Home Run!

Yesterday I read The Sun Field by Heywood Broun and I just loved it. Broun was a journalist of the early twentieth century, a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, and the one-time novelist of this straightforward, engaging, and wildly entertaining book. It’s a pity he never wrote a sequel to this fast-moving tale of triangle love but I am grateful that he wrote this one and that RVive books reissued it in 2008 after it had been out of print for eighty-five years.

The Sun Field delivers us into New York City of the early 1920s.  George Wallace, the narrator, is in love with his best pal, Judith Winthrop. She is a feminist before the word became common, strong-willed and smart, insightful and kind, and quite willing to call things exactly as she sees them.  George takes her out to a ball game one day where Judith’s only comment about the fanfare all around her is that “This is sillier than patriotism”.  But when she sees Tiny Tyler perform an incredible and beautiful feat of athleticism out on the sun field (baseball field) she falls in lust at first sight.  She explains to George the difference between love (which must grow over time) and lust (which can happen in an instant) after seeing a performance of Romeo and Juliet with Tiny:  “Juliet knew Romeo simply as a lover and nothing more.  They never discussed or engaged in any enterprise except love.  If they’d begun to talk about music, or the theatre, or free speech or birth control, it’s entirely possible that Juliet would have found that Romeo had a ratty and wholly objectionable mind and that she simply couldn’t stand him except briefly after sundown.”  The novel is full of discussions between George and Judith on all manner of topics, and all with the same wit and verve of this lecture on Romeo and Juliet.  No wonder George is in love but it will do him no good.

George has to stand by while Tyler falls hard for Judith and Judith continues in lust alone: the only solution is marriage but there is no way Judith is giving up her last name in exchange for Tiny’s.  Ups and downs in the marriage abound, with George always close by to offer another set of arms for Judith to fall into. But Judith is not the falling type and anyway she is too good a woman (much as she denies it) to fool around.  She is a stalwart to both her principles and her husband.

The three characters come from Broun’s own life. Judith is modeled after his wife Ruth Hale (herself a journalist and the founder of the Lucy Stone League, named for the nineteenth century activist dedicated to women keeping their maiden names), George is based on Broun himself, and Tiny is a variation on the great Babe Ruth whom Broun had covered closely as a sports writer. The fly ball catch that captivates Judith out on the sun field is based on a real life play of the Bambino and other true scenes from his baseball career are played out again in this novel.

Judith is simply a marvelous character.  Whether describing an article she is writing on “Tribal Rites in America”, which “begins with ‘The Golden Bough’ and ends with a discussion of the custom of standing up in the seventh inning” or commenting on Chicagoans, “I have no prejudice against Chicagoans.  Some of my best friends are Chicagoans, but I had never seen so many all together at the same time.  It does make a difference”, or berating Tiny, “I married you because you were beautiful and I thought you’d be gay and joyful.  All the other men I knew were people who sat around and talked about things and never got more than one toe into life.  Then I saw you in the sun field not even squinting at the light, and now you come back fat and moaning and repenting and expect me to like you.  How can I like you?  I don’t like you”, she is always clever and quick and genuine.  Just like George, I hung on her every word, every crazy idea and ideal, and when she presents her final word on marriage, I cheered:  “Smash the idea that two people go into the church and only one comes out.  Naturally that doesn’t really happen, but people keep up the pretense that it does. If the man and woman didn’t try so hard to keep in step they wouldn’t stumble so much…..It’s belittling God to take two divine souls and whittle them down to one.  Two can’t live more cheaply than one, but they can live more fully and more gloriously.”

The Sun Field is witty and cool, optimistically ironic at times and completely honest throughout.  As fresh as the day it was written, this is a definite must-read, a great book for the summer reading ahead.

Reviewed by Nina Sankovitch - originally posted on her blog www.readallday.org.  On the Read All Day website, Nina Sankovitch reviews one new book every day.

The Sun Field is published by Rvive Books - 978-0980190915 - $14.00

Available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or find a local bookseller through Indie Bound.

I flat out love this book.  The Celebrant has to be one of my favorite novels of all time.  If it is not the best baseball novel ever written, then it has to be among the top three or five.  Mark Harris must get his due of course, along with Bernard Malamud and Darryl Brock (see my review of If I Never Get Back.)  Still, Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s novel stands out for its beautiful writing and wonderfully complex story.

This is a work of historical fiction, meticulous in its recreation of the early 20th century, set most vividly in New York City.  Christy Mathewson, the greatest pitcher of his era, and the quintessential “All American Boy” and man, is the main baseball figure in the book.  Matthewson is the center of attention of the celebrant, Jackie Kapp, an immigrant Jewish jeweler, who after witnessing Mathewson’s first no-hitter, is struck with a strong case of hero worship of the great pitcher and whose life then becomes entwined with his hero’s.

This book is “about” baseball, the way it was played in an earlier time, and what it meant to the fans who watched it, but as with any great novel, the story transcends.  For example, Jackie loves the game, and in particular Christy, The Big Train, while in contrast, his brother simply gambles on baseball.  But there is much more to this beautifully written story.  The Jewish experience of America is embodied by Jackie - whose “real” name is Yakov Kapinski.  His love for baseball and the All-American Mathewson represents his love for America, what it means at its best, the highest and best principles it stands for, even as its players and owners, mere mortals all, are subject to all the failings and foibles of modern life.  The Black Sox Scandal of 1919 thus becomes a critical point in the book, challenging all who believed in and cared about baseball as beautiful and capable of transcendence, with the reality of its darker side.

Here’s a great and illuminating quote from the book:

“Have you ever considered what he is to himself? What it’s like to be Christy Mathewson? Imagine it. You know perhaps five hundred people by name, but fifty million know you. You make no more than ordinary demands upon people; you don’t insist that the sandwich you order for lunch be the most marvelous sandwich ever made, or that the bootblack’s shine dazzle the blind, yet the sandwich-maker and the bootblack and millions like them expect the superhuman from you, and finally they’ll accept nothing less. Expectation becomes demand, and it extends to everyone and everything. You hear the crowd groan if you give up a single hit; they expect a no-hit game. Give up a run and people say you’re off your game. Even your teammates turn to you to save them after they foul up the simplest plays. The writers make you a standard of excellence, and if a rival wins nineteen games in a row you’re expected to win twenty. The world makes you a god and hates you for being human, and if you plead for understanding it hates you all the more. Heros are never forgiven their success, still less their failure.” … Fullerton put on his hat. “Matty told me you were once a pitcher. I suspect that your [jewelry design] work is infused with the wish that you were he. You’re not alone. Inside every sportswriter there’s a frustrated athlete, according to the old saw. Why not? The same thing is inside every fan, or anyone who ever picked up a bat and a ball. But Kapp, you ought to thank God that your arm went bum. It might be you in Gethsemane tonight.”

Baseball is, after all, the most spiritual of American sports, and therefore has the capability to show us who we are through our love for it.  For me, The Celebrant captures the spirit of what baseball has meant and still means to the millions of Americans who have believed in its essence, despite everything in the “real” world that tends to make it harder for us to believe in the essence of what it is to be human.  A truly wonderful book.

Reviewed by David Wilk, unabashed fan

Now published by the University of Nebraska Press Bison Books - paperback - 978-0803270374 - $17.95

Available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or find it at your local independent store via Indie Bound

If this is not the best baseball book I have ever read, it comes mighty close.  I have read this book three times and am looking forward to reading it again.  I love the characters, I love the conceit of the book (waking up in the 19th century and getting to hang out with and play with the Cincinnati Red Stockings is a pretty compelling fantasy for anyone who loves baseball and I most certainly do), and I completely bought the emotional complexity of the story.  It doesn’t hurt to have a believable Mark Twain show up.  On top of  a great story and wonderful characters you want to spend more time with, Darryl Brock is a fine writer who never skips a beat.  Just a knock out book that I love deeply.  Reviewed by Readiac.

Published by Frog Books - 978-1583941874 - $15.95 - paperback.