Still Pitching: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Better than average, but flawed.
Review: By Russell Burlingame

Sports memoirs often suffer because the sentimentality of jocks is simply too heavyhanded for the uninitiated, and "Still Pitching" by Michael Steinberg is no exception.
Steinberg, who spoke on campus on October 15, makes the book as much about baseball as about himself-it's full of childhood memories from Ebbets Field, the stadium famously abandoned by the Brooklyn Dodgers as they took to the west coast in 1957, and about the disappointment of going through your childhood supporting a baseball team that uproots itself and leaves you behind.
Steinberg makes baseball his God, talking about the sport in glowing terms usually reserved for when Greil Marcus talks about Bob Dylan or Bill O'Reilly recounts the Reagan years. Like these previous examples, it's an honest kind of admiration, though, and one that rings true.
"Still Pitching" is, in many ways, the prose equivalent of "Field of Dreams," a verbose, sentimental paean to America's Game with a soft spot for history and a refusal to be bogged down by the cynicism of the modern day Major League scene with its petty millionaires and senior-citizen-assaulting all-stars.
More than anything in recent memory, the book reads like Hornby's "Fever Pitch," a memoir told from the perspective of an Arsenal football fan. Like Hornby, Steinberg talks of an "active distaste" for the game of his destiny early in life. Unlike his British counterpart, Steinberg handles the book more as a memoir than as a sports book (in this context, a "sports book" is a book on sports, not a bookmaker specializing in sports).
The book begins with Steinberg as a small child, an outcast who stresses himself out so much about school that he makes himself physically sick and is removed for home-schooling in kindergarten, and then again in first grade. An avid reader and writer, he finds acceptance not with his peers, but with adults. His grandfather, who takes him to horse races as male bonding, puts him in position to accept his father's frequent invitations to come to see middle-aged men play softball on Sunday afternoon. Soon, Steinberg says he developed a fascination with baseball.
Steinberg, unlike Hornby in "Fever Pitch," stops short of calling his behavior obsessive-though he can recite obscure statistics and lords over his friends his attendance at a no-hitter once, this is a status symbol rather than the sign of insanity that Hornby treats it as. In this respect, the book reads more like Stephen Kings "On Writing" or Eric Alterman's "Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive," also both memoirs told from the perspective of a person deeply committed or connected to something that the book is, therefore, kind of off-handedly about.
Besides baseball, Steinberg's book is largely about the social "pecking order" of public schools. When analyzing the traditional social groups in high school, it's usually suitable to use John Hughes' classic film "The Breakfast Club" as a quick reference.
Steinberg starts out as Brian (Anthony Michael Hall's character), a bright, unathletic outcast who's afraid to socialize. Toward the middle of the book, though, he reminds the reader quite a bit of Claire (the character played by Molly Ringwald) or Andy (Emilio Estevez). For those readers who aren't jocks, or who remember being tormented in high school by varsity athletes who got away with murder, the book takes a turn for the worse in chapter ten, where Steinberg talks about "the biggest ego trip of all" when "everybody watched with envy whenever a varsity athlete left sixth period Math or Econ to go to a road game."
All in all, the book is great at capturing the feeling of an era; between 1947 and 1957, baseball was arguably one of the most important aspects of life in Postwar New York City, and Steinberg's place in the middle of it all makes for a compelling narrative. Still, the story is largely bogged down by personal details that make little difference to the reader. Steinberg's was a life worth living, but not necessarily worth telling everybody about.
The book reminds me a bit of Bruce Springsteen's song "Glory Days," where a guy who had been the superstar pitcher in high school tries to revisit past glory by recounting the stories to the rest of the drunks in a bar after an injury hampered any hopes he had at a pro career. It's touching, sad and interesting-but ultimately inconsequential.
If you're looking for a story about baseball, move along to David Wells' recent autobiography, written with considerably less talent and eloquence, but with a lot more attention dedicated to the sport and his experiences in it. If you're looking for a great book about growing up in the `40s as a Jewish kid in New York, move along to Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay," which not only fits that bill, but is the best book American book written in the last five years.
For a little of both, Steinberg is your man.

Rating:
Summary: Still Pitching
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. I barely put it down this weekend. It was kind of strange for me as I relived my own dark high school years. The way the book is written it felt like I had opened up a time capsule and was forced to look at everything in excruciating detail. It held my attention so I couldn't look away even when I wanted to. The things I wanted to forget like my own desire to be with the cool group and the humiliation that inevitably occured was expressed in a way I'd never read before. I remember walking down the hall when one of the most popular guys passed me with a friend and barked at me. Man, did I hate high school. I never looked back until reading this book - which is so honest. I was impressed that the author had the guts to say what many teenagers feel but would never say aloud. For me, it was less about baseball and more about how to survive high school if you're not "in" with the "in" group.

Rating:
Summary: Apples to Oranges
Review: I need to disagree with Mr. Burlingame's long-winded review of Steinberg's memoir: "Still Pitching." I just finished reading the book and have to agree with Phillip Lopate's calling it an "honest, affecting, and funny memoir about growing up." Burlingame, like anyone looking for a sports book, would indeed be disappointed: because Steinberg's is a book with so much more. It's a story about a place and time forever gone. With lyrical language and palatable description, Steinberg's vivid characters saunter through chapters and shout from the page. Burlingame criticizes the personal aspect of the book, not understanding that that's what lends it its depth, resonates on another level with the reader. Like all fine memoirists, Steinberg bares his soul, tells his story, in order to not only make sense of his own life but to spark us to take a look at our own. "Still Pitching" is a book with heart but without sentimentality - the kind of reminiscence that takes us into unknown neighborhoods, other eras, and returns us to our own with a clearer vision of both. Finally, hopefully, it bequeaths us a better understanding of and compassion for our own flawed selves, both growing up and grown.

Rating:
Summary: Memoir of a Teen-- Making the Dream Come True
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Memoir of a Teen-- Making the Dream Come True
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: "Still Pitching" is a perfect game
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not Simply a Story About a Game
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining, and occasionally inspiring recollection
Review: Still Pitching: A Memoir is the autobiography of Michael Steinberg, a successful writer who has had an especial love for the game of baseball ever since his high school years. From how the game transformed Michael from an introvert into a popular pitcher during his high school years, to how the game helped him grow into the confidence needed to pursue his writing career, Still Pitching is a positive, entertaining, and occasionally inspiring recollection guaranteed to resonate with fellow baseball fans.

Rating:
Summary: Strike Out
Review: This is a confusing book. It purports to be a coming-of-age literary memoir about a young man yearning to be a baseball player. However, it's confusing for the following reasons: the more psychological coming-of-age moments are cliched, superficial, and juvenile, offering nothing new, insightful, or fresh to this theme. In addition, it purports to be literary, which is misleading, because the writing is wooden and dull, in many places boring. Lastly, on some level (especially since the bookjacket cover shows the author in a baseball uniform in front of Ebbets Field), it's about being a baseball player--or wanting to be one. But mainly the author is a wannabe, and certainly never played for the Brooklyn Dodgers--so don't let the bookjacket fool you. But even so, I never connected with the author's striving to be a baseball player or a writer. The emotional content felt hollow. In short, this memoir isn't at all what it advertises. It's not worth the price of admission.