Saturday, November 24, 2012

Jim Abbott Tells His "Imperfect" Story


 If you haven't already, check out Flint Expatriate and Central High grad Jim Abbott's excellent book, Imperfect: An Improbable Life. You don't have to love baseball to enjoy this book about Flint, fatherhood, and living a meaningful life. (Although the baseball sections are really great, as well.)
"The lives of many of the breadwinners in the cul-de-sacs and verdant streets near Burroughs Park would change in the 1980s, just as they would all over Flint, when General Motors began boarding up its manufacturing plants. For decades a man in Flint could chart his course from the playground to high school to an assembly line or management job at GM, the path their fathers and grandfathers had taken to middle-class stability. When the jobs disappeared, so too did Flint's hope, and the street corners that had been edgy in my father's youth became strictly off-limits in mine."


4 comments:

  1. I read that a few months back. It was a pretty incredible read for someone from Flint.

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    1. I just started reading it and I'm really enjoying it. I have a soft spot for sports bios, and this one is vastly better written than most. And it has a lot of themes that have nothing to do with sports. Also like the structure built around Abbott's no hitter. Not sure how I completely missed this when it came out.

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  2. There are no cul de sacs to speak of around Burroughs Park, just a few dead ends. Life was pretty sweet in that neighborhood throughout the 1990s and still is compared to most of the rest of Flint.

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    1. Well, dead ends count as cul de sacs. They don't need to have the rounded turnaround at the end, although that is the most common use of the term.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cul-de-sac

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.