Book Review: The Gloaming

   By Melanie Finn

• Pub Date: 2016

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: Gloaming is one of my favorite words 

 *****

    Let me tell you about how I first came across the word gloaming. I'm an old baseball fan, and one of the old baseball stories I read early in life is about "The Homer in the Gloamin'"

    Gloaming is the twilight of the day. In his recent book, Lark Ascending, Silas House has his character use the word. A second character expressed ignorance, asking what it meant. She told him. He asked why she didn't just say dusk. She responded, correctly, that "the word gloaming is so much lovelier." 

    Anyway, baseball. Back in the 1930s, most ballparks did not have lights. Wrigley Field was a case in point -- indeed it was the last modern park to put in lights, in 1988. So the park was dark at night. But late in the 1938 season, the Cubs and Pirates were in a pennant race, with the Pirates half a game ahead of the Cubs. So game 2 of their series would determine which team moved into first place. 

    The game was tied. As nighttime approached and the ninth inning started, the umps said that if neither team scored, they would rule it a tie. And since baseball did not allow for tie games, it would be played all over the next day as part of a doubleheader.

    Top of the ninth, the Pirates failed to scored. Bottom of the ninth, the first two Cubs went hitless. Gabby Hartnett, the Cubs player-manager, was up, and down to his last strike.

    He hit the next pitch into the bleachers, and as he ran the bases and fans swarmed the field to celebrate the victory and move into first place, a reporter for the Associated Press started writing his game story. He dubbed Hartnett's blast, "The Homer in the Gloamin'" 

    So, the legend lives on from the banks of the lake they call Michigan.

__________________________________

    Ok, now about the book, which is not about baseball, and has neither a pennant race nor a home run. 

    What it does have is some good stories and  decent writing. It starts slowly with a series of flashbacks and present time settings. 

    Bit I am somewhat uncomfortable with her settings in Africa, where her descriptions portray a continent of dirty, backwards, violent people. It's the story of a white savior.

    The protagonist and narrator, Pilgrim Jones, is a white woman who has traveled the world with her husband, a human rights lawyer. We learn this, and why, over time. We also learn that while traveling in Africa, she simply decides to abandon her companions and stay in a country village.

    The explanation comes through as she meets a series of characters, most of whom are more interesting than Pilgrim. They all have backgrounds of trauma or bad choices -- and some have both. The first half of the book tells the tales from Pilgrim's perspective, while the latter part reveals details of the rest of the cast.

    The second part is infinitely better. Some of the tales are about people people causing pain and living with it, or perhaps seeking and finding redemption. Others are those who choose to be called victims, but find ways to go on -- or not.

    It hard what to make of this book. Pilgrim's character almost feels like a cliche, a trope. The others are more real, if a mite exaggerated. 

Book Review: Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life

 

•  Author: Bill Madden
• Pub Date: 2020

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Tom Seaver was my boyhood idol 

********

    I cheered when Tom Seaver won the 1969 Cy Young Award the same year the Miracle Mets won their first World Series. I cringed when the Mets spitefully traded Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds in 1977. And I cried when Seaver died at his California home on Aug. 31, 2020.

    All that I knew. As a result, much of this biography -- Seaver's early days in Fresno, the Mets being able to sign him because the team's name was picked from a hat, and his glorious early career as "The Franchise," the player who led the Mets through their Amazin' days -- was a trip down memory lane. 

    I even knew about some of his later days in baseball -- his only no-hitter with the Cincinnati Reds, his 300th win with the Chicago White Sox, and his being on the field in a Boston Red Sox uniform when the Mets won their second World Series in 1986. After all, as a youngster I grew up reading every story I could find about his life, and I stayed enamored of him even after he was no longer a Met, even after I was no longer living in New York.

    Still, I was surprised by what I did not know: How Seaver was sometimes considered arrogant and distant by some teammates in his later years, how some of his best friends were his catchers, how he idolized Gil Hodges and later Tony La Russa, and how he considered quitting after the Mets let him go to Chicago in 1983 because of sheer incompetence.

    He had a falling out with the Mets over that fiasco, and the author notes that the Mets did little to alleviate the situation. The owners from the late '80 to 2020 often ignored the Mets' history and former players. When Shea Stadium was demolished in favor of Citi Field in 2009, Seaver and others lamented that it looked more like a shrine to the old Brooklyn Dodgers than the Mets. No memorials then existed for the franchise's star players.

    So, while it's a positive history, this is no hagiography. Still, it's a great read, with the workman-like sports writing and compelling insights of a newspaperman. Of course, because Madden's an older newspaper guy writing about an old player, some of the analysis isn't exactly modern.

    Statistics, for example. Whenever the author wants to show how Seaver was facing the best of the best players, he gives the hitters' stats from the old days -- BA-HRs-RBIs. No slashlines, no OBP, no WAR needed. He does the same with the pitching stats -- Seaver's prominence is always proved with wins, strikeouts, and ERA. Again, no WAR, no BABIP, no ERA+.

     And both Seaver and the author scoff at pitch counts. Seaver was appalled that starting pitchers today seldom go more than six innings. And while he acknowledges pitch counts are a legitimate measure, he says they were much higher in the good old days. Today, pitchers top out at 80 or 90 pitches per game. Seaver says he often threw 140 pitches a game. Teammate Nolan Ryan often threw 150 or more.

    Still, it's a fun book, and Seaver is overall a likeable guy who led a good life.

Book Review: Summerland

 

•  Author: Michael Chabon

• Where I bought found this book: Kenton County Public Library giveaway at the Pride Festival, Covington, Ky.

• Why I bought collected this book: Magic. Baseball. A perfect double-play. And it was free.

******

    A motley crew of young children, faeries, giants, and assorted folkloric creatures inhabit our four worlds, but a combination of ecological destruction, meanness, and a bored creator who wants to end it all threaten its very existence.

    Enter baseball, a game with a mythology all its own, which could either make things right or cause further destruction.

    Indeed, baseball is already at least partly responsible for the latter. Author Chabon -- obviously a fan of the traditional game --  posits that the introduction of the designated hitter tore a hole in the fabric of the universe, leading to its current downward path. 

    This is a fun, if sometimes unwieldy undertaking. At 500 pages -- precisely the number of lifetime home runs that once ensured enshrinement in Cooperstown -- it's sometimes overwhelming. And its characters -- including a girl who loves the game and plays it well, and a boy who is uncertain about it all, but accedes to his widowed father's wishes that he play -- tends to be, shall we say, tropes of the trade.

    They include a mournful Sasquatch -- don't call her bigfoot! -- a mean giant, a changeling boy who feels lost in our world, and a ferisher scout who may not be immortal but has Seen It All. Also, a Major League star -- a ringer!! -- who defected from Cuba, a car that can fly and runs on moonshine, and a magical bat taken from the tree that feeds the worlds.

    They come together to save the universe in a novel that is themed, inspired, and timed by baseball. It's enjoyable -- the writing is (for the most part) crisp, the characters are wonderful (if a bit predictable), and the story is a magic fable tied together by a love for baseball.

Book Review

 Smart Baseball, by Keith Law

• Where I bought this book: Volumes Bookstore, Chicago
• Why I bought this book: I read a few opening pages of several chapters and liked them

*******

    Baseball is like physics. The concepts are getting more esoterical, and the math is getting harder. But that math is proving many of  the old beliefs to be myths, and those new statistics to be correct.

    Actually, the major flaw in this book is that it is five years old -- and this edition was updated in 2017. Thus, keeping with the physics analogy, it's operating in an earlier dimension from what is happening now. Still, Law says the major explosion in data and its uses came about as he was writing the book, and the future changes will be more incremental, not expotenial.

    Its major point is how the statistical analysis in baseball -- and the sheer types and amount of data that are becoming available -- is changing the very nature of the game. The old stats, easy to compile or calculate, and simple to understand, were just plain wrongheaded and at best useless. At their worst, they measured things that didn't matter, or left out large parts of the games.

    For instance: RBIs, once thought as an ultimate measure of a player's offensive worth, in reality favored players who had teammates who got on base in front of them. Wins and losses, once seen as being the definition of a starting pitcher's importance, instead gave one man credit based on what others did on the field.

    The great benefit of the old stats is that they were simple to understand, readily available, and intuitive. The new ones are a bit more difficult: Not everyone has access to or can understand the data, the calculations can be difficult, and they must be explained. 

    But they are immeasurable better: On-base percentage and slugging percentage are far superior to mere batting average, which leaves a lot out of the equation and can mislead about a player's worth. New pitching stats give a better indication of a pitcher's performance, unlike, say, the save, which is worse than useless and ruined the game for the last 40 years. (Law's takedown of the save and how it was used is a major reason I bought this book.)

    These new stats are here to stay. They give greater insight in what players do and what they can do. The collection of information is staggering, and still being evaluated. They have lead to a revolution in the use of fielders. They may be able to predict -- and thus prevent -- injuries. 

    Teams are hiring entire staff -- many with doctorates in analytics -- to think about, gather, and use the numbers now available. Coaches, managers, and front-office staff are becoming better attuned to hard data. Players are recognizing the benefit to their games and careers.

    It's time for the fans to come along, and learn to accept -- and even love -- the numbers. Dump the save. Embrace WAR. 

     

Book Review: Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever

Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever: Mostly True Stories, by Ed McClanahan

• Where I bought this book: Kentucky Book Festival, Lexington
• Why I bought this book: McClanahan is Kentucky's best unknown writer

*********

    I first fell in love with McClanahan's writing soon after I moved to the commonwealth some 40 years ago, and a colleague suggested -- nay, insisted -- that I read The Natural Man, McClanahan's first novel.. 

    I did. I was hooked.

    McClanahan has led an extraorinary 20th Century life. Born in Brooksville, the seat of rural Bracken County, he was a part of the pre-war generation -- too young for World War II, and smart enough and pacifist enough to avoid the Korean War. McClanahan is a contemporary of the legendary Kentucky poet and author, Wendell Berry, along with Pulitzer-prize winner Larry McMurtry and beat/hippie author Ken Kesey. He ran with the Merry Pranksters. He was an author, professor, and lecturer under the moniker, "Captain Kentucky." Along with Mason, Berry, James Baker Hall, and Gurney Norman, McClanahan was part of the group called the "Fab Five" of Kentucky literature.

    In Not Even ..., McClanahan pens a ragtag collection of tales stretching from his boyhood days to his current elderly strolls around Lexington. The result is funny, yet touching, a feeling that you are listening to an old man in the latter years of his life lightheartedly recalling his earlier days of glory. He explores his relationship as the hippie, ne'er-do-well son of an upright, businessman-father who brokers little nonsense and was unusually proud of the cut of his nose.

The nose, my father firmly believed, is composed of certain pliable matter that one can mold and shape over time like a lump of gristly modeing clay, if -- if --one develops the proper habits of life and sticks to them assiduously. Such as: When said olfactory apparatus itches, son, do not scratch same by rubbing it with the heel of your hand as if you want to smear the gaddamn thing all over your counternance. Rather, delicately grasp it between the thumb and forefinger, just below the bridge -- thus; yes; just so -- and gently pull forward and down, thereby addressing the offending itch while simultaneously helping the nose to become all that it can be, which is to say a nose not unlike the paternal beezer itself.

    Some of the stories may be true -- one he claims to have video proof he found on the Internet. Others, like the one above, he admits, might be a teensy bit exagerrated.  There are those he says are true to the best of his recollections. A few, perhaps, might just well be, perhaps, merely allegorical. 

    It's a memoir in the best sense of the term -- self effacing, forgoing sentimentality if he chooses, grumbling about memory loss if it provides a convenient escape hatch.

    It's short, and sweet, and funny as hell. Go read it.

Book Review: Rockaway Blue

 Rockaway Blue, by Larry Kirwan

    It's almost three years after the 9/11 attacks, and the Murphy family remains in turmoil.

    Police Lt. Brian Murphy lies in his grave. His widow Rose and young son Liam remain lost in their big house by the ocean, unable to live up to the memory of the man who is revered as a martyred hero. His younger brother Kevin, a firefighter, still lives and works in his Rockaway neighborhood, fending off adulthood and his brother's shadow.

 

   His parents, NYPD Detective Sgt. Jimmy Murphy, retired, and childhood sweetheart Maggie, find themselves floundering, their Irish Catholism hanging heavy on their souls; growing old, growing apart, and unclear of both their futures and their pasts.

    Into this steps Kirwan, himself an Irish emigrant who moved to New York in the 1970s, and lived the authentic immigrant experience. 

    Kirwan is a polymath. He's a singer and songwriter, the founder and force of the Irish American rock band Black 47. He's a playwright and novelist. He wrote Paradise Square, a musical about the convergence of Irish and African music in the mid-19th Century, which is opening in Chicago. He is the host of Celtic Crush, a widely popular radio program on SiriusXM.

    In Rockaway, Kirwan wants to write of the Irish community's falling apart, losing its ethnic sense, and no longer dominating the city's police and fire brigades. But the overwhelming novel tries to do too much. Its themes run the gamut -- questions of faith and family, of community and identity, of the changing definitions of manhood and womanhood, of love and marriage, of the shifting cultures, even of the rivalry between the Mets and the Yankees.

    Still, it centers around a single, burning question: Why was Brian -- who died a hero because he ran back inside after leading people to safety -- at the World Trade Center before the first plane hit? Detective Sgt. Murphy's unofficial investigation raises the hackles of his former tribe as he delves into the issues described above. and his efforts at easing his family's guilt and heartbreak sometimes makes them worse.

    It's an uneasy tension that careens through the book, showing that life, tragedy, and death isn't always as clear-cut as it seems.

Book Review: The Natural

The Natural, by Bernard Malamud

    In the long, long ago, an old college friend handed me a copy of this book, telling me I should read it because it is the best baseball book ever written.

    I put the book aside, somehow ignoring it for the next four decades. But earlier this year, while meandering around a used-book store, I landed across the book. Not knowing where my original copy was, I decided to pick it up and actually read it this time.

    It was good.

    But the best baseball book ever written? I think not. I'd have to list at least five or six novels by W.P. Kinsella ahead of it. And perhaps a few others. 

    Maybe time has caught up with The Natural. It was, after all, published in 1952. It was made into a movie, with a then-middle-aged Robert Redford in the lead role, way back in 1984 -- long after an even younger Redford helped break the Watergate scandal.

Malamud is considered one of the greatest Jewish authors

of the 20th Century. Later in his writing career, he won a

Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer, his novel about anti-semitism in

the Russian Empire. The Natural is the first novel he published.

      The Natural begins with a young rube by the name of Roy Hobbs headed on a train to Chicago for a tryout with the Cubs. Something happens, and Hobbs' career stalls. Some 16 years later, Hobbs is signed as the new left fielder for the down-and-out New York Knights. Hobbs brings along his special bat, which he has named Wonderboy. He refuses to hit with anything else.

    It's unclear whether the bat has magical powers, or Hobbs just thinks it does. And while fueding with his veteran, old-school manager, Pop Fisher, Hobbs beomes the star of the team and starts leading the sad-sack Knights toward the pennant. As Hobbs gains fame and fortune, a cloud begins to surround him, and a deep, dark secret in his past is hinted.

    Each chapter of the book reads like a short story, self-contained but presenting a snippet of the whole. It's well written, and the baseball stories and tales in the dugout and clubhouse seem realistic for the era. But it sometimes falls into common baseball tropes -- the aging manager who's seen it all, the obnoxious superstar, the long-suffering fans. I also question some of the math -- in one sequence, a team is four games behind another in the pennant race, wins a four-game series, but then is just one game behind.

    But it's the magical sequences that are most problematic. Are they dreams? Mystical happenings? Or simply extended metaphors? 

    I don't know. And I am afraid the book's failure to properly deal with those is its major flaw.

Book Review: Buck O'Neil's America

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski

    Buck O'Neil is a story teller.

    Joe Posnanski is a listener.

    Together, they created a book that is many things -- a pleasant read, a learning experience, an emotional tour through the United States from the eyes of a Black man who experienced the best of the country and the worst of its racism.

    In the end, it's an uplifting story, one of hope and happiness migled with meloncholy. It shows the heights Black men reached while leaving the tantalizing potential of what could have been.

    One scene, which occurred in 2005, has O'Neil and Willie Mays taking a tour through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. They are talking about Oscar Charleston, who from 1915 through the 1940s was a center fielder and manager in the Negro Leagues, and who many consider the greatest player ever.

"How good was Oscar Charleston, Buck?" Mays asked the old man standing next to him.

"He was you before you," Buck O'Neil said. 

Mays nodded as if he had heard that before, and he looked again through the chicken wire at the bronze statues of mostly forgotten men who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues. They had played at a time when Black men were banned from the Major Leagues. Segregation was an unwritten rule and mostly unspoken.

    Throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2006, O'Neil was the living, breathing embodiment of Negro Leagues baseball.

     He wasn't the greatest to ever have played the game, but he was pretty damn good. He was a first baseman and manager, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known as a fast runner and a decent hitter, who twice led the Negro American League in batting. In his later years, he became the representative of a group of men who were finally getting their recognition as players equal to those in the Major Leagues. O'Neil played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues museum.

   But mostly, O'Neil was chosen because, as he told Posnanski at the time, "I'm alive."

    In 2005, O'Neil, at the age of 94, planned to tour the country as the Major Leagues began to promote the history of the Negro Leagues in an effort to right some wrongs. Posnanski, then a columnist at the Kansas City Star, asked to tag along. O'Neil's response was, "Don't be late."

    This book is the result. It's a road trip story, the tale of a youger white man and an older Black man traveling the country, talking baseball and life and jazz, another of O'Neil's passions. Mostly, O'Neil talked. Posnanski listened. and took notes.

    One of the stories told has O'Neil talking with Monte Irvin, perhaps the only man to be a star in both the Negro Leagues and later in the Major Leagues. They sound just like what they were at the time -- two old men talking, kinda lamenting how things had been.

"I'm not complaining," Irvin said. "I mean, I lived a good life. Better than most guys in the Negro Leagues. I got to play in the Major Leagues. I got to play in the World Series. I'm not complaining. It's just that people used to tell me how good I was, and I would tell them, 'You should have seen me when I could really play.'"

"I saw you, Monte," Buck said.

"And?"

"You could really play."

"That's all I was saying," Monte said, and he smiled too.

    The book is not a biography, but there is a lot in there that tells you about the man Buck was -- and also makes you want to search out more about him and his life. While on the tour, and right up to his death in 2006, O'Neil still felt he had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to do it.    

    So O'Neil told the stories of the Black men who played the game, and the lives they lived. He was proud of his playing days. He knew he and his teammates could have played alongside the white guys on any Major League team. He rejected the notion that the players were a ragged-ass bunch of clowns playing pickup ball. He knew they were professionals who worked hard and played hard, and who were as good as -- often better than -- any of their white contemporaries.

Book Review: Going the Distance

Going the Distance: The Life and Works of W.P. Kinsella, by William Steele

Kinsella's life was successful, yet uneven. The same can be said for this biography.

For starters, it was filled with too much minutia. I do not need to know about every date Kinsella went on in high school, nor every address where he lived.

Instead, I would have liked more information about the reviews and responses to Kinsella's works, especially the debate about the fiction he wrote in the voice of indigenous people. The view that Kinsella was guilty of cultural appropriation grew throughout his life -- particularly as he became more popular for his other works -- but was treated as an afterthought in the book, spread out amidst the pages, rather than as an idea that should have been evaluated as a specific criticism of a portion of his work.

Perhaps the structure of the biography dictated how it was handled. Instead of categorical breakdown, it was written in a strict chronological order.

Still, the book presented a wealth of information about Kinsella's life and writings. He set his goal on being a writer at an early age, and despite feeling hampered and discouraged throughout those early years, made good on his goal. The book also showed how incidents in Kinsella's upbringing on an isolated farm outside of Edmonton, Canada, affected his prose. He used other experiences in his life in his stories and novels, but denied his works were biographical. Again, this issue could have been explored in a chapter, instead of interspersed in the book.

Kinsella, who died of assisted suicide in 2016, also had a disjointed private life. He hated most of his early government jobs, because he hated government and bureaucracy. He became a university professor for a span, but for the most part, he hated teaching. He hated all forms of religion, but his description of religious people could mirror a description of himself.

"... (T)here is a smugness about every one of them, a condescending sense of superiority, which the more they try to hide it, the more it shows."

The book is at its best when it explores Kinsella's growth as a writer. That may be because the growth went along Kinsella's timeline -- for the most part, he got better as he grew older and more experienced.

He was a prolific writer, often having five or more stories and books in process. He often would expand his short stories into novels -- a criticism by people who thought he was unduly padding out his stories -- but one that I would argue produced some of his best work. Shoeless Joe, for instance, started out as a short short, then a novel, and later became the movie Field of Dreams.

Steele spends a lot of time describing how the book traveled its path and grew into a cultural touchstone. He also discussed the impact it had on Kinsella and his life as a writer.

Kinsella's death in 2016 came as a shock, but his health had long been poor, and he went out as he wanted. He spurned life-extending measures that would have caused much pain and suffering, and choose to end his own life.

Book Review: After the Miracle

After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets, by Art Shamsky

These were the good Mets. Unlike the bad boys of the 1986 Championship team, the '69 Mets were beloved across the country. 

They were young. They were happy. They played with joy and excitement and persistence. They were noble in defeat and celebrated in victory. At a time of political division -- over a war, over the direction of the country's youth -- a team from New York City was the epitome of togetherness.

That's because, says author and team member Art Shamsky, they were teammates who loved and respected each other. Each player accepted his role, and no matter how big or how small that part may have been, was appreciated for carrying it out with aplomb. Shamsky, for instance, may not have liked the fact that he platooned in right field with Ron Swoboda, but both reveled in each other's play.

Shamsky credits several people for this, including manager Gil Hodges, who believed in the team before it believed in itself, and then led them to the top with love and discipline; and pitcher Tom Seaver, who despite his superstar status, performed his role with humility and dignity.

Harrelson, Koosman, Sherman, Shamsky,
 Swoboda, and Seaver at a restaurant during the visit.
(Photo, from the book)

The book, while a celebration of the team and its youthful exuberance, carries notes of sadness 50 years later. Several team members have died, and two of its stalwarts --  Seaver and shortstop Bud Harrelson -- have signs of degenerative brain function -- Seaver from Lyme disease, and Harrelson from Alzheimer's.

Shamsky begins the book with his plan to bring a small group of former players out to celebrate with Seaver in his Napa Valley home in Calistoga, Calif., where Seaver owns a winery. He invites Harrelson, Seaver's former roommate; Jerry Koosman, the lefty counterpart to Seaver; and Swoboda, whose legendary catch saved Seaver's victory in Game 4. Shamsky's co-author, journalist Erik Sherman, went along.

Once the planning of the trip is set -- although Seaver's wife, Nancy, cautions that Seaver's health might force a last-minute cancellation -- Shamsky reverts to the 1969 season, going over games and memories from spring training to the last out of the season, and the ensuing on- and off-field celebrations. The remembrances are highlighted with interviews, stories, and quotes from former players and fans, adding color and grit to the memories.

After that pleasant reflection, Shamsky returns to the trip to Seaver's house. It's another happy occasion, with the conservative Koosman and the liberal Swoboda indulging in some banter about politics, and the group of five recalling their glory days. But it's a sad meeting as well, with the former teammates knowing their days are ending. The melancholy continues as Shamsky explores  how diseases have ravaged the minds of Harrelson and Seaver, causing the former ace to show a flaw in remembering the day's events while eating at a local restaurant.

Without a hint of frustration, the ever-courageous and self-assured Seaver shrugged and told (us) once more, "You know, I've got a little bit of the Lyme disease going on." He then graciously picked up the check, gave his regard to all of the people he knew at the cafe like he was the mayor of Calistoga, and walked us back out to the parking lot -- where the conversations continued on and on. We knew we would never all be together like this again. We were in our seventies, scattered around the country, and Tom could no longer travel.

It was the lengthiest of good-byes. Nobody wanted to leave.

You may shed a tear at the end. But overall, it's a book about days of happiness and youth, and the brotherhood of teammates.

This Week in Books, 8th Ed.

Rambling through a bookstore

One of the joys of wandering among the shelves of an old bookstore is a lack of people. Oh, perhaps you see the occasional fellow book fiend studying the titles, but for the most part you are alone with your thoughts and your fictional friends.

Then there is the Book Loft of German Village, a rambling independent bookstore in neighborhood near downtown Columbus, Ohio.

The entrance to the Book Loft

The stacks of fiction
 along a narrow hallway

A staircase lined
 with promotional photos

Most bookstores are large and airy, inside one large room. This one is not.

Many bookstores -- especially those of the chain variety -- are enclosed in modern glass and steel. This one does not fit that description.

They are in suburban shopping malls, surrounded by large parking lots. Usually, you'll find similar stores in similar buildings nearby -- a Panera, an office supply store, and most likely a Starbucks.

But the Book Loft is tucked away in an urban neighborhood. The entrance is a garden, and the store itself resembles a bunch of older homes that were renovated and smashed together. Yes, there is a coffee shop next door, which is part of a small, local chain, Stauf's Coffee.

The Book Loft boasts 32 rooms. Outside are tables full of books on sale, along with the racks of remainders. I arrived with my daughter in the early afternoon on a sunny weekend, when the Ohio State Buckeyes were thankfully playing out of town -- the university and the 100,000-seat stadium is about five miles away along city streets.

So after a vegan lunch, we made our way over, entered through the garden gate, and strolled up the walk.  It's a wonderful place, with surprises up every flight of stairs and around every corner. Each room has a theme, but you are likely to find random stacks of books in random places, so you have to meander all over the place, just in case you might miss something.

The fiction section takes up several rooms, and arranged along narrow hallways lined with bookcases. I found several novels that just came out, one that isn't scheduled to come out until next month (I said nothing, and bought it), and a sports book I've been seeking for a while.

Last Night in Montreal, by Emily St. John Mandel. Because I read Station Eleven and loved it.

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin. It asks the question, how would you live if you knew the day you would die. Sounded intriguing.

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas. The story of a young black girl who really wants -- needs -- to become a rap star. It's been on the TBR list for a while.

After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets, by Art Shamsky. The Mets. 1969. 'nuff said.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. Doesn't everyone want to read this?

Akin, by Emma Donaghue. Another of my favorite writers, and I mistakenly thought it wasn't due out until next month, so it was a bonus when I saw it.

The Institute, by Stephen King. He has his own bookcase -- not just a mere bookshelf -- in my library.

Resurrected Reviews No. 2

Ya Gotta Believe, by Tug McGraw and Don Yaeger

This is the second installment of Resurrected Reviews, where I dig up and revive a pre-TBR book review. This is a memoir of one of my favorite ballplayers while growing up. I  finished the book on Feb. 1, 2017.

One of the bad things about reading a memoir by one of your childhood heroes is finding out what an asshole he was. 

McGraw rushing off the
field after winning the
1973 National League
championship.

McGraw was the guy I copied when I pitched during softball games. He slapped his glove on his thigh, a move the 16-year-old me thought was so cool, so I did it as well.

He lead the New York Mets to the 1973 World Series with his extraordinarily great play, optimism, and exuberance.  He coined the phrase, "Ya Gotta Believe," which he had the whole city screaming out, and which has lived on.

But in this book, he describes how he used women, rejected one of his sons, and basically did as he pleased throughout life, regardless of the consequences to others. 

His only redeeming personal quality was that he told it all in this book, written as he was dying of brain cancer. 

It's a decent, if sad and disheartening, read.

Book Review: It Couldn't be Done

They Said it Couldn't be Done, by Wayne Coffey

One of the drawbacks of reading history --especially the history that you can remember -- is that you know how it ends. But in the case of the World Champion 1969 Mets, that's a good thing.

Sportswriter Wayne Coffey returns to "the most astounding season in baseball history," according to the subtitle of his book. He recreates the story of the Amazing Mets, who in their first season seven years earlier had set a record for futility. But with a '69 team of some fine young ballplayers, coupled with a few grizzled veterans, all playing under the leadership of the incomparable Gil Hodges, the New Yorkers rose from the depths of despair to the top of the baseball world in the last year of the 1960s.

"More than a anything, in the same summer that two men walked on the moon, 400,000 men and women descended on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, and millions more all over the county were embroiled in a conflict about the war in Vietnam, the Mets embodied hope," Coffey writes. "They embodied possibility -- a belief that things could get better and would get better."

He tells their story by rewinding the season and its most important games, interspersed with vignettes of the people involved. Some stories are well known to any Mets' fan: How a small-town stadium usher in Iowa discovered the best left-handed pitcher in team history and alerted a Mets scout. How the Franchise, Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver, came to the team after Atlanta signed him out of season, and the Mets -- one of only three teams willing to match the Braves' offer -- saw then-commissioner William Eckert pick their name out of a hat.

Others tales are of the fans and behind-the-scenes people -- the batboys and school boys who skipped school, the statistician and travel managers who kept the records and got the team where they were going, and the Broadway stars who sang and the New York mayor who won an upset re-election because of the team's success.

But perhaps the best are the backstories of the four African Americans on the team, who grow up in the Jim Crow era in the deep south, and lived to tell about it. Take Donn Clendenon, for example, who entered Morehouse College and was assigned Martin Luther King Jr. as his mentor. The pair struck up a lifelong friendship, and when King was assassinated in 1968, Clendenon was instrumental in persuading Major League baseball to postpone the beginning of its season for a few days while King's funeral took place.

Several of those stories are told in the latter pages of the book, which describe and narrate the games of the playoffs and World Series. Each game is given one or more chapters, and the details are exacting and told with the thrill of the mid-October classic. For Met fans of a certain age (that would include me) it's a trip down memory lane and a chance to re-live one of the best moments of the best time of your life.

This week in Books 6th Ed.

TBR's Stephen King
bookcase

So, I finally persuaded my daughter to give Stephen King a shot. She doesn't like horror. I kept telling her King is much more than a horror writer

We have shared books since she was in her late teens. When she comes home now, we often go straight to my library, where I offer some suggestions, and she can browse for more. At times, she'll recommend a book for me. It works for us.

She's a runner (a good one, I might add; a Boston qualifier). So I gave her Elevation, telling her it had a running story arc that was well done. It's one of King's shorter works, so it's a quick read. Here is my review.

She liked, it. No, she loved it. I am happy, although not surprised. It is a good read.

The best description of King is that he puts regular people in abnormal situations. I think King's strength as as writer is simple: He writes well, has great characters, and tells a helluva story. What more could you want? Despite his reputation, he's not solely a writer of horror, which I've always seen as bloody, slasher stuff. Instead, he's a writer of the supernatural -- the paranormal, if you will.

Anyway, now I have to decide what King work to suggest next. Perhaps one of his earlier works -- perhaps Dead Zone, which could be appropriate in the current political climate? Or perhaps a later work, Sleeping Beauties, which he co-wrote with his son, Owen King? It hits the high points of a King book, and I credit Owen King with taking out some of King's flaws, particularly his weakness in crafting a credible ending.

As for the TBR stack: It's getting bigger after a trip to a local bookstore this past week. I found three books that weren't even on the horizon:

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek tells the fictionalized tale of the first travelling library in Kentucky (my home), and how one of the (real-to-life) blue people of Kentucky was its librarian. They Said it Couldn't be Done is about a time I remember well from growing up in New York City in the summer and fall of '69, when man landed on the moon and the Mets won the World Series. Fifty years later, I cannot read enough about the latter. And Washington Black continues my excursion into books by and about people of color. This one tells the story of an 11-year-old field slave who becomes his master's brother's servant, and their ever-changing relationship. It was nominated in 2018 for the Man Booker prize, always a great place to find a good read.

Book Review: The Big Fella

The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, by Jane Leavy

One hundred years ago, Babe Ruth was a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. Then he was sold to the New York Yankees, and everything changed.

He moved to the outfield, became one of the most powerful hitters ever to play, and upended both the game of baseball and his place in it. Not only did Ruth lead Major League Baseball away from the dead ball era to its new-found reliance on the three-run homer, but he brought it out of the darkness of the Black Sox scandal and into the thrill of the Roaring '20s. During the decade, Ruth was baseball: its face, its star, its savior.

And according to this wonderful new biography of the Babe, he also changed the face of America. He helped bring in the celebrity-athlete culture. He was the first person to regularly lend his name and his image to endorse products. His lifestyle -- both on and off the field -- was breathlessly reported in the press. His personality helped sell newspapers -- more than a dozen dailies in New York City in those days -- and bring to life radio broadcasting, then in its infancy. His financial planner and adviser, Christy Walsh, was baseball's first agent, and he helped to make Ruth realize his enormous earning potential -- both from his play on the field, and his being the the face of baseball off the field.

Ruth also created myths about himself and his image, with equal parts truth and legend, and nobody seemed to be able to tell the difference -- or even care about it. Truthiness was born, long before Stephen Colbert thought of the word.

Leavy, who has written masterful biographies of baseball legends Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax, is at her best here. Her research is remarkable -- her appendices, notes, and sources section at the end covers more than 100 pages. She delves into some of the myths -- Ruth's early life, his marriages, his children, his racial heritage -- that have never adequately been explored before. And she tells it in an easy, readable style.

That being said, let me add a few caveats. The book's editor could have paid a bit more attention; I found a number of sloppy errors and repetitions throughout, especially in the first few chapters. And the author's writing style in this book was a bit confusing. She chose to jump around in time, writing about Ruth's barnstorming tours with Lou Gehrig, and mixing in Ruth's history, and his seasons with the Yankees. Many times, I found myself confused as to exactly where in time she was talking about.

But those are quibbles.

They don't play baseball at the old field, anymore

I went for a run at the trails in Devou Park in Covington, Ky., tonight, and while the run was pleasant, the sights at the old Ludlow-Bromley Field nearby were depressing.

Instead of Little Leaguers struggling to catch the ball in the sun, weeds and shoots of grass poked from the infield dirt.

Instead of bracing for a collision as a runner rounded third, home plate lay forlorn, cracked and smashed into the dirt, listing to the left. Instead of the cries of parents and coaches telling players to hit it where they ain't, only the humming of cars on the nearby road broke the silence

Clearly, the baseball park no longer gets much use. Even the view from what is left of the mound shows a porta-potty instead of a swinging batter, a crouching catcher, and the umpire behind it all.