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.