much as Americans. Particularly vivid is Brock's depiction not only of those games, but also of life in Cuba -- all the more relevant with Cuba's role in today's news. Finally, one of the book's most elegant subplots shows us how Taylor takes under his wide wing a local boy, with a magnificent arm, but who is also deaf. Brock has brought to life both characters, stories, and history not well-known to most readers. You won't forget any of it. Very highly recommended not just to baseball readers, but to anyone who loves well-crafted, well-researched, and deeply satisfying fiction.

Rating:
Summary: "Havana Heat", a novel by Darryl Brock
Review: If you have warm feelings about early 20th century baseball, especially about John McGraw and the New York Giants, you will love this book. It tells of a Cuban exhibition tour the Giants make in 1911 after having just lost the world series to the Philadelphia A's. The narrator is a deaf-mute named "Dummy" Taylor, a former Giants pitcher who, at age 36, thinks he can make a comeback. McGraw, the Giants' manager, allows him to accompany the team to Havana. The adventures in this baseball crazy city are described with much realistic detail, including the doings of the great Christy Mathewson. I do not know how many of the players described in the book were real persons, but they ring true. The climax of the story is a game between the Giants and a team made of raw country teen-agers assembled and coached by Taylor, to allow McGraw to possibly sign some young rookies for the Giants. None of the events in the novel are unexpected, and I was not aware that the sign language could be used in as subtle a manner as the book suggests, but the baseball material sounds real and the unsophisticated descriptions atributed to Dummy Taylor are well done. It is an easy book to read and enjoy, even if some of the Cuban adventures incorporate today's political correctness.

Rating:
Summary: Darryl Brock needs to write more!
Review: My only complaint about Darryl Brock is that he doesn't write enough! What a great book! I loved If I Never Get Back and I loved Havana Heat. What a wonderful story about baseball, Cuba, and Luther Taylor. C