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Showing posts from July, 2012

Book Review: "Women's Fast Pitch Softball"

Steven Clarfield recently sent me a copy of his (co-authored with Bill Plummer) new book, Women's Fast Pitch Softball: Best of the Best , which I am happy to review. Readers will likely be immediately impressed by these authors' ability to get Arizona coach Mike Candrea to write the preface and former UCLA and Olympic star Dot Richardson to write the foreword. The core of the book consists of 19 chapters on all-time great figures of the sport -- 10 on contemporary  players and nine on "oldsters" (coaches from various historical eras and players from an earlier day). The contemporary-player chapters, featuring such individuals as Lisa Fernandez, Michele Smith (now a color commentator on ESPN's annual coverage of the Women's College World Series), Cat Osterman, and Jennie Finch, touch on ingredients typically associated with athletic greatness, such as preparation from an early age, hard work, persistence in the face of adversity, a never-ending quest for self