Still Pitching: A Memoir | 
| Author: Michael Steinberg
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 909082
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 275
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0870136976
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.723043092
EAN: 9780870136979
ASIN: 0870136976
Publication Date: September 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page (not personalized). 1st ed/1st printing. Flawless, fully gift-quality condition. Not book club. DJ fine. No stamps/stickers/remainders/marks. Free delivery confirmation. International orders shipped via priority mail.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
Still Pitching is a coming-of age-memoir about growing up Jewish in New York in the 50's. It spans the years 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier to 1957, when the Dodgers and Giants left New York for California--thus marking not only the beginning of baseball expansion, but other significant chances in the larger culture. The narrator's personal story begins in the early 50's, toward the end of grade school, and continues through high school graduation. The heart of the story is the author's struggles with two baseball coaches, one of whom was an anti-Semite, and the other, a Jew who pushed his Jewish players harder because he thought they were too soft. A parallel motif is the narrator's identification with the hard luck Brooklyn Dodgers, the resilient underdogs of that era-- a team whom the author views as a kind of personification of his own struggles. The memoir focuses on those struggles--the narrator's yearnings to find a place to belong and something to excel at. That something was baseball. Still Pitching is set against the rich cultural and intellectual, backdrop of New York in the 50's--the advent of the Beats, the Greenwich Village jazz scene, and the beginnings of both rock and roll, and Off- Broadway avant garde theater. The drama also takes place during the period that most baseball writers called "the golden age" of New York baseball--when one or two of the three New York teams, the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants appeared in the World Series ten times. The memoir ends with the Brooklyn Dodger's only World Championship, after decades of failure--while at the same time as the narrator earns his own success as a high school relief pitcher. In the final scene, the author, by pure coincidence, is once more following his childhood team, the Dodgers. He's on a plane to Los Angeles, where he will attend college at UCLA.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Strike Out September 22, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
 Memoir of a Teen-- Making the Dream Come True January 14, 2004
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.
"Still Pitching" is a perfect game December 30, 2003
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.
An entertaining, and occasionally inspiring recollection December 12, 2003
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.
Not Simply a Story About a Game November 20, 2003
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.
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