Rating: 
Summary: Recollections of Painful Appearances
Review: Review Summary: This book will be a five-star effort for young David Cone fans, adding to their knowledge of this great pitcher. For those who know little about pitchers and how their careers develop, this will be a four-star book. For those who have followed Mr. Cone's career for many years, this book will be a disappointment. By focusing much of the attention on Mr. Cone's worst season, you get too much of the physical and emotional pain involved towards the end of a big-league pitching career and too little on the better parts of his career. Review: Mr. Angell is one of the best baseball writers, and he took on a new format with this book. "Cone has agreed . . . to let me hang around with him during the coming season . . . ." This was the 2000 season with the New York Yankees. During that year when he was 37, Mr. Cone experienced injuries, pain, and painful emotions. His won-loss record was 4-14 and you don't want to know his e.r.a. In fact, the strength of this book is that it explains about the pain that pitchers endure very well. There's "good" pain which is from sore muscles and "bad" pain which comes from sore joints. " . . . [G]ood old 'normal soreness' on the day after you pitched felt as if you'd been punched hard in the arm about fifty times." In fact, major league pitchers "take pride in their mental toughness." One of Mr. Cone's role models was Orel Hershiser's remarkable performance in the 1988 World Series for the Dodgers. One of the challenges of such extreme pain is that you can have a serious medical problem and not realize it. In Mr. Cone's case, he had a life-threatening aneurism that was creating blood clots, but was hard to diagnose. Fortunately, the aneurism finally was and he lived to tell the story. "Dr. Hershon saved my life." You will learn a lot about Mr. Cone's character. After his perfect game in 1984, he spent over $200,000 to buy Swiss Ebel wathces for teammates, coaches, family friends and advisers. "I just got lucky and wanted to remember some of the people who'd helped." Unlike a lot of big leaguers who complain about their parents, Mr. Cone is respectful about his father. "He wasn't proving anything through me." Although the book focuses on the 2000 season, you also get standard biographical information about growing up. You may learn more about Mr. Cone's youth in Kansas City than you wanted to know . . . unless you are a youth player now. The discussions about the relationships between pitchers and catchers were interesting. That would make a great book! There is a short discussion of pitching mechanics. Mr. Cone credits his style of staying on the rubber longer than other pitchers as contributing to his success. Coaches were always trying to get him to stop doing that. More information on this point would have been helpful. After you finish enjoying the well-written prose and new facts about Mr. Cone and pitching that you learn from this book, I suggest you think about what your attitude should be towards pain. When should it remind you to seek help? When should you use it to steel your resolve? When should you ignore it? What other obstacles should you be focusing on overcoming . . . and under what circumstances? Look and move beyond surmountable obstacles to live your dreams! Focus on your optimism and hopes!!
Rating:
Summary: A Journey with Mr.Cone
Review: Roger Angell takes you through the troublesome and nail-biting career to the ordinary every day life of the renowned pitcher, David Cone. From his first participation in a major league uniform with the New York Mets, to many thriving seasons with the Yankees and Red Sox, and from the time that David's arm felt like a stable rocket launcher, to the end of his career when he prospered by throwing mostly split-fingers and curveballs instead of a blazing fastball. A Pitchers Story not only makes the reader envision a life as an imfamous pro-baseball player, but also learns from the way to handle themselves under extraordinary pressure. This book is also similar to a pitching lesson in itself, as grips of seams and the twists of wrists are manifested by the masterful Cone. I am sure that this story has made hundreds of people realize how hard-working and dedicated a person must be in order to maintain a respectable and successful career in the big-leagues, as Cone consistently did throughout his almost two-decade career. This book is certainly better than the average biography, and I would recommend it to any lovers of "America's Past Time."
Rating: 
Summary: better than most baseball books
Review: This is a very good book but it ends up just a notch below Angell's other baseball books. I think the reason is that this book is essentially a biography and, thus, it gives the author a more limited scope. If your wish is to read a biography of David Cone, you could not pick a better author to do the job. If you want to enjoy the writing of Roger Angell, you may, at times, feel like David Cone gets in the way.
What an interesting turn of events; a world class baseball essayist picks an all-star caliber NY Yankee pitcher to follow through a season. They both agreed that this would turn into a book after the season. The problem is that this turns out to be the worst season of Cone's career. Lesser participants would have probably dropped the idea in mid-season. However, this book turns out to be more than the recap of a swan song. Angell gives us the beginning and the middle of Cone's career to go along with the end. We see the highlights and not just the low lights. David Cone makes for an interesting subject but the reader often enjoys the sidebar stories more than the Cone stories. The beauty of Angell's writing is how he takes us on journeys through Baseball and the reader is able to see through the author's panoramic view. We may start with the Red Sox and end up with the Padres. In this book we keep coming back to the ups and downs of David Cone. There are times we would have preferred to linger at other places and with other personalities that Angell introduced us to. Still there is plenty here to keep the reader's interest. One last comment is on the publisher which is Warner Books. I am confused how it came to be that a lesser publisher would handle this project. The book may be well-written but it is of poor quality. My hardbound copy may not withstand another reading as it is already showing signs of coming apart. I recommend getting the paperback version (assuming there is one). I suspect the paperback will last longer than the cloth-bound edition.
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