Birthday greetings

Pete Fromm, author of How This All Started (Picador: 2000), celebrates a birthday today. Fromm is a four-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Award, including one for How This All Started.

Fromm is also a prolific writer of short stories (over 100). He currently is on the faculty at Pacific University.

Matti Sternweiss: faith and destiny behind the plate

Sandy Koufax sat out a World Series game instead of working on Yom Kippur. He did, however pitch regularly on the Sabbath during the season. Matti Sternweiss, the central character in Allen Hoffman's Big League Dreams (Abbeville Press: 1997) does not have quite that level of religious conviction when we are introduced to him at the beginning of the novel. An immigrant from Poland, Matti - or "Sirdy" as he's known in the baseball world - has grown up with baseball and sees a clear separation between the two. He has always determined what he wanted to do and then gone and done it.

Big League Dreams is set in the summer of 1920, amid the swirling rumors and accusations of gambling and game-fixing over the previous Fall's World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. Sternweiss is the starting catcher for the mediocre St. Louis Browns. We are reminded that players of that era worked basically as indentured servants to team owners; that it was the owners who raked in the profits and "didn't share." And for Matti, even though he has proven he is a good field manager (he is guiding two of his pitchers toward 20-game winning seasons), he knows that he will not reap any monetary rewards for his efforts. ("Who but [the manager] really knew how important Matti was to the club's success?")

Hoffman's Sternweiss, while professing no superstitions or adherence to religious rituals, is haunted by images of a recent mailplane crash in New Jersey. He is obsessed with images of the crushed fuselage, and envelopes of mail fluttering about in the empty field where the plane crashed. This is a recurring image in Matti's mind and Hoffman skillfully reveals it for what it is: a symbol of lost faith.

It's his loss of faith in his religion, but also in himself, and his fellow man, that moves Matti to consider involving himself in a gambling fix. He wants to earn enough money to marry his sweetheart (who was the nurse over his father's bedside when he died). He knows that his desire to someday be a manager will likely not happen (likely because he is Jewish). But a huge payoff could lead him to a better life.

Matti, though, must weigh the risks with the rewards: The risk of banishment from baseball versus the reward of marriage to the woman he loves. But when his plan is uncovered, he is taken before the leader of the small immigrant Jewish community from which Matti lives on the outskirts. Because many of the gamblers associated with the growing Black Sox scandal are Jews, if a Jewish player is discovered to have fixed a game it could result in a great backlash against the religion, as a whole. Will Matti pursue the monetary rewards, or be pointed in the right direction by the leader of his synagogue? He faces this decision as a game against Detroit and its star player, Ty Cobb, approaches.

Matti's story is a morality tale of temptation and redemption. Money and fame compete with and against each other. Matti knows he is a good player - and his efforts are noticed by the fans and press. Yet he knows his career is limited because of factors outside of his control. Matti eventually must decide whether his life's path is one he can control or rely on the faith he's seemingly lost to take him where he is destined.

Reference material

I recently obtained a copy of The Baseball Novel (McFarland & Co.: 2008) by Noel Schraufnagel. This is an invaluable resource for anyone who is a fan of baseball fiction. Schraufnagel has included an enormous amount of bibliographic information, including lists, plot capsules, and his own personal reviews. Schraufnagel presents summaries for over 400 titles between 1838(!) and 2008. Even if you find that you don't agree with Schraufnagel's conclusions as to the relative merits of a particular novel, this bibliography is valuable just for the list of titles. I found myself going through the book to identify titles I hand't heard of and I came across at least a dozen that I've added to my future acquisition list.

The reviews contained in The Baseball Novel are helpful and insightful. You have to place some level of credibility with Schraufnagle, just because of the sheer number of books he's read. I compared a few of Shraufnagel's opinions with my own. I was pleasantly surprised that his opinion of Veteran's Park (Don J. Snyder, Ivy Books: 1988) matched well with my own opinion: that it is a greatly over-looked novel of literary merit within the genre. In glancing through his reviews, I liked his side notes as to titles that are must-reads versus those that should be relegated to the "worst" of the category.

Schraufnagel admits to limiting his annotations to adult novels because of the likely similarly large number of juvenile baseball titles (particularly published prior to the 1960s). But the dividing line between adult and juvenile fiction is gray. Just note Schraufnagel's inclusion of the John Tunis series. But I'll go along with this, only because of the time it would have taken to include them all.

This is the first reference piece I've acquired to accompany my collection of baseball fiction. I've put Andy McCue's Baseball by the Books (William C. Brown: 1991) and Lauricella's Home Games (McFarland & Co.: 1999), among a few others, as other references I want to obtain, if nothing else, than to balance out opinions and deepen my understanding of baseball fiction.

I appreciate bibliographic references like these that treat full-length novels, but that's only really a segment of baseball fiction. In addition to novels (both adult and juvenile), there are novellas and short stories. I'd love to see someone put together an all-inclusive bibliography of all types - novels and short stories - categorized by sub-genre (e.g., adult, juvenile, mystery, science fiction, etc.) Sort of a "baseball fiction in and out of print" type of reference. Wow, now that would be reference book!

Leading Off: Opening Lines, Part 2

"Time was, on a summer afternoon in the northern Vermont hamlet of Kingdom Commons, when Ethan Allen would walk completely around the rectangular village green and never be out of earshot of the Red Sox game on somebody's radio."

"Behind the grandstand the late afternoon sun moved around a big tree and poured its sticky heat into him."

"Old pal: Well Al I have not got much to tell you."

"A word of advice: Don't appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated when you're twenty-one."

"On the hot and humid night of July 21, 1958, when all signs pointed to a tenth consecutive pennant for the New York Yankees, a manhole cover rose slowly from its resting place near the center of a certain intersection in Washington, D.C."


(Waiting for Teddy Williams, Mosher; Man on Spikes, Asinof; You Know Me Al, Lardner; Season's End, Grimes; The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Wallop)

Is this (a little patch of) Heaven?

Iowa has an allure over baseball novelists. W.P. Kinsella has made repeated visits to this state in various novels (see Shoeless Joe or The Iowa Baseball Confederacy) and short stories ("Frank Pierce, IA", "K Mart", and "The Dixon Corbelt League"). Jerry Klinkowitz also shares this affinity in stories contained in his collection, Short Season, and in his novel Basepaths. They both, of course, have ties to the state. Kinsella attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and Klinkowitz was on the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa. The University of Iowa's Program in Creative Writing has also included such baseball writers as Tom Grimes (Season's End), Philip Roth (The Great American Novel), and Don J. Snyder (Veteran's Park).

Robert Curtis joins the ranks of honorary Iowans with his The Baseball Patch (iUniverse: 2001). Along the lines of Kinsella, The Baseball Patch is a quirky, magic-laden tale about the pursuit of dreams and immortality. Curtis presents two protagonists: John Evanston, a Phoenix sportswriter, and Harley Walker, a retirement home friend of Evanston's grandfather.

As boys, Walker, his cousin, and their friend set out from their childhood home (the stereotypically-named, Cornville, Iowa) to seek fame and fortune as baseball players. Being 11 or 12 years old didn't seem to concern them. Their little league team had "magic" and hadn't lost a home game since Babe Ruth had attended one of their games five years previous while on his way to the West Coast for some barnstorming. They ride the rails west and end up trying out for a minor league team in Bisbee, Arizona along the Mexican border. After the try-out, they go their separate ways and end up with a variety of life-long experiences, never returning to Iowa.

Evanston is known to his peers as "The Freak" for his propensity for writing odd feature stories. When he learns that there's a little league team in the middle of Iowa that may not have lost a game in 60 years he decides this is the story of a lifetime (pun intended). He convinces his flirtatious editor to let him travel to Iowa to cover the NCAA wrestling championships from where he'll leave to investigate the baseball team. His editor mischievously routes his trip to Iowa through Fargo perhaps, as Evanston supposes, so that she can meet up with him later in Des Moines.

As Evanston heads off to track down the mysterious story behind Harley's reminiscences, Walker is visited by his former friend Zach Jared, who made the trip with him to Arizona. Jared convinces Walker that it's time to locate Harley's cousin and go home (to Iowa). The novel is then a story of planes, trains, and automobiles as it follows the journey of Harley and Evanston until they meet up in the small Iowa town where time seems to have stopped.

There's a lot to admire about this little tale. While it is fairly short (the book is only 160 or so pages long), it contains a lot of period tidbits about the 1920s and 30s. I liked the description of how Babe Ruth's caravan of town cars came into town, and the imagery of the dusty landscape in southern Arizona. It's a fantasy piece, for sure, although the mystery of why the Cornville Little League team hasn't lost any home games since 1923 is quickly surmised. But it's a fun little story and the interaction between young and old is entertaining. The ending is wrapped up quick and neat, and perhaps could have used a little tension or some degree of conflict before the ending. But The Baseball Patch is actually fine the way it is: like the rolling Iowa countryside where it is set.

Leading Off: Opening Lines

"You've probably never heard of me, but I'm in the Hall of Fame."

"Our family came to New York in the winter of '89, and in the spring I saw my first game of baseball."

"Always been in the right place at the wrong time."

"Sister Mary Bernadette! How many times have I asked you not to wear your cleats in the sanctuary?"

"Bottom half of the seventh, Brock's boy had made it through another inning unscratched, one! two! three!"

"My father saw him years later playing in a tenth-rate commercial league in a textile town in Carolina, wearing shoes and an assumed name."



(Murder in Fenway Part, Soos; The Celebrant, Greenberg; Veracruz Blues, Winegardner; The Spring Habit, Hanson; The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., Jerry Waugh, Prop., Coover; Shoeless Joe, Kinsella.)

Books on Deck

Last weekend I picked up two relatively new novels at the local Borders (it always helps to have a coupon!)

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (Picador, 2009)
Home, Away by Jeff Gillenkirk (Chin Music Press, 2010)

The former was recently reviewed by Ron Kaplan back in April, and the two main characters are tied together through baseball. The story, though, is primarily centered around caring for someone who is aging, but I liked the premise and, of course, the baseball aspect.

While perusing the aisles at Borders, I came across Home, Away and picked it up, as well. Gillenkirk's novel is a father-son story and how that relationship is tested over time.

These two acquisitions bring the books currently "on the bench" (i.e., not read, yet) to ten. For me, that's a good number to have available heading into the end of the season, as well as provide for a substantial reserve for next. I now have to decide whether to go ahead and read one more before the World Series, or hold out until next Opening Day. I do have my sights on a few other novels that I'd love to add to the current Bench, including The Man With Two Arms and The End of Baseball. Snagging one or two additional books this fall would make certainly make the decision to dip into the reserve easier.