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A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone
Baseball's best writer offers an extraordinarily candid and thorough exploration of the inner craft of pitching from one of the game's best, David Cone.
There is no big league pitcher who is more respected for his skill than David Cone.
In his stellar career Cone has won multiple championships andcountless professional accolades. Along the way, the perennial all-star has had to adjust to five different ballclubs, recover from a career-threatening arm aneurysm, cope with the lofty expectations that are standard for the games highest paid players, and overcome a humbling three-month, eight-game losing streak in the summer of 2000.
Cone granted exclusive and unlimited access to baseballs most respected writer Roger Angell of the New Yorker . The result is just what baseball fans everywhere would expect from an extraordinary inside account of a superstar.
There is no big league pitcher who is more respected for his skill than David Cone.
In his stellar career Cone has won multiple championships andcountless professional accolades. Along the way, the perennial all-star has had to adjust to five different ballclubs, recover from a career-threatening arm aneurysm, cope with the lofty expectations that are standard for the games highest paid players, and overcome a humbling three-month, eight-game losing streak in the summer of 2000.
Cone granted exclusive and unlimited access to baseballs most respected writer Roger Angell of the New Yorker . The result is just what baseball fans everywhere would expect from an extraordinary inside account of a superstar.
320 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2002
29 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
Roger Angell
56 books116 followersRoger Angell (b. 1920) is a celebrated New Yorker writer and editor. First published in the magazine in 1944, he became a fiction editor and regular contributor in 1956; and remains as a senior editor and staff writer. In addition to seven classic books on baseball, which include The Summer Game (1972), Five Seasons (1977), and Season Ticket (1988), he has written works of fiction, humor, and a memoir, Let Me Finish (2006).
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
April 7, 2010
My May 2001 review in the San Francisco Chronicle:
IF ANYONE endured as much as David Cone did last year, it was Roger Angell.
Cone, one of the great pitchers of recent decades, found himself enduring unspeakable embarrassment on the mound during a season so over-the-top bad, it unfolded like a bad dream or bad movie. The Yankees' victory over the Mets in the World Series took away some of the sting, but still Cone was left with a 4- 14 record and 6.91 ERA.
Angell, long a favorite of baseball fans for his New Yorker pieces on the game, watched in horror as his plans for a technical book on the pitcher's craft unraveled. What emerged instead -- "A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone" ($24.95 Warner Books) -- is in large part a chronicle of loss and searching and the strange way baseball has of always throwing something new at you.
"To his immense credit, he stayed with me," Angell said in a recent phone conversation. "He could have walked away at any time, but he stayed with it. He kept apologizing. He was embarrassed.
"We had some technical discussions. There's a chapter in there called 'Get A Grip' about how he throws a slider and other pitches and it is somewhat technical. But at the same time, he had lost his feel for the slider."
Angell, 80, has been writing about baseball for the New Yorker since 1962. He's deeply modest about his work, and the surest way to make him mad is to start talking about his writing being something exalted. Still, Angell has earned not just knowledge, but respect. Yankees manager Joe Torre is liable to refer to him as an authority during one of his pregame press talks.
Angell never had sat down and written a book from start to finish. All of his previous books were collections. So last season, he was out there -- an admired old pro who felt a little like a rookie -- writing about Cone, a 1994 Cy Young Award winner and longtime master who suddenly felt like a rookie desperate for a routine inning.
"Cone understood this was a sort of gamble for me," Angell said. "It was a very strange venture for me because I had never written a front-to-back book before. It was a tough, tough deadline. I wrote more than half of it in the middle of October. I kept saying, 'I can't do it, I can't do it,' but David said, 'You can do it,' and my wife said, 'You can do it,' and my agent said, 'You can do it,' and my shrink said, 'You can do it.' "
To all the Angell fans who have read his words aloud to a friend, so they could both beam at the pleasure and truth in them, it might be hard to believe Angell really agonized over this book.
"It was scary," he said, "but it was a great emotional experience, it really was. It was a huge adventure. Not knowing what a book is going to be, as you write it, is really an adventure. It made me and David the same, because he didn't know what his season was going to be, either."
Cone does not know what this season is going to be, either. He lost his spot in the Boston Red Sox rotation when he went down in spring training. Angell was there, naturally -- even though the book already was being printed by then.
"He's very low," Angell said. "I don't know what's going to happen right now. He could retire."
Angell's not talking retirement. He has known every editor of the New Yorker, dating back to the great, gruff Harold Ross and William Shawn. He got on just fine with flamboyant Tina Brown -- whom he chided occasionally about her lack of baseball knowledge -- and with current editor David Remnick, a former Washington Post sportswriter as well as foreign correspondent. Angell still works as a fiction editor -- and promises to keep writing for the magazine.
"I'm going to go on writing baseball," he said. "I was working on the book last year, so I didn't write a postseason piece. David Remnick is here to publish whatever I give him -- if it's any good."
The tone in his voice answered one last question: Yes, he still can sound boyishly excited talking about the game.
Coming soon? Angell will visit what he calls one of the great subjects in baseball -- that's right, Pacific Bell Park -- in June.
"I feel that writing about baseball has enabled me to write about myself, which is what writers want to do," he said. "I've learned a lot about myself since I started writing about baseball, and I've learned about baseball, and sometimes the two coincide. I'm lucky that this has worked out. Some people start forms of writing that run out on them. That hasn't happened for me."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article...
IF ANYONE endured as much as David Cone did last year, it was Roger Angell.
Cone, one of the great pitchers of recent decades, found himself enduring unspeakable embarrassment on the mound during a season so over-the-top bad, it unfolded like a bad dream or bad movie. The Yankees' victory over the Mets in the World Series took away some of the sting, but still Cone was left with a 4- 14 record and 6.91 ERA.
Angell, long a favorite of baseball fans for his New Yorker pieces on the game, watched in horror as his plans for a technical book on the pitcher's craft unraveled. What emerged instead -- "A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone" ($24.95 Warner Books) -- is in large part a chronicle of loss and searching and the strange way baseball has of always throwing something new at you.
"To his immense credit, he stayed with me," Angell said in a recent phone conversation. "He could have walked away at any time, but he stayed with it. He kept apologizing. He was embarrassed.
"We had some technical discussions. There's a chapter in there called 'Get A Grip' about how he throws a slider and other pitches and it is somewhat technical. But at the same time, he had lost his feel for the slider."
Angell, 80, has been writing about baseball for the New Yorker since 1962. He's deeply modest about his work, and the surest way to make him mad is to start talking about his writing being something exalted. Still, Angell has earned not just knowledge, but respect. Yankees manager Joe Torre is liable to refer to him as an authority during one of his pregame press talks.
Angell never had sat down and written a book from start to finish. All of his previous books were collections. So last season, he was out there -- an admired old pro who felt a little like a rookie -- writing about Cone, a 1994 Cy Young Award winner and longtime master who suddenly felt like a rookie desperate for a routine inning.
"Cone understood this was a sort of gamble for me," Angell said. "It was a very strange venture for me because I had never written a front-to-back book before. It was a tough, tough deadline. I wrote more than half of it in the middle of October. I kept saying, 'I can't do it, I can't do it,' but David said, 'You can do it,' and my wife said, 'You can do it,' and my agent said, 'You can do it,' and my shrink said, 'You can do it.' "
To all the Angell fans who have read his words aloud to a friend, so they could both beam at the pleasure and truth in them, it might be hard to believe Angell really agonized over this book.
"It was scary," he said, "but it was a great emotional experience, it really was. It was a huge adventure. Not knowing what a book is going to be, as you write it, is really an adventure. It made me and David the same, because he didn't know what his season was going to be, either."
Cone does not know what this season is going to be, either. He lost his spot in the Boston Red Sox rotation when he went down in spring training. Angell was there, naturally -- even though the book already was being printed by then.
"He's very low," Angell said. "I don't know what's going to happen right now. He could retire."
Angell's not talking retirement. He has known every editor of the New Yorker, dating back to the great, gruff Harold Ross and William Shawn. He got on just fine with flamboyant Tina Brown -- whom he chided occasionally about her lack of baseball knowledge -- and with current editor David Remnick, a former Washington Post sportswriter as well as foreign correspondent. Angell still works as a fiction editor -- and promises to keep writing for the magazine.
"I'm going to go on writing baseball," he said. "I was working on the book last year, so I didn't write a postseason piece. David Remnick is here to publish whatever I give him -- if it's any good."
The tone in his voice answered one last question: Yes, he still can sound boyishly excited talking about the game.
Coming soon? Angell will visit what he calls one of the great subjects in baseball -- that's right, Pacific Bell Park -- in June.
"I feel that writing about baseball has enabled me to write about myself, which is what writers want to do," he said. "I've learned a lot about myself since I started writing about baseball, and I've learned about baseball, and sometimes the two coincide. I'm lucky that this has worked out. Some people start forms of writing that run out on them. That hasn't happened for me."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article...
November 15, 2018
The Yanks didn’t make the Series, so I read this instead. An enjoyable and insightful look into the life and mind of a very competitive athlete through ups and downs that proves Yogi’s old quip that “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical.” Angell does a great job weaving in all sorts of interesting baseball anecdotes - just what baseball fans love.
March 25, 2016
Who's this book about again, David Cone? It felt like Angell got Cone's permission to travel with him just so he can gain access to an MLB clubhouse. Sometimes it felt like Cone was a sideshow in all that was going on. For sure, he was among the many characters in the book, and the one who was written most about.
Before I read the book, I learned that Angell was touted as a great writer. May be so, but I get annoyed by all the detail, much of it only tangentially relevant to Cone. You don't get inside his mind enough to understand his mental toughness. Unlike Michael Lewis, Angell has no central thesis. Very disappointed.
OK, so let me scrap together the good I got out of the book.
* His wife Lynn fell in love with him because unlike her peers at Wheaton, some of whom hadn't decided on a major yet, the minor-leaguer Cone knew exactly that he wanted a career as a ballplayer.
* He was always looking intense. Reminds me of Christian Grey in those commercials.
* Like other great pitchers, he always wanted to pitch and never wanted to leave a game, and would always want to play through pain.
Before I read the book, I learned that Angell was touted as a great writer. May be so, but I get annoyed by all the detail, much of it only tangentially relevant to Cone. You don't get inside his mind enough to understand his mental toughness. Unlike Michael Lewis, Angell has no central thesis. Very disappointed.
OK, so let me scrap together the good I got out of the book.
* His wife Lynn fell in love with him because unlike her peers at Wheaton, some of whom hadn't decided on a major yet, the minor-leaguer Cone knew exactly that he wanted a career as a ballplayer.
* He was always looking intense. Reminds me of Christian Grey in those commercials.
* Like other great pitchers, he always wanted to pitch and never wanted to leave a game, and would always want to play through pain.
August 24, 2008
I read this book, I believe, towards the end of my baseball writing days. I LOVE David Cone and I loved this book. It's honest and it gives you a glimpse into the mind and inner-workings of baseball's most fragile players: Game-Starting pitchers.
January 10, 2024
Angell was a gifted writer and this makes half a dozen of his books that I've read. It's the first to focus on a single player. David Cone was a very talented pitcher who grew up in KC and came through the Royals minor league system only to be traded to the NY Mets just as he was ready for the majors. It was a disastrous exchange for KC though Cone did return years later as a free agent (and pitched extremely well for the doomed 94 strike team that was surging when the season ended).
The book provides much biographical material but is primarily about the 2000 season, which was a terrible performance year for Cone -- even as the Yankees won another World Series.
The book provides much biographical material but is primarily about the 2000 season, which was a terrible performance year for Cone -- even as the Yankees won another World Series.
July 16, 2023
This isn't what I expected, and it's not what Angell expected to write. His plan was to follow David Cone through the 2000 season and show how a superstar pitcher goes about his business. But that was Cone's worst season by a mile, so instead of a book about mastery, it's about struggle. Cone himself is interesting, and Angell shows his own mastery as a writer, but the book gets bogged down in details, like the names of all the people hanging out with Cone after a game.
September 1, 2022
Angell characteristic laconic form, more sardonic and uplifting than exuberant in chronicling Cone. It’s a testament to the workmanlike nature of baseball and not it’s highest moments even though it starts with his perfect game. Stirs quietly, but there’s just no one better.
April 5, 2019
A look at the career of David Cone...well written!
September 20, 2020
Fascinating insight into the career of David Cone and his tough final year with the Yankees.
December 15, 2021
Roger Angell's the best. You'll love this if you love baseball.
December 18, 2021
I read /A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone/.
January 5, 2023
Roger Angell is a great baseball writer - this is not among his best books, but it is solid. Angell brings to life Cone's background and the struggles toward the end of his career.
May 29, 2024
Excellent baseball book.
June 26, 2023
Baseball fans, more specifically N.Y. Yankee fans, will enjoy David Cone's look back at his career, its ups and downs and how he survived and thrived in the Baseball world. A good read, especially if you are a Yankee fan!
December 28, 2012
Roger Angell is probably the best baseball writer who ever lived and this book is more proof. Although I didn't like this book as much as Angell's other works such as Late Innings or Season Ticket to name a few, it was an interesting read. I've read so much about the Yankees in the late 90's, but not so much on the 2000 season, when they beat the Mets in the World Series. This book chronicles David Cone's 2000 season, which was not what Angell and Cone expected as the former Cy Young Award winner and two-time 20-game winner had probably his worst season ever as his career began to wind down. Angell also tells about Cone's overall career. Angell gets a lot of help in this one from Cone, who would make a great sportswriter considering his good relationship over the years with the media. Gained a lot of respect for Cone after reading this, which is weird because as a Dodger fan I couldn't stand him for his remarks he made during the NLCS in 1988. That episode is described here in good detail and I actually gained respect for him in that he didn't blame reporters for his error and actually apologized but stood by his words. I think Cone would make a good sportscaster if he isn't one already (book was published in 2001). If you haven't read any of Angell's books, don't start with this one. If you have, you'll probably like this one too.
September 9, 2012
Roger Angell's books on baseball were introduced to me when I was a kid by my father, and they're a big reason baseball will always be my favorite sport. Here Angell spends the 2000 season with David Cone, who found himself facing unprecedented difficulties (4-14) in a season that would end with another Series win for the Bombers. Angell admits the book became more of a study in personality than a book about pitching due to Cone's frustration with his own performance, and the book loses focus for a while because Cone seems to have little to offer the writer during a prolonged slump. I enjoyed the biographical details on Cone, especially his complicated relationship with his Dad and his role in the 1994-5 players' strike. Angell is in love with baseball and yet not sentimental about it; A Pitcher's Story is an honest and finally moving look at a great pitcher in the autumn of his career.
August 31, 2014
A good read about one of the better pitchers of the past few decades.
Cone pitched for the Mets (one of the reasons I picked up the book), along with the Yankees, Royals, Blue Jays, and Red Sox. He had his problems and scandals revolving around sex and his bad behavior, but he was never tied up in the steroids acandals. He wound up with just short of 200 wins, including two, 20-win seasons.
This book picks up in Cone's 2000 season, his last with the Yankees. It's part biography, part pitching primer, and part season retrospective. It was written during one of Cone's worst years, even though he helps (just barely) the Yankees win a World Championship.
Angell is a great baseball writer, and fills the book with anecdotes, statistics, interviews, and recollections from dozens of people, both in and out of basebll. He also gives his own commentary on what's happening, and why he's writing the book in a certain way.
Cone pitched for the Mets (one of the reasons I picked up the book), along with the Yankees, Royals, Blue Jays, and Red Sox. He had his problems and scandals revolving around sex and his bad behavior, but he was never tied up in the steroids acandals. He wound up with just short of 200 wins, including two, 20-win seasons.
This book picks up in Cone's 2000 season, his last with the Yankees. It's part biography, part pitching primer, and part season retrospective. It was written during one of Cone's worst years, even though he helps (just barely) the Yankees win a World Championship.
Angell is a great baseball writer, and fills the book with anecdotes, statistics, interviews, and recollections from dozens of people, both in and out of basebll. He also gives his own commentary on what's happening, and why he's writing the book in a certain way.
August 7, 2007
Like Michael Lewis's Moneyball and Buzz Bissinger's Three Nights in August, this book about David Cone's approach to his profession really gives you an insider's look into the daily grind that major leagues baseball players have to endure.
June 19, 2014
A year in the life of a major-league pitcher near the end of the line, with a biography mixed in ... and written by a baseball-writing legend. Excellent book. Really interesting and the timing was fascinating considering where Cone was in his career at this time (2000). Great behind-the-scenes stuff.
January 21, 2008
A slow and not very compelling read. I feel the author did a terrible job with jumping around in a non-linear way. I would not recommend this book.
Jim
Jim
August 29, 2011
Blah, good Yankee moments but not a compelling story other than brief parts about '94 labor issues
March 14, 2014
Roger Angell is an excellent writer. It took me a few days to understand his style and keep track of the people he was talking about, but once I fell into his orbit, this was an easy read.
Read
April 24, 2017 In the book The Pitcher's Story Roger Angell uses entertainment as his authors purpose. Throughout the book Angell talks about a variety of baseball players. He talks about this one special player named David Cone. Roger Angell writes this book in David Cone's perspective. What's interesting is that mixes up the perspectives into his and Cone's thoughts.
When reading this book it was hard to understand the theme just because of the way it was told. On page 159, Angell said "Don't judge a pitcher by his pitches, judge a pitcher by is grip". What Angell was trying to tell us was a character might not have the best talent, but if that character has the determination and the toughest work ethic then he will be better than anyone on that field.
Roger Angell style of writing is narrative and description. The book follows David Cone through the start of his career and the end of his career. Angell put us in the perspective of Cone in many ways. The other style I chose was narrative because of the way it was told in series of events. It was very understandable because of the way it was told in events. That way the reader knows when and where the situation takes place.
I really enjoyed this book. I liked the way Angell taught us about more than just one person, but multiple players and pitchers. What I disliked about this book was how many perspectives it came with. I wish there was only one perspective so it would be less confusing. If I could change something about this book it would be the ending. I wanted to hear what Cone did after his career as a baseball player. This was a very fun book to read, but I can't compare it to any other book I have read.
When reading this book it was hard to understand the theme just because of the way it was told. On page 159, Angell said "Don't judge a pitcher by his pitches, judge a pitcher by is grip". What Angell was trying to tell us was a character might not have the best talent, but if that character has the determination and the toughest work ethic then he will be better than anyone on that field.
Roger Angell style of writing is narrative and description. The book follows David Cone through the start of his career and the end of his career. Angell put us in the perspective of Cone in many ways. The other style I chose was narrative because of the way it was told in series of events. It was very understandable because of the way it was told in events. That way the reader knows when and where the situation takes place.
I really enjoyed this book. I liked the way Angell taught us about more than just one person, but multiple players and pitchers. What I disliked about this book was how many perspectives it came with. I wish there was only one perspective so it would be less confusing. If I could change something about this book it would be the ending. I wanted to hear what Cone did after his career as a baseball player. This was a very fun book to read, but I can't compare it to any other book I have read.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews