Jim Abbott. (2012). Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Random House Publishing Group.

Jim Abbott. 2012. Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Random House Publishing Group.

Jim Abbott, Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Random House Publishing Group, 2012.

Jim Abbott. Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Random House Publishing Group, 2012.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: Personal Growth
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6. • value: disability
7. • value: memories
8. • value: major league baseball
9. • value: sports memoir
10. • value: Yankees
11. • value: true story
12. • value: Inspirational
13. • value: inspiration
14. • value: Advice
15. • value: sports
16. • value: biographies
17. • value: disabled
18. • value: narrative nonfiction
19. • value: Motivational
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25. • value: nonfiction books
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30. • value: no-hitter
31. • value: baseball memoir
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33. • value: olympic gold medal
34. • value: new york yankess
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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Abbott, Jim
   • bioText: Jim Abbott was a major league pitcher with the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Yankees, among other teams. Born in 1967, he was an All-American at Michigan; won a gold medal with the 1988 Olympic baseball team; and threw a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium in 1993. He retired in 1999. Abbott has worked with the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, has been a guest pitching instructor for the Los Angeles Angels, and has appeared as a motivational speaker. He lives with his wife and two children in Anaheim.
      
     Tim Brown is an award-winning writer with twenty years of experience covering Major League Baseball at the Los Angeles Times, The Star-Ledger, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Los Angeles Daily News. He studied journalism at the University of Southern California and Cal State Northridge, and currently works for Yahoo! Sports.
   • name: Jim Abbott
2. • role: Author
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publishDate

2012-04-03T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Imperfect

fullDescription

“Honest, touching, and beautifully rendered . . . Far more than a book about baseball, it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man
 
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott dreamed of someday being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who encouraged him to compete, Jim would become an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning: By twenty-one, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and—without spending a day in the minor leagues—cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels. In 1991, he would finish third in the voting for the Cy Young Award. Two years later, he would don Yankee pinstripes and pitch one of the most dramatic no-hitters in major-league history.
 
In this honest and insightful book, Jim Abbott reveals the challenges he faced in becoming an elite pitcher, the insecurities he dealt with in a life spent as the different one, and the intense emotion generated by his encounters with disabled children from around the country. With a riveting pitch-by-pitch account of his no-hitter providing the ideal frame for his story, this unique athlete offers readers an extraordinary and unforgettable memoir.
 
“Compelling . . . [a] big-hearted memoir.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“Inspirational.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
Includes an exclusive conversation between Jim Abbott and Tim Brown in the back of the book.

gradeLevels

1. • value: Grade 5
2. • value: Grade 6
3. • value: Grade 7
4. • value: Grade 8

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr.
   • content: "Jim Abbott is the embodiment of perseverance. The obstacles that he was able to overcome to play the game at the highest level are remarkable and his story can teach all of us valuable lessons. Jim was a fierce competitor. He never viewed his disability as a disadvantage and, as a result, it wasn't. Imperfect is a terrific story and the best part is that it's true."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Don Mattingly, former New York Yankee captain and current Los Angeles Dodgers manager
   • content: "As I read Imperfect: An Improbable Life, Jim Abbott's love for the game jumped off the pages. It was like Jim was right in front of me telling me his life's journey. I felt his pain, hurt, joy, exhilaration, disappointment and accomplishments throughout his life. Jim has always been and continues to be an inspiration for all of us."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Mark Kriegel, author of Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich and Namath: A Biography
   • content: "The story of Jim Abbott--wonderfully crafted by Tim Brown--is everything you'd expect from a baseball life: funny, heartbreaking, and triumphant, though not necessarily in that order. Still, to label this fine book 'an inspiration' almost misses the larger point. Imperfect isn't about learning to cope with a disability. It's about becoming a man in America."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Ian O'Connor, New York Times bestselling author of The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter and Arnie & Jack
   • content: "Jim Abbott was 20--22 as a pitcher for the Yankees, and yet, as a man who played the game with one hand, an argument should be made that he belongs among the greatest players of all time. In Imperfect: An Improbable Life, Abbott and one of America's leading sports journalists, Tim Brown, tell the amazing story of a man's dignity and grace in overcoming a forbidding physical hurdle to pitch 10 big-league seasons and to throw a no-hitter. Abbott won every day he took the mound. This book is required inspirational reading for all fans of the human spirit."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Tom Verducci, senior writer for Sports Illustrated and New York Times bestselling co-author of The Yankee Years
   • content: "If you think you knew the inspirational story of Jim Abbott, think again. With Tim Brown, Abbott gives an unflinching account of his remarkable baseball life--the joys and the pains. With each chapter you know him better and root even harder for him."
6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     March 1, 2012
     Former Major League pitcher Abbott recounts the ups and downs of his career--and how he managed to succeed despite being born without a right hand. Abbott's athletic success was perpetually viewed through the lens of his disability. His achievements, while impressive, were deemed extraordinary relative to what the average one-handed person might expect to accomplish. Such judgment rankled the principled, hard-working lefty, however, as he recounts in this chronicle of his childhood growing up in hardscrabble Flint, Mich., and subsequent rise to the majors, where he pitched for the California Angels and New York Yankees (among others). Throughout his career, Abbott fought to be evaluated based not on his remarkable ingenuity and dexterity in learning to both pitch and field so well with one hand, but rather on the merits of what he achieved on the mound. He could not, however, fail to acknowledge his status as a hero to the disabled, a burden he willingly bore throughout his career. Overall, Abbott enjoyed a marginally successful pro career with a lifetime record of 87-108. He excelled for a few seasons and even threw a no-hitter in fabled Yankee Stadium, all after being one of the nation's best college pitchers at the University of Michigan; he also won a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics. Still, as much as Abbott sought to be known solely as a pitcher rather than a one-handed pitcher, it's impossible to contextualize his career without acknowledging the incredible odds he overcame. His retrospective is appropriately modest and self-effacing, and able co-author Brown punches up an inning-by-inning recap of the no-hitter, but there's a predictability to the narrative that makes it somewhat less remarkable than it should be. Inspirational paint-by-numbers, but a worthy addition to the category of moving athlete memoirs.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 15, 2012
     Jim Abbott was born without a right hand. Against all odds, he enjoyed a 10-year major-league pitching career, threw a no-hitter while he was with the Yankees, and won an Olympic gold medal. His career ended prematurely at 31. There was no tragedy. He just couldn't pitch well anymore. With the assistance of Yahoo! baseball journalist Brown, Abbott relates his truly amazing life. His parents, blue-collar kids in Flint, Michigan, had Jim shortly after they left high school. Young Jim didn't like the prosthetic device he was given, and his parents made a brave decision to allow their son to lead a normal life, doing what everyone else did. The missing hand became merely one of life's many challenges. Jim grew up playing sports and even quarterbacked his high-school team briefly. Readers experience his athletic high points as well as the lows, from throwing a no-hitter to mysteriously losing the magic in the latter years of his career. A solid sports autobiography that will inspire as it entertains.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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“Honest, touching, and beautifully rendered . . . Far more than a book about baseball, it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man
 
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott dreamed of someday being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who encouraged him to compete, Jim would become an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning: By twenty-one, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and—without spending a day in the minor leagues—cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels. In 1991, he would finish third in the voting for the Cy Young Award. Two years later, he would don Yankee pinstripes and pitch one of the most dramatic no-hitters in major-league...

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