Billy Fitzgerald is a sports legend you've never heard of. The 57-year-old former minor league catcher coaches baseball and basketball at New Orleans' Isidore Newman School; not exactly a high-profile assignment. Ubiquitously called "Coach Fitz," this veteran mentor personifies a tough-as-nails coaching philosophy seldom seen in these days of player perks and recruiting wars. Not surprisingly, his old-school ways are under fire from parents at the expensive Louisiana prep school, but this gruff mentor does have hundreds of defenders among his former players (most notably NFL quarterback Peyton Manning), who insist that Coach Fitz changed their lives. Bestselling author Michael Lewis once labored under the verbal lashes of this unforgettable man; now he, too, pays tribute to a man who taught him some of life's most important lessons.
Publishers Weekly
Lewis (Liar's Poker; Moneyball) remembers his high school baseball coach, Coach Fitz, a man so intense a room felt "more pressurized simply because he was in it." At the New Orleans private school Lewis attended in the late 1970s, Coach Fitz taught kids to fight "the natural instinct to run away from adversity" and to battle their way through all the easy excuses life offers for giving up. He was strict, but he made such an impression on his students that now, 25 years later, alumni want to name a new gym after him. But the parents of today's students aren't as wowed by Coach Fitz's tough love. They call the headmaster with complaints, saying Coach Fitz is too mean to their children and insisting on sitting on his shoulder as he attempts to coach. A desire to set these new parents straight may be the underlying reason for Lewis's slight book, though he'd probably rather have readers believe he's just written it as a paean to a man who taught him some important life lessons. The book's corny subtitle, lack of heft and hackneyed images of kites flying and fireworks exploding may turn off some readers, but those who persevere will come away with a reminder that fear and failure are the "two greatest enemies of a well lived life." Agent, Andrew Wylie. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Everything Lewis ever really needed to know he learned from prickly baseball coach Fitz. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
OCT/NOV 05 - AudioFile
The turning point in his life, author Michael Lewis says, came in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. With the game on the line, his coach, an irascible man along the lines of basketball coach Bob Knight (but without the swearing and bullying), gave the young pitcher the ball. Lewis wasn’t able to thank him then but does it with this book decades later. He describes the coach’s life, the apocryphal stories that grew up around him, and the change in the atmosphere of youth sports today. It is this last point that is the author’s strongest. While coaches like Fitz remain as stern taskmasters, parents no longer tolerate criticism of their kids. The author is adequate as narrator. His diction is crisp, and his pacing is good. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
