There are teachers with a rare ability to enter a child's mind; it's as if their ability to get there at all gives them the right to stay forever."
There was a turning point in Michael Lewis' life, in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."
The coach's message was not simply about winning but about self-respect, sacrifice, courage, and endurance. In some ways, and now 30 years later, Lewis still finds himself trying to measure up to what Coach Fitz expected of him.
The turning point in his life, author Michael Lewis says, came in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. With the game on the line, his coach, an irascible man along the lines of basketball coach Bob Knight (but without the swearing and bullying), gave the young pitcher the ball. Lewis wasn't able to thank him then but does it with this book decades later. He describes the coach's life, the apocryphal stories that grew up around him, and the change in the atmosphere of youth sports today. It is this last point that is the author's strongest. While coaches like Fitz remain as stern taskmasters, parents no longer tolerate criticism of their kids. The author is adequate as narrator. His diction is crisp, and his pacing is good. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
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