Richard Sandomir, who covers sports media for The New York Times, has this on Ian O’Connor’s latest appearing in this week’s Sunday Book Review section.
Upshots:
- “O’Connor rarely elevates his material beyond a narrative about Jeter’s greatness as a man and player. A straightforward storyteller, he gods up his subject without irony, detachment or recognition of the hyperbole that comes with so much positive testimony. The literary bromance can be breathless. Assessing Jeter’s status early in his career, O’Connor says that during the Yankees’ 1996 World Series victory parade in Lower Manhattan, Jeter was “as big as Lindbergh, MacArthur, John Glenn and every other American lion who traveled up the Canyon of Heroes.” It can also be oddly blinkered: in asserting that “no Yankee ever played hurt more than Jeter,” O’Connor ignores Mantle’s career of pain.”
- “The book is strongest when its subject is least central,” as when O’Connor writes about Jeffrey Maier’s post-season home run “assist” and the teams that didn’t draft Jeter.
- “The running portrait of Jeter as a baseball saint is most effective when O’Connor plays it off his sinner’s view of Alex Rodriguez.” This was what the tabloids focused on when they ran their stories about the book.
- “Once the enemies find detente, with Jeter deciding that a humbled and “emasculated” Rodriguez is worth a second shot, O’Connor extends the saint-sinner imagery to an explicitly biblical level.”
Hero worship to the n-th degree.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.