Hot Stove Books
By Karlsie
(Sorry for all the delays; however, I just survived a nasty browser crash and only finally got back in... enjoy)
The holidays are here and winter is fast closing in on us. While I am thankful we have 3rd base and we're starting to get pitching covered for the 2006 season, there's still a long stretch between now and spring training in which I have to amuse myself.
So, curl up in a comfy chair near the hot stove or the fire; settle in under a comfy blanket with a mug of spiced cider (with just a dash of the Captain in there to really warm you up) and pick up a good book.
That's right - a good book.
Just because the season is over doesn't mean you need to abandon the field of dreams with the extensive library of good reading out there. Over the next couple of months, I'll share some of my favorite baseball books - old and new - with you. To start, let's go with a book that should be on everyone's shelf: "The Old Ball Game" by Frank DeFord.
If history is merely a paint-by-numbers scenario of facts and figures, DeFord is among the class of artists painting the original canvasses of scenes for us to copy. He is a story teller who can weave color and beauty in even the most mundane situation. (His most recent commentary about intelligent design vs. evolution as exemplified by golf is a classic - if you missed it, check the morning edition website to see if it's up there.)
He weaves the tale of two men: Christie Mathewson and John "Muggsy" McGraw transformed the New York Giants into a force that transformed baseball forever. When Deford weaves the tale, it is more than a study in class contrasts that the two men represented; it is a tale of how two people can connect in a way that can change the world as we know it. You can almost feel yourself in Mr. Peabody's way back machine sitting in the stands watch the handsome Mathewson throw while the Little Napoleon dictated orders from the side.
It takes a real talent to do that.
To give you a taste, of how I was sucked in - let me quote you this sentence from the opening pages: "Mathewson was golden, tall and handsome, kind and educated, our beau ideal, the first all-American boy to emerge from the field of play, while McGraw was hardscrabble shanty Irish, a pugnacious little boss who would become the model for the classic American coach - a male version of the whore with a heart of gold - the tough, flinty so-and-so who was field-smart, a man's man his players came to love despite themselves."
No one writes like that any more - it is an old-school talent that can run a sentence like that and fill the air with poetry, color and music. It is a story teller's sentence - something we're no longer used to in a world of coffee in a cardboard cup, multi-tasking type-A personalities and instant gratification. Reading DeFord makes me a better writer because he reminds me of what sports writing used to be instead of what it's become: glorified tabloidism designed to feed the jackals their morning outrage and water cooler fodder.
Perhaps, one day, I'll be as good as DeFord - one can only hope. In the mean time, if you need to kill some time while holiday shoppers bustle all over the mall, go into your local big box bookstore caf�, get a fancy cuppa joe and curl up in a comfy chair with "The Old Ball Game" and feel yourself transported away from the insipid canned holiday music and panicked shoppers. You won't be sorry.
