31 Oct 2011, by Eric
Bryan Harvey, who has previously written here about Brian McCann and Jason Heyward and John Henry, is a high school teacher and poet, who writes for The Faster Times and The Lawn Chair Boys. His poetry has appeared in the Cold Mountain Review and DeckFight Press released his eBook, Everything That Dunks Must Converge, in April..
The set of chapters we read for last week ended with Affenlight telling a soup-poisoned Henry, "Don't forget your uniform," so we're clearly on the road to recovery this week, right?
And what signals a man's hibernating greatness more than his willingness to mask his identity with a playoff beard, am I right?
We could discuss Henry's recovery, the symbolism of Affenlight's death, Owen's eulogy, or the metaphor that is the last scene, but who wants to do that when you can discuss playoff beards? And that's why chapter seventy-four is where it's at.
The summer after I graduated high school I quit shaving, thought it made me look like part of some long forgotten counterculture, so I totally understand Schwartz's observation that "If he was the Ahab of this operation, this tournament the target of his mania, then they were Fedallah's crew" (454), because the growing of a beard isn't just about a denial of self--it's about an occult belief in the mission at hand, a mission that can only be accomplished by a band of brothers. And the beard signifies that one is willing to pay their dues, to the brotherhood, to the mission, to the Captain, to the 'ship.
But beards aren't just about buying in, they're also a sign of mourning. I've grown beards out of laziness, deploring the work I have to do. I've grown beards over ex-girlfriends, aching over all those lost moments. I've grown beards when the AP test approaches in May, agonizing over whether or not I've properly prepared my students. Ladies and gentlemen, I've grown a lot of beards, and while I wanted to celebrate how well Harbach captures the many meanings behind growing a beard, chapter seventy-four made me incredibly sad, filling me with an intense sense of mourning for one Henry Skrimshander.
While his teammates closed in on their goal of winning a championship, I felt forced by Harbach's allusions, both explicit and implicit, to ponder that chapter inMoby Dick when all the sailors gather in a church whose walls are marked by remembrances to the dead, those men lost at sea, their whaling ships swallowed up by the eerie depths, and there it was, on page 453, Henry's plaque on the church wall: "once you healed the Henry gap you had no place for Henry." A team can't dwell on who is not present. A team must go with the men they have, and at this point in the narrative, I was sad for Henry no matter what happiness might be waiting for him later on in the book, or even after the book.
And then I got sadder, because Henry made me think of the 2004 Nomar Garciaparra, a very good shortstop who missed out on playoff beards, a World Series, and champagne. Is there anything like Nomar's sadness? Have you ever accomplished something that felt incomplete? Has a group of people ever been better off without you? Have you ever had to grow a beard alone, and if so, how did you know when to cut it?
31 Oct 2011, by Eric
Find more of Megan Wells at Around the Horn from Aerys Sports.
The end of this book affected me in ways I really didn't expect. I read it in a marathon binge session, guiltily hoping for Henry's glorious Hollywood return and salvation, but feeling like I'd be better off with a more "real" ending - the same way you hope for ice cream in the freezer when you're done with dinner, but when there is none and you're forced to eat fruit, you console yourself by feeling virtuous.
But in reality, the book gave us both, and they ultimately detracted from each other. Henry's frenzied and desperate heroics seemed like an extension of his depression, of the idea of his own meaninglessness. He won the game, but by the end of the book, we find out he's been back in South Dakota, working at the Piggly Wiggly - it didn't mean what we wanted it to mean.
Still, it may have given him enough of a taste of his own self-worth to start him on the road to recovery. So while the book leaves us with the knowledge that Henry is not at all what he once was, we also have the slim hope that he can make it back. For his own reasons this time, in whatever role he chooses, and better - more whole - in some way.
Henry, you are skilled. We exhort you.
28 Oct 2011, by Patrick
(Author's Note: this article has nothing to do with Game 6 of the World Series. For that, I apologize.)
Right around the time our reading club got underway, I began my tenure at a local high school as a student teacher. I adore academia, even if my university doesn’t quite compare to the Midwestern charm of Westish. The layout is utilitarian, the grounds Spartan. We have no lakes, president-filled or otherwise.
I was warned about the demands of student teaching, and these warnings were apt. I haven’t watched a single pitch of playoff baseball this season. Essentially, The Art of Fielding has been my postseason, and without it, my sense of alienation would be nearly palpable. Stacks of textbooks on education theory and articles on critical literacy have replaced the game for me, and my head has been swimming with conceptual theories. It was only inevitable that these ideas would bleed into the novel itself, as we headed toward the novel’s denouement.
In a conversation Eric mentioned the uselessness of the Harpooners coaching staff, especially the well-meaning, ineffective Coach Cox. The man reminds me of an older, mellower portrayal of Jim Bouton’s Joe Schultz, a study in the virtues that are respected in baseball and are useless in everyday life. Cox is helpless before Owen’s hospitalization, Schwartz’s fiery leadership, and Henry’s downfall. He’s ceremonial, a reminder that most managers receive far more than they deserve in terms of pay and accolades. The students change with every passing year, but Cox is always there, always the same, always losing.
What Harbach illustrates is that fielding and baseball really are an art, rather than a craft. One’s ability is innate. Owen puts down his novel, walks into the batting cage and sprays line drives. Henry pirouettes effortlessly, thoughtlessly. Strong coaching can maximize potential, add endurance and strength through countless hours of training. But that potential is finite and predetermined. For a teacher, it’s a troubling concept.
So as the book wound down, and I prepared to bid baseball adieu for another winter, I found my sentimentality waxing with the somber funeral march/row. Soaked with alcohol, Freud’s solution for the masses, the gang finds itself on the brink of inexorable change, and I too found myself pausing between page turns, hoping to hold it back.
So as Schwartz takes up the mantle of teaching, and walks out to the familiar field to hit ground balls to his familiar friend, I finally identified with him. This is what teaching is like, I thought. Maybe Schwartz can make a difference, fix Henry and blend as gracefully into Westish as Affenlight had. Maybe something can be taught, and that not everyone has to repeat every last mistake in life. I hope that last throw found its way to the shovel.
26 Oct 2011, by Eric
Ted: Eric, you recently wrote a piece about Adrian Beltre calling for more appreciation for the third baseman. Has Beltre entered the general baseball zeitgeist, or is he still on the oustkirts? Are all of the Rangers on the outskirts of something? If so, what?
Eric: Beltre is in a weird place. If you only read baseball blogs and twitter, then he is the zeitgeist. But if you read newspapers, listen to sports radio, and are a generally sane person for whom baseball is only a minor interest, Beltre remains on the outskirts. I suspect that in this way he is indeed emblematic of the Rangers. Many of the Rangers' best players are either sabermetric delights like Mike Napoli and Ian Kinsler, or highly stylized like Elvis Andrus. If the Rangers win, then everything changes. Maybe in Texas, it already has. You're in Houston. How do y'all perceive the Rangers down there?
Ted: Astros fans perceive the Rangers as the distant cousin that we should feel some kinship too but don't. If the Astros moved to the AL it would be like an 80s sitcom where a city cousin and a country cousin have to move in together. In that scenario, the country cousin would be successful and charming, and the city cousin has dandruff and wears mom jeans. But I digress.
The Rangers are a truly dichotomous team. On the one hand, as you mention, they are saber-darlings who perform bigger than their popular baseball playing reputations. On the other hand, they are clearly having fun out there, and I'd imagine that the casual fan can really get into their jam. Derek Holland is a total clown whose Harry Caray and Arnold Schawarzenneger impressions were so funny that Joe Buck woke up for long enough to hand his job over to the pitcher. Adrian Beltre's head-touching issues would amuse Michelle Bachmann on a debate night. I'm guessing teenage girls swoon over CJ Wilson. The Rangers are a sabermetric team that you'd never know it, the way you can't tell it's Adam Sandler playing his own sister in his new blockbuster.
Speaking of the same thing over and over, I read somewhere that the Rangers would hypothetically be the 11th different team to win the World Series since some particular time. How does that make you feel?
Eric: Well, Ted you know my theory about the number 11...
No seriously, I don't think parity is a bad thing, if that's what you are referring to. And by parity I mean a state in which teams with competent management like the Rangers are just as likely to lose the World Series as teams with Brian Sabean as their GM. The thing about baseball, though, is that I don't think World Series winners are a fair measure of inequality or dominance. This is not an uncommon argument: look at the 2001 Mariners or the last 20 years of the Atlanta Braves.
That said, knowledge that the playoffs aren't fair doesn't hurt any less when, say, your favorite team loses to the Phillies in the NLCS consecutive years. And to write off the World Series seems like giving up on everything we believe in (after all, if we can't embrace randomness and absurdity, then what's the point of being a baseball fan -- even a self-aware one?) That's a serious question: Could baseball exist and be delightful without a World Series?
Ted: What you pose is the Europe v. America argument. In Europe, they do things like end a football season without a championship and end games in ties. I enjoy such bizarre, Middle Age practices on one level, as a break from the American style, but I'd never choose it for these United States.
I think the real success of the playoffs and the World Series is the fact that most any fan, no matter which team you follow, can get a quick adrenaline rush from watching most any other team experience the thrill of the playoff win. It's an inhabitable space for baseball fans to enjoy vicariously. The only way to live vicariously like that is if unexpected things happen, like lesser teams win bigger games, or crummy players--I'm coughing as I say the name Allen Craig--pull off wildly unlikely feats. You can't get that from the IV drip end of a non-playoff season.
So, to answer your question, baseball could exist without the World Series, but it would be House Hunters.
(At this point we ask the readers for their thoughts. Imagine that Ray Bradbury and George Will collaborated on a neo-apocalyptic novel in which there was no World Series. What would this world look like?)
25 Oct 2011, by Eric
I wrote a thing about Adrian Beltre for The Classical's Deadspin Journal.
Check it out.
-Eric