Sokolove, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine
, has written a passionate, heartbreaking yet sympathetic look at what happens when schoolyard dreams meet the "cold-blooded business" of professional baseball. After writing a 2001 magazine profile on Strawberry, who after high school quickly rose to superstar status with the New York Mets only to decline into an ongoing struggle with drugs, Sokolove decided to further explore "where he came from and what produced this tragic American icon." He found the answer by looking in depth at the 1979 Crenshaw High baseball team—"the greatest assemblage of talent in the whole history of high school baseball"—and the inner city Los Angeles community that produced him. Sokolove weaves a cautionary tale of the role baseball once played in the inner city, where sports is not a fantasy but a "reality based" way to try to avoid falling into gang life. Culling from in-depth interviews with players, coaches and family members from South Central L.A., Sokolove paints Strawberry as an extremely gifted athlete for whom baseball was a ticket out, but who "emerged from inner city L.A. as damaged goods." This is the most insightful account written so far about the roots of Strawberry's troubled life: "It's hard to say what is the greater marvel; that he laid waste to his career or that he managed to have one at all." But equally moving is the story of Carl Jones, another star player whose descent into drug abuse and robbery has earned him a sentence of 25 years to life under California's "three strikes" law. (Apr.)
