A Pitcher's Story

April 16, 2001
This is not the book that master baseball chronicler Angell set out to write, the author acknowledges midway through what is essentially a biography of the well-traveled Cone. Angell had planned an "inside look at a wizardly old master at his late last best," but instead found a "Merlin falling headlong down the palace stairs." Neither Cone nor Angell could have foreseen that after the Yankee pitcher gave Angell full access to him during the 2000 baseball season, Cone would have the worst year of his career, finishing with a 4-14 won-lost record. Although Angell's focal point is Cone's last year with the Yankees, he covers all of Cone's life and career, tracking his baseball journey from his days as a star athlete in Kansas City to his stops with the Mets, Blue Jays, Royals and Yankees. Cone had success with each team he played for, including being one of the core players and unofficial team spokesman for the 1996–2000 Yankees with whom Cone won four World Series. Angell (The Summer Game) not only details Cone's highs and lows on and off the playing field, but does a superb job in recording Cone's anxieties and frustrations as the two men move through the disappointing 2000 season. The combination of Angell's love and knowledge of baseball and his truly fascinating subjects makes for another win in Angell's long list of hits about the American pastime. (On-sale: May2) Forecast:Given the Yankees' recent dominance, this book will attract a lot of fans—despite Cone's disappointing last season and his off-seasonn move to the Red Sox. In addition to radio spots in New York and a TV satellite tour to 25 other markets, fans of America's team of the century will call this book a keeper, not only because of Cone but also because of Angell's deservedly high reputation as a sportswriter.

Starred review from April 15, 2001
Cone has won 184 regular season games pitching for the Royals, Mets, Blue Jays, and Yankees, with a perfect game, a Cy Young Award, and other honors over a 16-year career. Angell, author of the classic The Summer Game and other baseball books, blends a diary form account of Cone's sadly frustrating 2000 season with a look back at his earlier years. The New Yorker writer and editor mixes a sympathetic narrative of the pitcher's struggles last summer and his 2001 move to the Yankees' rival Boston Red Sox with a tribute to his rise from young playboy to elder baseball statesman. Angell's graceful prose and baseball savvy should win this a place in most sports collections. Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tuscon, AZ

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2001
This is not the book Roger Angell intended to write last year: "Instead of an inside look at a wizardly old master at his late last best, this was going to be Merlin falling headlong down the palace stairs." It is, however, a brilliant book about baseball and about pitching. In the year 2000, Angell followed David Cone, met his family and friends, visited his childhood haunts. He loops around from the present--the 2000 season--to Cone's long history (Cone was 20-7 in 1998, 10 years after his 20-3 record for the Mets) to brief vignettes of Cone as a kid, as a son, as a spouse. These illuminating glimpses of the intense and private Cone we saw on the mound, and Angell's analysis of how Cone thinks about pitching, are riveting. Nothing can really explain last season: the Yankees working through injuries and a dying-fall September; Cone struggling all season as we watched in horror; the Yankees winning the Subway Series in glory despite it all. Angell, perhaps the best baseball writer of our time and one of the best writers period, uses every tool at his command to tell Cone's story: it is beautifully constructed, carefully thought out, and elegantly composed. Sobering and enlightening and funny and real, Angell's account makes us understand why Cone went to Boston, and we hope that will work for him. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)