Review: Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm (Houghton Mifflin: 1973)

Period novels have their own "feel" and "texture". There's almost a naive quality to them. John Alexander Graham wrote this story in the early 1970s, during the height of opposition against the Viet Nam War, the Watergate break-in, Munich, and the beginning of the end of the Reserve Clause in baseball. I look at this period in U.S. history as the end of America's innocence. Reality had arrived in the guise of economic downturn, military failure, and political corruption. In many ways Snowstorm is similar to other novels of the period (like Love Story, in its sentimentality and innocence and Watership Down, in its attempt at social commentary).

Graham's Snowstorm characterizes the end of naiveté. In the story, a successful businessman, Slezak, forms a baseball team for the pure love of the game. Slezak totes around a souvenir paperweight – a snow globe with the figure of the Bambino taking a home run swing – as a reminder of how pure and wonderful the game is to him. It’s no matter that he knows little of the rules or what is required to field a team; his aim is the original “build it and they will come” model. His Wichita Wraith will not be based in Wichita, but in a Boston suburb. The fans will not care what they are called, or where they play – they will simply come to watch, like him, because they love the game.

His players, epitomized by the team's catcher Petashne, are also not professionals. Very few of them, in fact, have any experience and their only qualification is their love of the game and belief they can play. Their innocence is characterized by their individuality; when sent to purchase their uniforms each picks out an outfit that may or may not be an actual baseball uniform, but include garish features (such as buttons, or holes, or multiple colors) that each player admires. But when they get on the field, there is magic. Their passion for baseball elevates their skill level, and they start to win.

The story is a metaphor for the changes affecting America during the 60s and 70s. The team is so successful that it makes the jump to the Major Leagues. But like America’s confidence in itself (such as a supreme belief in right versus wrong in Southeast Asia), it is only a matter of time before the team is overcome by the weight of its own success. The increased media attention, bureaucracy, and capitalism take their toll on the players and the game they love. In a meaningful moment toward the end, we see Petashne pick up the snow globe and observe that with all the snow circling about, it’s hard to see the figure of Babe Ruth. (“What in the world is he doing playing ball in the middle of a blizzard?”)And like the demonstrations against an unpopular war, tension finally erupts in a melee between fans, the players, and management.

I enjoyed Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm, particularly when I got past the over-simplistic mindsets of the various characters and was able to read the story as the metaphor it is. This is not a piece of realism, nor a work of fantasy; Snowstorm is a work of social commentary and a tale of lost innocence. With a good bit of baseball thrown in.