Reading and Watching

I enjoy reading about baseball. I especially enjoy reading the baseball "classics," and Thomas Boswell's How Life Imitates the World Series is one of those. I certainly understand why Boswell is considered one of the lions of baseball literature, after progressing through the series of essays that make up this slim book.

Boswell has the baseball aficionado's feel for pacing, which is to say that these essays unfold at a deliberate pace. He also has the aficionado's ear for pithy commentary, sometimes insightful and sometimes outright hilarious. His essays are arranged to follow the months of the baseball season, March through October, and themed similarly, from spring training to the playoffs and the Series, lending a nice arc to the reading experience.

Along the way the reader is treated to situations and conversations from dugout to pressbox, locker room to playing field. Sometimes a single game is the focus; other times, a particular player. Little Leage baseball gets its due, as does Cuban baseball, although mostly the subject is the major leagues. It's a successful mix that puts different aspects of the game under the microscope, to good advantage.

And how does life imitate the World Series? It's all about how you handle the pressure.

Excerpt (Yankees vs. Red Sox playoff, 1987, bottom of the 9th, two outs):

This play-off lacked only one thing: a time machine. When Captain Carl, Boston cleanup man, stood at the plate facing Gossage with the tying run dancing off third and the winning run on first, that moment should have been frozen. The 32,925 standing fans, the poised runners, Yaz's high-held bat, Gossage's baleful glare: For once baseball had achieved a moment of genuine dramatic art -- a situation that needed no resolution to be perfect. A game, a season, and an entire athletic heritage for two cities had been brought to razor's edge. . . .

Sports' moments of epiphany are written on water. The spell of timelessness must be shattered, the house of cards collapse. Yaz cannot stand poised forever, waiting for the Goose. Art may aspire to fairness, but games cannot aim that high. They must settle for a final score.

"I was thinking, 'Pop him up,'" said Nettles [the Yankee third baseman]. "Then, Yaz did pop it up and I said, 'Jeez, but not to me.'"

Note: This book counts toward the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.