Writers who deal with baseball seem drawn to its mythic dimensions. Whether they produce a novel (“The Natural”), a movie (“Field of Dreams”), a play (“Damn Yankees”) or a song (“Mrs. Robinson”), they often focus on outsize heroes, their feats and their flaws. Maybe it’s the grass or the lights or the uniforms. Maybe it’s the strict geometry of the playing field that turns players into archetypes, characters in a morality play: stars and bums, good guys and bad guys. And so it is with “Calico Joe,” a story about two men whose lives are fused together by one terrible instant on Aug. 24, 1973.
Wearing the white hat is Joe Castle, a 21-year-old rookie first baseman for the Chicago Cubs. Calico Joe (the nickname comes from his home town of Calico Rock, Ark.) bashes home runs in his first three at-bats in the major leagues and is hitting above .500 six weeks later when the Cubs play the Mets at Shea Stadium in Queens.
Wearing the black hat is Warren Tracey, a 34-year-old journeyman pitcher for the Mets with a reputation for hitting batters — and the bottle — with equal determination. His first time up, Calico Joe whacks a homer off Tracey. When he comes to bat again, an 11-year-old boy in the stands, Tracey’s son, Paul, has a very sick feeling.
He’s obsessed with Joe, keeping a scrapbook that records all of his dazzling deeds. And he knows his father is about to throw at Joe’s head. Paul knows this because Tracey has called his son a “coward” for not challenging batters with inside pitches in Little League. Years later, as he narrates this story, Paul recalls the game at Shea: “I wanted to stand and scream, ‘Look out, Joe!’ but I couldn’t move.”
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1. Dale Sams Posted: April 11, 2012 at 11:41 AM (#4103851)mmm..hmm.
But still....just doesn't ring true based on this excerpt.
It's a John ####### Grisham novel. Of course it won't ring true!
So its a biography of Matt Wieters?
Like they said, he knows baseball as well as he knows crime.
Or, you know, laziness.
It's obviously fiction. Hitting just .500? Where's the walking on water? The healing of lepers?
This is the worst part. You can't warn a player from the stands.
Actually, probably more so.
This seems to gloss over the five weeks on the DL more than it should.
Is this actually supposed to be a realistic baseball book? Or a baseball myth, more along the lines of The Great American Novel (where a pitcher very nearly throws an 81-pitch perfect game). It seems like it would work better as the latter, but that it's trying to be the former.
Oh well...I haven't read a Grisham book since "The Brethren", which was the least thrilling "legal thriller" ever.
More perfect is 27 pitches.
Never seen anyone use the word tincture this way.
Especially if the pitcher makes every single putout.
It's not so far-fetched that someone could love Tom Gordon!
Surely it's a verb, not a noun. I have no idea who or what this Roberts character is supposed to be, but I think we can safely conclude that he doesn't need to be writing for a living. And/or that his editor (if any) should be beaten severely. I suppose those of us out in the hinterlands can take a certain amount of comfort at the knowledge that the mighty Washington Post employs shameful imbeciles, too.
Edit: Roberts teaches journalism and politics at George Washington University and often reviews sports books for The Post. Good ####### god. And to think that there are perfectly literate human beings who can't find gainful employment. What a world.
1. To stain or tint with a color.
2. To infuse, as with a quality; impregnate.
Cliff Lee-style, or Greg Maddux-style?
Either way, 27 putouts would put him at or among the league leaders for the entire season.
The day I bow to the authority of some stupid dictionary is the day that I die.
Hmmm. If you average my parents' ages at death, I should have -7 years to go.
Also, I blame that second usage on the "impact-is-a-verb" people. Damn them all to hell!
It's archaic, but an acceptable usage of tincture, if you think, like I do, that English has very permissive rules. From the OED:
The relevant usage it quotes is this one:
Gresham's use is novel. But I still think acceptable largely because the rules of English permit such things. And gef, if you really think that about dictionaries, well then, you just mean that you bow the authority of another dictionary: The American Heritage, which instructs us on how to use English. I find that dictionary pedantic. To each his own.
(Addresed by Piehole before my post showed up, I see.)
Otherwise, I bow only to the AP Stylebook, I'm pretty sure, though I hardly think it's infallible.
(Actually, I typed my original objection too quickly -- doing too damned many things at once. Alternatively, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)
My one quibble is that I think "tincture" (as verb) should probably be used to mean that something has been only lightly imbued or altered. To me the word implies mildness and daintiness. In this case it sounds like the guilt that the character feels over this moment is the crux of the novel, so a harsher, more declarative word might have been more appropriate.
I think the concept that a boy wouldn't have realistic, logical guilt is not that hard to accept.
But you said "Surely it's a verb, not a noun."
It's not a verb. And don't call me Shirley.
I mean, it's one thing to be stupid -- happens all the time for me. Being stupid & costing myself however-much extra because of it is really aggravating.
Hmmm. I think I've gotten 2 crowns in the last decade. The first time, while the temp was being replaced the radio in the dentist's office in North Little Rock was broadcasting the unfolding of 9/11. *shudder*
I don't like it as a verb, obviously, but yeah ... In that usage, for me it's sort of the same as "tinged," which pretty much amounts to what you say.
####### rookie should have been ####### expecting it anyway. You don't dig in on an old pro after you just took his ass deep.
But Gresham is using it as an adjective. That's a predicate adjective you see there.
Had Gresham written, "The next moment changes many people’s lives, including that of the boy, whom guilt tinctured about the warning he never uttered." it would have been used as a verb.
Had he written, "The next moment changes many people’s lives, including that of the boy, on whose face the tincture of guilt was visible for the warning he never uttered." that would have been using it as a noun.
As in the expression: "Guess what? I tinctured my wife the other day."
Version 1.0, by Gresham.
Version 1.1
Racist.
Eh, so what. Let's just go with it. It's certainly not worse than anything Grisham has written.
And I keep writing Gresham through force of habit. "Gresham" is the family name of some prominent characters in the novel I'm writing about for chapter 1 of my dissertation. I didn't even notice that I was writing Gresham, though. I hope I don't write Grisham over there.
As to what Grisham himself has written, can't say I've ever read him. I've got used copies of a couple of his bestsellers from, I guess, the '80s, but have just never gotten around to them. Not sure why; I've read a number of courtroom procedurals in my time (& even been a character, sort of, in a few by a Little Rock lawyer), which I guess is what he writes.
Elitist or hipster?
There was a family in my hometown named "Gresham" - a veritable stable of very attractive daughters, as I recall.
Of course, I gave up after the first 30 pages or so. Maybe it got better after that.
They were horse-faced, though?
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope.
I'm writing about the entire Barsetshire sequence, though, in Chapter 1 of my diss. So The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset. I'm studying the ecology of organizations: how large and small, nascent and established organizations interact with each other and with their environments (transportation and communications systems and with other institutions like the family, etc.). It's a bear to write because there's so much material to write about.
In the Trollope novel most of the females die early in childhood. There is one male son, Frank Gresham, and he lives. He becomes the hero of the novel.
And since Primates are always interested in 'alternative' bands, these guys also grew up where John's family did:
Black Oak Arkansas Band
I had a substitute who was obsessed with the Beats. If it was the afternoon you could start class by asking him a question about the Beats (even, or especially, if it was not English class) and get him ranting on the topic for a couple of minutes. This would wear him out, then the booze he had at lunch would kick in and he'd sit behind the desk and fall asleep.
As for Calico Joe -- I was wondering what the longest stretch of hitting .500 is, for someone playing regularly. Can't figure it out using BBRef.
I agree, there are at least two other equally literary words that would have done better in "suffused" and "imbued".
George Brett hit .494/.541/.812 in July, 1980.
I resemble that remark. I'm sure other researchers recognize this problem. What you study ends up being what you teach about, so you'd better like it.
That said, I really don't like all of the literary archipelagos that constitute much of literary studies. Specialization is the price we pay for professionalization, but you can't keep anyone's interest when you tell them what you work on. Most jobs are boring, but just taking a look at professionalism and organization in 3 groups of massive sequences of novels between 1855 and 1880, well, let's just say that I just tell people I want to be a professor.
It's the name of the village in Doctor Thorne. Greshamsbury, which is named after the house, Greshamsbury, which is named after the family that resides there. Is there much of a there there in Gresham, Oregon?
Nope; Mrs. JPJ has a collection of Grisham's novels and I tried reading this one on vacation one year. I got about 50 pages in and couldn't tolerate it any longer, it seemed very pedestrian and formulaic. From talking with my wife Grisham has apparently written the same book 10-12 different times, although that is probably true for many popular authors.
Gresham's Law is (semi-)famous.
"Hearing the desperate cries of a child Joe reflexively turned his head towards the sound, with his eyes turned aside he didn't see the oncoming fastball aimed at his head. His body crumpled lifeless to the ground. THE END."
That's great! Thanks for the offer and good wishes. I'll be writing about all the fox hunting in chapter 4 when I tackle "the great outdoors" and all those ditches, hedges and drainage.
You had sex with a woman? And people are saying that the bit about the .500 hitter is implausible?
This works with Joey B. as well. Mention anyone to the left of ... I dunno, Himmler or somebody ... & he raves for a bit, then goes comatose.
Three of the publishers have settled already, though.
I have no idea why Apple would do that because Amazon is forcing prices down. Unless it's to get the publishers to stop selling titles on Amazon. The cost of an ebook has to be much, much less than a paper book, so it makes no sense to keep prices artificially high.
Many academic books are cheaper on Amazon, but some publishers, like Routledge keep the prices in the hundreds of dollars.
Here is a condensed version.
The publishers and Apple ganged up on Amazon to move to an agency model where Amazon wouldn't be able to set the price (and giving Apple most favored status so they couldn't be undercut).
The whole conspiracy sounds extra insane because the money involved is loose change to Apple.
Not really. It's just a big, sprawly suburb between Portland and Mt Hood.
Driving a hard bargain isn't illegal. Publishers are free to seek other channels, they aren't free to set up a cartel.
The collusion between the publishers have probably cost me 600 dollars or so over the last few years. Excuse me if I have limited sympathy for those #####.
Nope; Mrs. JPJ has a collection of Grisham's novels and I tried reading this one on vacation one year. I got about 50 pages in and couldn't tolerate it any longer, it seemed very pedestrian and formulaic. From talking with my wife Grisham has apparently written the same book 10-12 different times, although that is probably true for many popular authors.
Grisham's books were pretty entertaining to the 13-year-old version of me...good page-turners but they lacked the payoff at the end. It seemed like Grisham had interesting premises that he just couldn't fully develop--once he set the story in motion the rest of the book played out exactly as you'd expect it would. IIRC they changed the ending of The Firm for the movie.
The case as presented in the NY Times and the link from Swedish Chef above is damning. Are the 3 publishers who settled agreeing to help out the prosecution here? Isn't this the kind of #### that your company can be broken up for?
Their keeping e-books from libraries (apart from Random House) is also a big negative in my book.
As e-books become a larger and larger part of the book market, looking towards the future, that's unacceptable (I'd be sympathetic to "windowing" - keeping the new bestsellers off their virtual shelves for a period of time - but not to keeping the whole older backlist of books off-limits)
Once they get settled with the DOJ & the states, they still have the EU to deal with.
Don't knock it, it's the toughest multiplayer game out there. World of Warcraft has nothing on it, even Eve Online can't match the addictive and infuriating qualities of Academia. Some say that it is lacking in realism though, but don't listen to the haters.
There ARE no bad made-for-tv movies of the 70's you bastard.
Read it about three years back (at the recommendation of my sister) and enjoyed it. Grisham tells the story well, in my humble opinion. Grisham allows just enough of his own opinions to filter through to make it clear where he stands, without being over-bearing. The fact that it's non-fiction makes it disturbing, and, quite frankly, somewhat sad; but, sadder still, is the fact that it's not a shocking story, as in "I can't believe this could happen in America!".
Pre-incarceration, Ron Williamson is far from a sympathetic figure; Dennis Fritz is the man whom your heart goes out for. But, to me, that just makes the point of the story more effective, and why it tells better focused on Williamson, rather than on Fritz. To quote Larry Flynt, "If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you."
One of my favorite lines in the book comes towards the end (page 267 in my copy):
That made me laugh.
Of all that Ron and his family had to endure, the part that made me angriest/saddest/most frustrated was the reaction of their church after Ron was exonerated. Of all that they went through, that was the part that most broke my heart.
The only other Grisham book I've read is The Summons. A co-worker loaned me her copy when she learned that I was reading The Innocent Man. Overall, I found The Summons an enjoyable book; a nice, easy read. The plot and the characters (all of whom, by the way, I recognize by type, courtesy of having lived for over a decade in the Southern U.S.) made it a good page turner.
Taking a peek at Amazon.com, however, it appears that I'm in the minority, as over seven hundred reviewers have combined to give the book a rating of approximately two-and-a-half stars. Glancing through the comments, it appears most of the negative reviews are based upon disappointment from readers who are familiar with Grisham's other works, and were therefore expecting more of a legal "thriller", with a lot more action and suspense. I could be wrong, but I suspect that if another author's name appeared on the cover The Summons would have rated somewhat higher (though, of course, it would have sold a lot fewer copies).
DB
Listen, it's like anything. The details are boring. But let me put it this way: I will be paid to read books for a living. There are worse things. I was a computer programmer for many years and it made me miserable. There hasn't been a moment on this ride through graduate school that was miserable. It's been great: camaraderie, talking about and thinking about literature, talking to students, teaching and training teachers. Sure, I'll never make a lot of money, but I have summers off, I get to spend a ton of time with my wife and kids. Life is good.
(The school I go to, by the way, has great and relevant teaching practice. In fact, I ran the TA training for 40+ departments for 2 years (ended in 2011). )
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Let me rephrase...you will not be paid for summers, but you sure as heck won't have them off. Assuming you are talking about a tenure-track position at a 4-year American university.
There's a sense in which you're right, PreservedFish, but that sense accounts for about ½ of 1% of the stuff that goes on in humanities departments, even those with research expectations. I sometimes meet English professors who have managed to land jobs with low teaching loads and arcane research agendas, who talk amongst themselves as if certain aspects of certain impenetrable Lacan seminars were life-and-death affairs: people who got translated from Research One doctoral programs to Research One doctoral faculties the moment they defended and have never had to think about anything beyond their noses. The stereotype is sometimes almost true.
But for the overwhelmingly huge majority, academic life is a teaching job. Yesterday I taught grammar and a Young Adult novel, and went to a lethally boring meeting that was like any lethally boring meeting at any company or institution anywhere. Like Piehole, I do a lot of teacher-training (in basic composition pedagogy). My PhD students tend to get jobs at comprehensive universities or community colleges where they teach writing and intro to lit. It's a good life, and the opportunities to reflect on one's navel are rare.
2012 will be my first summer "off" since 2006. I'll have to do a lot of reading for new fall courses, and I'll do some travel, and some Ballpark time, and very little esoteric research. And I'll be broke by September, but that's become an acceptable tradeoff in my old age ...
Teaching vs research is kind of like fielding vs hitting. At some level they're both very important, but there's a big premium on research -- to the extent that you'll see the academic equivalent of designated hitters, who have very little teaching ability at all.
In the natural sciences, research brings in a lot of money -- in grad school, I noticed that our department actually brought more money to campus per grad student than the football team brought per player. From that perspective, it's a no brainer to favor the researcher over the teacher -- the researcher can bring in new money directly through grants, while the teacher brings in money indirectly by increasing the number of satisfied students. If you figure in a network effect and the reputational advantages of being seen as a strong department, the effects are even bigger.
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