Having fallen for baseball in a shamefully wanton fashion last summer, I’ve been looking forward to the start of the season for quite some time now. I’ve also been anticipating it with a kind of creeping dread, given that I don’t have the time to scratch myself these days, let alone get sucked into watch three hours worth of baseball every night.
But I will. Go Phillies, etc.
Anyway, the timing is good for John Grisham’s CALICO JOE, a charming novel with shades of THE NATURAL, in which a rookie phenom called Joe Castle debuts for the Cubs in the 1973 season, only to come up against a mean-spirited Mets pitcher with a penchant for beanballs. Told by the son of said pitcher, and looking back on the events of ’73 from the perspective of today, it’s essentially a love letter to the game of baseball. And, like all the best love stories, and despite Grisham’s crowd-pleasing instincts at the finale, it is at its heart a tale of poisoned innocence and paradise lost.
It’s also only 194 pages long. If you start reading it now, you’ll be finished in time for the first pitch …
2 comments:
Wait. Aren't you in Ireland? I suspect that's a terrible place to watch baseball games except through mlb.com.
The season started a few days ago as two teams played a series in Japan that counts towards all official records.
Go Phillies? Can't anybody be a Mets fan but me?
To this day, the best job I've ever had was security guard in Fenway Park. Starting off in the celeb box elevator--I was one of the smallest on the crew, most of the other guards being college (American) football players and Criminal Justice majors from Northeastern U; I escorted everyone from Mike Dukakis to Marky Mark (Walberg) and his reputedly Funky Bunch to their boxes--I worked my way up to first baseline and finally, bleachers, where all the good fights were. Rarely in life-- and I'm including when I first heard my novel was going to be published and seeing my kids for the first time...ok, some minor hyperbole--have I ever felt as cool as I did standing on the Bosox dugout at games' end in my khaki trousers and navy Bosox blazer, keeping the crowds back, letting the odd kid through for an autograph. I mean to write about it some day...Go Sox!
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