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