Osborne, a staff writer for the sports magazine SLAM
, decided to follow the Brooklyn minor league Cyclones through their inaugural season in 2001 and gauge their impact on the local community. The result is jumbled and uneven but never dull; imagine Roger Angell and Alex Kotlowitz passing a typewriter back and forth to write about sports and social policy. Osborne focuses his story on two primary figures: Brett Kay, a rookie fresh from college with strong potential to make it in the majors, and Anthony Otero, a teenage baseball fan who lives in a housing project within walking distance of the team's new stadium, KeySpan Park. But some of the book's most fascinating material is about how the park came into being, recounting a struggle that pitted former mayor Rudy Giuliani, "desperate to have baseball stadiums as part of his legacy," against local borough politicians. The return of baseball to Brooklyn was supposed to launch a redevelopment of Coney Island that would rival the turnaround of Times Square, but, Osborne suggests, the Cyclones franchise still has lots of community outreach to do. Though the prose can be raw, the account of the season's games is handled deftly, and Osborne effectively captures the zeal of Brooklyn baseball fans. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Apr.)
