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Friday, May 10, 2013

Harper’s: Lucas Mann on hope and change in a minor-league-baseball city

(harpers.org)

posted 2 weeks ago by Neutral Milk Dotel (Dan Lee) to books, minor leagues | 4 comment(s)

There are thousands of young men on minor-league baseball rosters working toward a spot in the majors. Most of them won’t make it. With this in mind, essayist Lucas Mann spent the 2010 season in Clinton, Iowa, watching the city’s Class A team, the LumberKings. In his new book, Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere (Pantheon), Mann writes about becoming intimate with the players, the fans, and the town, and explores the themes of nostalgia, failure, and hope.

The link is a question ...

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1. Don Lock posted on September 11, 2011 at 02:27 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2. morineko posted on September 11, 2011 at 03:24 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

I am 3 chapters in and so far it is basically Pamela Dean's Tam Lin with added Mythic Baseball Literature. The latter is usually a tipoff for "boring." And I'm one of the few sff fans I know who hated Tam Lin. The only bonus would be if, like in that book, the overly erudite college kids in this one turned out to be immortals from Faerie.

3. Walt Davis posted on September 11, 2011 at 08:20 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

What #1 said. It would be hard for a review to make a book less attractive to me. Campus novel, bromance, comedy of manners, Henry Skrimshander, the thrill of chasing Division III baseball records, literary magazine n+1, and "mildly satiric mode of psychological realism" (whatever that is) -- ick.

4. AndrewJ posted on September 11, 2011 at 10:03 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

I posted this quote from the novel (by an MLB scout) in an earlier thread on this book:

I played in the minors for nine years, batted twice in the majors. And I'll tell you something -- pretty much every guy I ever shared a locker room with wound up becoming either an alcoholic or a born-again Christian. Booze or God. That's what this game does to you.

Piffle, or not piffle?

5. Jarrod HypnerotomachiaPoliphili(Teddy F. Ballgame) posted on September 11, 2011 at 11:15 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

It's not as bad as all that, Walt. Spin Richard Russo, John Irving, and Jonathan Franzen in a blender with a baseball and you wind up with Harbach. It's a perfectly cromulent book.

And AndrewJ, I never played the game, but my impression of that quote is: not piffle.

6. Lassus posted on September 11, 2011 at 11:24 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

This is like the opposite of the other thread on the book, where people - if I recall - really loved the book.

7. Walt Davis posted on September 12, 2011 at 04:40 AM # hit 0 | hit 0

I'm of course not commenting on the book (which I haven't read) but on the review (well, the excerpt) which makes the book sound horrible (to me).

pretty much every guy I ever shared a locker room with wound up becoming either an alcoholic or a born-again Christian. Booze or God. That's what this game does to you.

I'm pretty sure you can say this about 72% of all 21st century Americans.

8. JJ1986 posted on February 19, 2012 at 11:54 PM # hit 0 | hit 0

I read about half of this today and I am unreasonably annoyed by the fact that a major free agent contract was apparently agreed to on March 31. How can a writer blow a detail like that?

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Friday, May 10, 2013

Harper’s: Lucas Mann on hope and change in a minor-league-baseball city

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