Hardball: A Season in the Projects by Daniel Coyle

Hardball: A Season in the Projects Reviews

• 
  Lindsay

  I was more interested in the life of the boys in Cabrini-Green than I was in the paragraphs on their baseball games.
• 
  Jayme Del

  Surprisingly amazed with how the book turned out to be. As an unknowing reader, I ended up feeling living in the same neighborhood. That's how engaged it got me.
• 
  Deborah Frazier Gibson

  I originally picked up this book because I enjoyed the movie starring Keanu Reeves. However, I now wish the movie was actually made as the book was written. It is a true story of men who selflessly give of themselves to Coach kids in the projects of Chicago. It tells of all the good and the bad that goes along that service and sacrifice.
  
  I truly enjoyed the honesty of this book and having worked with so many kids myself, I could hear them saying those same lines as they did to the coaches. Such defense mechanisms at such an early age.
  
  Job well done, Daniel Coyle.
• 
  Tracy Towley

  I'm kind of shocked to see how many people liked this book. I'm the perfect audience for this book; I'm a baseball fan, I live in Chicago and I'm interested in youth programs that deal with inner city kids. But god damn, Hardball: A Season in the Projects just didn't do it for me.
  
  First of all, it was aggravatingly overwritten. Coyle added plenty of details, I assume in an attempt to paint a full and vivid picture. What resulted were paragraphs of overly flowery, dull and pointless prose that did nothing to further the story. As he tried to add dialouge and mimic the 'street kids' language, he just sounded like every other uptight white guy who's awfully proud of himself for spending time 'in the projects'. I was a little embarrassed for him.
  
  The pages and pages of play by play baseball business were pointless. As I said, I'm a huge baseball fan. But reading chapter after chapter of moment by moment commentary on a strike out is boring - no matter how much you like baseball. Yes, I cared how the kids did and yes I wanted to know who was struggling and how their games turned out, but I didn't need this much detail.
  
  Writing aside, I had some issues with the author's clear bias against Al, the man who actually founded the league. Al was from the projects and was an African-American man. Initially he was portrayed somewhat sympathetically but eventually he was reduced to being some crazy guy who, and I'll quote, "must have been killed a nigger once." Based on the information in this book it seemed clear that Al wanted control of his league and had trouble letting some of that control go to the volunteer coaches. It also seems somewhat understandable to me, that as a man who'd lived in the projects all his life, there would be some resentment of a bunch of rich, white dudes coming in and telling him how to run his league and how he could best impact these children's lives.
  
  Overall I did not like the writing and I did not like the angle the author took. I did learn a few things about Cabrini-Green but you could shave 200 pages off this book and still get as much out of it.
  
  Currently reading: You Shall Know Our Velocity! – Dave Eggers
• 
  Donald

  If you need a baseball fix this winter, I heartily recommend Hardball. I found this gem on the discard shelf of my library, and picked it up for ten cents!
  
  It chronicles a Little League team in Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects during the summer of 1992. It's about more than just baseball, however. Author Daniel Coyle does an excellent job of weaving the personal lives with the baseball personas of the individual players. You get to know each player, his home life and personality, and how and why he came to join the team, the Kikuyus. The field is the players' escape from the reality of the projects' gang wars, murder, teen pregnancy, and broken families.
  
  The book also discusses the politics that seep into the league, and the tension that arises between the original founder of the league (who is African-American and from Cabrini-Green), and the white coaches who volunteer their time to try and teach the kids baseball, as well as win their trust and friendship.
  
  This is an old book, published in 1993. An excellent journalist, Coyle has since gone on to write a novel, and a book about Lance Armstrong, Lance Armstrong's War. You don't have to be a baseball fan to like Hardball. It's about society, and opportunity, and community. Pick it up.
  ----------------------------------
  A side note to Mr. Coyle: It's been nearly 15 years since you wrote this book. I'd love to see a follow-up, even if it's an article and not a full-length book. Where are the kids now? What are they doing? Who succeeded? Who succumbed to the lure of gang life? What has happened to the residents—and gangs—of Cabrini-Green, now that a new urban renewal is happening, and the old projects of the neighborhood are coming down?
• 
  gosobooks.com

  Giving this book 4 stars because I am not a baseball fan, it just doesn't exist in the part of the world (Lagos, Nigeria) where I come from but then the concept of the housing project, little league, mentoring scheme... are nice concepts that could be looked into in any cosmopolitan city especially with awful lot of slums. Read like 50/60 % of the book but dropped it not because the book is bad but because I just can't comprehend baseball scoring points and as a sport generally.
• 
  Agatha Lund

  This was heartbreaking and lovely. Reminded me a lot in tone of Darcy Frey's
  The Last Shot.