Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230453
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
By John Feinstein. Villard. $22.50.
"Play Ball," released on baseball's 1993 Opening Day, is a readable but ultimately disappointing account of the 1992 season.
Feinstein is an excellent reporter and able writer, talents that earlier produced well-received "inside" looks at basketball and tennis. But baseball, as the author himself notes, is a remarkably open game. With baseball, unlike other sports, the type of book that Feinstein has written - for the most part - already exists in profusion.
The exception is the "troubled times" referred to in Feinstein's subtitle. The game's finances, its institutional racism, owner-player labor relations and similar topics all merit a level of scrutiny they so far have escaped. Unfortunately, Feinstein doesn't provide it, either.
He seems simply to assume, for example, that baseball finances are in the precarious condition that the owners claim. True, perhaps, but I wouldn't take the owners' word for it. More historical context might have helped, too: How are baseball's troubles today different, or worse, than in other eras?
It's as if Feinstein wrote two separate books under one cover. One book is the prologue and epilogue of "Play Ball," in which Feinstein discusses the game's underlying issues just enough to be tantalizing, but not nearly enough to be satisfying. The other book is what's in between, a retelling of the '92 season - descriptions of baseball figures, interviews with some of them, play-by-play narratives of on-field highlights, etc.
This is all familiar stuff. Feinstein does it ably and intelligently. But the competition is stiff, and others - Roger Angell comes to mind; so, in a quirky way, does Bill James - do it better.
Blue Ruin, A Novel of the 1919 World Series.
By Brendan Boyd. HarperCollins. $10.
This softbound reissue of Boyd's 1991 first novel, though dotted with the names of real baseball players and gamblers of the era, is a fictional first-person account of the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919. (For non-baseball fans: Several Chicago White Sox players conspired with gamblers that year to throw the World Series.)
The story is told through the eyes of Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, a small-time Boston gambler who convinces himself that the fix is principally his creation. He does in fact profit from it, but comes to recognize that the scheming was more pleasurable than the reward.
A morality play of sorts, "Blue Ruin" also offers a glimpse into the era: the pervasiveness of gambling in American life, and baseball management's exploitation of labor.
Sometimes You See It Coming.
By Kevin Baker. Crown. $20.
Unlike much baseball fiction, this first novel by Kevin Baker is actually about the game, and knowledgeably so.
The book's situations, which range from the somber to the hilarious, seem genuine, as do its characters, including the members of a fictional New York Mets team set in the present.
The character most obviously patterned after real life is Charlie Stanzi, the Mets' new manager. As a hotheaded purveyor of "Charlie Ball" and specialist in producing immediate winners at the expense of shortened careers and diminished prospects for long-haul success, "The Little Maniac" is a lookalike for the late Billy Martin.
Baker's tale of Stanzi's year with the Mets - and, more centrally, the last year of John Barr, the greatest player ever - is told mainly through the voice of "The Old Swizzlehead," centerfielder Rapid Ricky Falls. The reader comes to know Falls as much as the story line.
The taciturn Barr, however, is a mystery, and so are the reasons for the shockingly sudden decline in his performance. He can be known only through Falls and other observers.
The quest in the book for an answer to Barr's mysteries echoes the quest of fans for an answer to an imponderable question of real-life baseball: Just who is, or was, the game's greatest player?
In his impact on baseball, Babe Ruth might qualify. But the otherwise strong case for Ruth is mitigated by context (athletes today are faster, bigger and better trained than 70 years ago) and by a freewheeling lifestyle that almost certainly shortened Ruth's effective career.
In any event, Baker doesn't pattern Barr after Ruth or any other single figure. There are evocations of Ted Williams, with his consistently disciplined hitting; of Willie Mays, with a replay of centerfield catch off Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series; of Roberto Clemente, the Pirates' Hall of Famer whose career was cut tragically short; even perhaps a touch of Ty Cobb, in Barr's aloofness from the other players (though not in other respects).
The title alludes to another of baseball's mysteries: the seeming ability of the very best players to anticipate the play - of outstanding hitters to start their swings even before the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, of outstanding fielders to get a jump even before the ball leaves the hitter's bat.
But in Baker's fine novel, the reader learns, even the best can't see it coming every time.
Geoff Seamans is associate editor of the editorial page and a suffering Kansas City Royals fan.
by CNB