Audry, Barlow Road Grade School Pioneers (Bat 6)
Chuck Arnold, New York Lions (The Last Great Season)
Waxahachie Beckland, Splendid Dominican Tourists (Brittle Innings)
"Blockade" Billy Blakely, New Jersey Titans (Blockade Billy)
Bubba Broadax, Smackover High School (Fielder's Choice)
Joe Louis Brown, Graceville Oilers (Long Gone)
Joe Buck Cartwell, Arkansas Reds (The Dixie Association)
Tim Connell, Lions (Chance)
Chico Hernandez, Veracruz Blues (Veracruz Blues)
Dean Larson, Washington Memorials (The Spring Habit)
Boon Lions, Oxford Fury (The Dixie Association)
Bingo Long, All-Stars (The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings)
Phil Nagle, Boston Blues (Conduct of the Game)
Bruce Pearson, New York Mammoths (The Southpaw)
Hothead Ptah, Rupert Mundys (The Great American Novel)
Petashne, Wichita Wraith (Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm)
"Turkey" Sloan, Highbridge Hellbenders (Brittle Innings)
Earl Smith, Chicago Blades (Conduct of the Game)
Matty Sternweiss, St. Louis Browns (Big League Dreams)
Tootie, Bear Creek Grade School Ridgers (Bat 6)
Hank West, Brooklyn Dodgers (World Series)
In a similar vein as Mark Harris' Henry Wiggen with a touch of Ring Lardner's Jack Keefe, Rick Norman presents Andrew Jackson Fielder. Fielder's Choice (August House: 1991) is a baseball memoir with "Jax" Fielder recalling his life as a small-town Arkansas pitcher and war veteran. Narrating his life to an unnamed Army officer after the war, Jax paints a roller coaster of a story. As a high school pitcher, Fielder invents the "gooseball", a sidearm throw that seemed to rise as it closed on the plate. Fielder's success with the gooseball eventually earns him a spot on the St. Louis Browns. Like Wiggen and Keefe, Fielder is a rather simple soul who innocently moves about in a complicated world.
Fielder's career with the Browns in short. He signs in 1940, spends much of the 1941 season with the minor league Toledo Mudhens, and then is called up in August to try and help the Browns secure a pennant. Unfortunately, Fielder's ultimate claim to fame in baseball is not his pitching (despite his brilliance on the mound), but his error in the final game of the season that would have brought the Brownies the pennant. Of course, this being the fall of 1941, any hope for a lengthy career (and restoring his reputation) are cut short when America is drawn into the War.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jax immediately volunteers. He is eventually sent into combat in the spring of 1945 as a gunner on a B-29. In Norman's continuing tale of lucky ups and downs, Fielder is "ejected" over Japan after his plane is attacked. He is captured and sent to a POW camp. At the camp, however, his identity as a Major League pitcher is discovered by a Japanese admiral who has Fielder transferred to his personal care. The admiral's wish is for Jax to teach the admiral's son, Yoshi, to pitch. And Fielder obliges.
While Fielder is a rather simple individual, but his life is full of complications. Because of his trusting personality, though, he doesn't fully realize just how convoluted his life really becomes until much later. Jax blindly accepts the role of pitching coach, but in seemingly innocent conversations with the admiral blurts out possibly damaging intelligence because he feels he's no longer serving in the Army. And his encounters with his sister-in-law, Dixie, gradually cause discord between himself and his brothers. Overall, Fielder's boat of life appears to follow a downward spiral solely due to Jax's innocence. But like Henry Wiggen, in the end he bobs to the surface without any serious damage.
Fielder's Choice is a charming tale of decency and honor amidst darkness and obstacles. The comparisons with The Southpaw and You Know Me Al are unavoidable, but Fielder's Choice is wonderful in its own terms. The character of Jax Fielder is certainly not Jack Keefe - while he is a simpleton, his naivete does not stretch as far as that of Lardner's character. And while the similarities between Fielder and Wiggen are closer, Fielder actually handles his situations in a much more mature manner. His displays of bravery and principle, I think, are much deeper than found in Henry Wiggen. This is a highly enjoyable story and one to be added to any collection.
Rookie superstars are always compared to stars of previous generations. Carl Yastrzemski was to be the next Ted Williams - and that was understandable as he followed so closely with Williams' departure. Similarly, when Bobby Bonds was introduced as the newest Giants outfielder, he was touted as the next Willie Mays.
Ron Chapman is the rookie phenom of the New York Barons in John Hough, Jr.'s The Conduct of the Game (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 1986). Chapman actually plays a minor supporting role in the story, acting partly as antagonist to the novel's central character, umpire Lee Malcolm, as well as a representative of racism and bigotry during the book's 1960s setting. Actual prejudice, however, is never really displayed by anyone. Chapman relays his feelings of being biased against through his statements toward Malcolm. He feels that his race is the ultimate reason calls are made against him. When he is compared to Willie Mays by a sportswriter, he fires back - asking why he shouldn't be called the next Joe DiMaggio or Babe Ruth.
Chapman is fond of stating that his struggle through baseball has been akin to "picking cotton." But his record does not bear out the type of obstacles that one would associate with someone having to overcome racial bias. He is a graduate of UCLA, spent one year in both A and AAA ball before being promoted to the Majors. Hough portrays Chapman, though, as the stereotypical African American with a two-hundred year chip on his shoulder. Chapman is driven, and arrogant and seemingly in the hunt for a fight. But there seems to be a degree of conflict within Chapman in regards to racial inequality. In several instances - such as when called out in a close play, or tossed from a game, his response is one of "you can't do that", but when umpire Malcolm tries to settle tensions down by using Chapman's first name, Chapman's retort is one of "you don't know me" (as in "you don't know where I'm from or what I've had to endure").
Overall, because one of the underlying themes of the book revolves around prejudice, Chapman's character is never allowed to fully change in the main character's mind. But we do learn that Chapman has a different side - he helps disadvantaged youths, has been arrested during Civil Rights protests, and even becomes involved with a white woman. In a story centered around Ron Chapman I think we would see his character evolve to be more sympathetic. And that might mean that instead of playing with a scowl of distrust, Chapman would wear a smile (and display a love for the game) that would result in him being the next DiMaggio or Mantle or Robinson or, even Willie Mays.
Birthday greetings go out to Jerry Klinkowitz, today. Klinkowitz is the author of Short Season and Other Stories (Johns Hopkins: 1988) and Basepaths (Johns Hopkins: 1995). The former is a collection of stories about a fictional minor league team in Iowa. These stories were novelized in Basebpaths.
Klinkowitz was a member of the ownership group of the now-defunct Waterloo Diamonds (Midwest League) from 1978 to 1994. He wrote of his experiences in Writing Baseball (Illinois: 1991)*. His fictional works drew from his time with the Diamonds.
Currently a professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, Klinkowitz is also a noted authority on the works of Kurt Vonnegut.
* reprinted in 1999 by Southern Illinois as Owning a Piece of the Minors.
"It's when you're good that they throw at your head."
"In the summer of my thirty-seventh year, when the air began leaking so conspicuously from my life that remaining oblivious to it soon required my full attention, my father fell into a pig-rendering fire and, of his unspeakable injuries, perished."
"From the dugout where Grouchy sat, the whole field spread itself out before him, the diamond not a diamond at all but what it really was, a square with players at every corner."
"This was supposed to be a book about losers."
"It was bad enough going 0-for-5 and committing a dumb-ass error that led to two unearned runs in the bottom of the ninth that beat you."
"My name is Gideon Clark and, like my father before me, I have on more than one occasion been physically ejected from the corporate offices of the Chicago Cubs Baseball Club, which are located at Wrigley Field 1060 West Addison, in Chicago."
"They were the laughing boys of the American League."
(Strike Three You're Dead, Rosen; Blue Ruin, Boyd; Keystone Kids, Tunis; All G.O.D.S. Children, Craig; The Dreyfuss Affair, Lefcourt; The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, Kinsella; The Seventh Babe, Charyn.)
Ohio native and author of Veracruz Blues (1996), author Mark Winegarnder turns 49 today. Veracruz Blues is often included in lists of the best written baseball novels. Winegardner did his homework on this one in fictionalizing the Mexican Baseball League's attempt to lure American players south shortly after World War II.
His other baseball works include a couple of non-fiction titles: Prophet of the Sandlot (1990), about Major League scout Tony Lucadello's last season, and The 26th Man (1991), co-authored with, and about, minor league journeyman Steve Fireovid.
In addition to numerous short stories and articles, Winegarnder is also the author of several other non-baseball novels, including Crooked River Burning (2001) and The Godfather Returns (2004). Winegardner is on the faculty at Florida State.
Joining similar works such as Man on Spikes and Chance, there is Season's End (Little, Brown & Co: 1992), by Tom Grimes. Like the aforementioned novels, Season's End is a career study of a star player. In the case of Season's End, the player is infielder Mike Williams: the "best pure singles hitter", ever. Grimes re-tells Williams while navigating through the tumultuous period in baseball from the mid-1970s to the beginning of the 1980s. When we are introduced to Williams we find him re-signing his contract just as the reserve clause is overturned in Federal Court. From this point on Williams' life in baseball changes dramatically. As Williams describes his ordeals with trying to earn what he's worth, struggling through slumps, the demands from his team, his agent, and his family, we are also cast back to stories of where Williams came from and how he ended up in the situation he finds himself.
Mike Williams is a complicated character. On one hand he is a rather simple individual, only wanting to play baseball his way: one base hit at a time. He appreciates the money he receives, but does not exhibit the level of greed others have (or wish Williams to possess). But Williams is also very introspective. He sees the beauty of the game; that it was timeless and could conceivably go on forever. And he sees through the various games both his agent and team owner play to one-up each other over salary and public relations. He also displays moments of weakness in regards to women and other vices, yet recognizes the self-destructive nature of his actions.
While Season's End is about the life and times of a major league ballplayer, it is equally a tale of how the end of the reserve clause and the emergence of free agency affected the game of baseball. Agents moved to the forefront and players became grossly overpaid as owners were faced with bidding against each other. And, with higher salaries came demands by the fans to see perfection. As Williams, himself, puts it: "The money, the greed, the insatiable appetite of the fans -- they became larger than the game, the field ceasing to be a sanctuary and become, instead, a place to dwell on our bitterness and frustration." In effect, baseball as Williams knew it, was over.
