Tag Archives: Baseball

Nov 23 2011
Leave a comment
Feature, Recs

My Last Sports Post and #travelreads

Odds and ends.

I’ve been talking a lot about sports lately, and I’m sorry about that. They’ve been on my mind, I guess, because there have been so many stories (Sandusky scandal, Fine scandal) that involve sports, but are not necessarily about sports; they’re about horrific crimes that are made no more horrific by their association with games; these are stories that have been leading the nightly news, stories so toxic that ESPN anchors get visibly uncomfortable talking about them, as it’s not their meat-and-potatoes brand of “huge hit here, droppin’ dimes there.” (You can always tell when “Sportscenter” personalities get uncomfortable with talking about realer or more devastating stories. It’s always right before a commercial, and the bass-line that accompanies the  “coming right up after the commercial break…” montage is neutered.)

All of these terrible crimes, however, have opened the floodgates for a weird and unsettling and kind of insensitive commentary from decidedly non-sporting folks. Katha Pollitt’s charged “Penn State’s Patriarchal Pastimes” (for The Nation) sticks out foremost, as it was a rather on-the-nose piece about how college athletics should be abolished. Erecting a bridge between university officials covering up child rape and the abolition of college athletics is a little like tying Chandra Levy’s murder to the immoral state of the Democratic Party; that is to say: not liking sports and then using unspeakable tragedies as a means of getting rid of what you don’t like is a brand of demagoguery usually reserved for right-wing talk radio hosts. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Nov 11 2011
Leave a comment
News

Good Book, _______ Movie

Wringing your hands about a film adaptation of your favorite book is a little tired, amirite? Listen: we’ve all been there. We’ve all been disappointed in the adaptation of our favorite books. When Faulkner died, did he know his unpublished manuscript Black Sheep would be adapted for the big screen? Probably not—but it was, and David Spade may not have done everything, but he did his best.

We are well aware that films cannot accurately convey what prose can; that the act of reading is a far more personal, participatory, one-on-one experience than the passive act of viewing a film (burn in hell, portable DVD players). We don’t need to talk about this.

OKAY FINE, let’s talk about this. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Oct 07 2011
Leave a comment
Recs

#fridayreads

A week from now, the DBC|READS gang is going back to college! (Cue: montage showing us in college.) And for some of us—the D and B, respectively—this means heading back to the Midwest. This is exciting. This is a good thing. So, in honor of that, our #fridayreads will focus on the Midwest.

Chad Simpson’s “Estate Sales”
One of my favorite writers’ (and a former professor) best stories, “Estate Sales” does everything a good piece of flash fiction should do: it condenses a meaningful story line into a very small space, without sparing the elements required of a good piece of writing.

Michael Martone’s “The Flatness”

And, in the dawn around Sandusky, they have had enough, and they hunker down and drive, looking for the mountains that they know are out there somewhere. They cannot see what is all around them now. A kind of blindness afflicts them, a pathology of the path. The flatness.

I’ve always had a particular fondness for this piece. Having spent a lot of my adolescence driving across Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, reading “The Flatness” puts me back in the seat of my 1999 (and later 2003) Chevrolet Cavalier.

David Foster Wallace’s “Tennis, Trigonometry, and Tornadoes”
Look at that opening line—I mean, seriously, look at that opening line. I love, “T, T, and T” because it’s Wallace’s best piece about the Midwest. Spare me his treatise on the Illinois State Fair—which was, undoubtedly, something he must have regretted writing, what with its East Coast self-righteousness and generally toxic tenor—I’ll take this simple, heartfelt piece that somehow comments on all three Ts in a way that seems natural; right.

Jonathan Franzen’s “The Comfort Zone”
Listen, I’m just not a big Franzen guy. He’s lacking in, shall we say, humility? But this is a tremendous essay.

Fin.

Have a good weekend, everybody. I’ll be the guy trying to figure out if the White Sox really did hire Robin Ventura.

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
Oct 04 2011
1 Comment
Feature

Baseball Books, Good and Bad

Last Sunday night, I was slothing my way through one of those soulless duty-free bookshops at O’Hare—the kind with the endless supply of the book-clubby tome du jour and caustic lighting and $4.29 Smartwater bottles—when a book caught my eye.

Moneyball. Completely out of place. Next to Stieg Larssen.  Kitty-corner from Mitch Albom. A new cover—one of those weird book-turns-into-movie-so-we-change-the-book cover-to-look-like-the-movie poster covers: a shadowy and tiny Brad Pitt, relegated to the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, standing in the outfield of the Coliseum—an angle meant to convey contemplation, smallness, pressure.

But Moneyball. How tired was I? I could count on two hands my cumulative hourly sleep total the past three nights (#whitetravelerproblems) and I was just coming out of a craft beer coma. I was not in my best shape, in other words.

Yeah, Moneyball. There—at the moment, here—in this shitty little store with its overpriced items and sub-bodega customer service. Rebranded, reborn, with a new cover and a price out of line with a relatively-successful-but-not-meteorically-so book about how a bunch of white guys running a small franchise exploited market inefficiencies—that market being Major League Baseball—to their advantage, acquiring assets—those assets being Major League Baseball players—to maintain success—success defined as regular season wins relative to dollars spent, not money or championships—despite a bevy of competitors with more resources, and a market—again, Major League Baseball—that is governed by archaic restrictions and regulations that make competitive balance the stuff of reverie.

How does that book transcend its subject and land in duty-free bookshops? How does that turn into a box office smash?

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Sep 30 2011
Leave a comment
Recs

#fridayreads

Whether you are failing to write an adequate review of Justin Torres’ We the Animals, moving to a new apartment this weekend in the uber-literary Somerville, Massachusetts, or just looking forward to seeing “Moneyball,” this is what you should be reading this Friday, the last day of September.

(The above are all about me. I apologize.)

Hannah Pittard’s The Fates Will Find Their Way
Pittard, the 2006 winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, unleashed her debut novel last January. Reviews were, for the most part, positive. I picked up an advance reader copy of this at a certain unnamed bookstore in Boston which, I’m pretty sure, shouldn’t be selling ARCs! Even if it was for, you know, one measly dollar. Even if it did, I admit, make my day.

John Warner’s The Funny Man
Released Tuesday, Warner’s novel explores the strangely unfunny world of comedy. But if Michael Ian Black’s clunky blurb has any weight to it, I expect this to be a very entertaining read. Look for a review next week.

Jonah Keri’s The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First
Moneyball, this is not. Keri used to be a financial writer, writing about baseball only in his (seemingly fulsome) spare time. Now he’s fully focused on baseball, and in The Extra 2%, Keri looks at how the Tampa Bay Rays—you may have heard about them sometime yesterday—have used financial principles to build a better baseball team. A timely, worthwhile read.

Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squid, and the Long Con That is Breaking America
The “Occupy Wall Street” protests continue. Taibbi’s book on the soulless nature of high finance serves as not only an accessible manual on corruption for laymen but also a well-written, humorous read.

Tagged , , , , ,
Sep 23 2011
1 Comment
Recs

#fridayreads

Whether you’re travelin’, holed up in the soon-to-be-flooded northeast, or just want an excuse to sit still as a corpse this Friday, here’s what will captivate you on the first day of autumn.

Justin Torres’ We the Animals
Torres’ debut novel has been hailed by basically everyone—and with good reason. It’s as affecting, gripping, and intelligent as anything you’ll read in 2011.

Michael Lewis’ Moneyball
Perhaps you’ve heard about the movie? Lewis’ classic sets the modern standard as far as baseball books go, finding story-within-story-within-story. Whether it’s Oakland’s unlikely draft choice Jeremy Brown, the shockingly serviceable first baseman Scott Hatteberg, or submariner (and former member of my Chicago White Sox) Chad Bradford, Lewis tells each story with remarkable swiftness and command.

Macy Halford’s “The Art of Fielding: Soul-Building”
In case all of the other hype surrounding Chad Harbach’s bestseller hasn’t swallowed you yet, New Yorker bloggers are book-clubbing it! Halford has some interesting thoughts about the book’s true engine, and a wonderful excerpt from a tremendously emotional scene. (Warning: der spoiler ahead!)

Maria Bustillos’ “I Love You Christopher Hitchens, You Irritating Bastard”
An extremely long look at one of our generation’s great minds. Bustillos doesn’t spare Hitchens, acknowledging his more specious stances and moral failings.

John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” (No link—go to the library, you lazy so-and-so’s)
Arguably Cheever’s greatest short fiction work. A friend emailed it to me this week, and I’m convinced it’s the best way to celebrate the passing of another beautiful summer.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 19 2011
Leave a comment
Review

Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding”

What I knew going in.

HYPE: Holy hell hype. Hype hype hype. Franzen hype—Franzen blurb. Six-hundred fifty thousand smackeroos. Michael Pietsch said it was huge but familiar. A book so important it demanded an extra eBook about the book—its making; its having traveled from MFA class to (eventually) most publications’ year-end “best of” lists.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Harbach is a big INFINITE JEST guy. Can’t hurt.

UNDERDOG: Overcooked media portrayal: Unemployed Harvard man sells book for a lot of money. The proper adjective in that sentence sticks out a bit, no? I mean, there are unemployed people and there are unemployed Ivy League people; the majority of both categories are probably English majors. But the latter, of course, are likely far less in number and far more marketable on the, well, market. Especially those with an MFA from the University of Virginia.

BASEBALL: A baseball book. Yes. I love baseball. And not only a baseball book, but one that hits close to home, one that deals with the mental problems of fielders; the loneliness of sport. Steve Blass. Chuck Knoblauch. Rick Ankiel. Those once-great players who suddenly and bafflingly lose it—it being not the world-class ability (lots of players turn into pumpkins overnight; the difference is those pumpkins are still in the top one percent of baseball players on earth), but remedial little league ability. Like a marathon runner who suddenly forgets how to walk; left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

What I know now.

THE ART OF FIELDING is the first novel by a man who might be the next great American writer. Reading it—tearing through it, putting off sleep for a few more pages, being too engrossed to get off the train and go to work—filled me with feelings I had to suppress. Critical faculties demanded more of themselves. A desire to write off every thought and every scribble in my notebook as hyperbole.

This is a great novel.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , ,
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 67 other followers