Boys of Summer
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
The boys at the Henry Wiggen’s blog are back and posting more frequently now. One of the bloggers is my former journalism professor, John Lofflin. Something he added to the site earlier in the week caught my attention. In an excellent post, he asked why so many talented writers turn to baseball as the basis for their literary endeavors. My response (re-published here) was that I loved playing baseball as a kid and that the answer might be as simple as Hemingway, Malamud, Shaahara, and others did, too. I think that response was pretty obvious, but it gave me a reason to reel off a few hundred words.
Of course, Lofflin’s question digs way deeper than my reply. I hadn’t considered that in almost all of the novels, a central character’s body is failing and, in many cases, he is losing the ability to play the game. This is an excellent point. I think the key word is “loss”. The sport and the ability to play it well – or at all – is what brings something meaningful to these ballplayers’ lives and to see it go – to have to play half-ass or sit it out altogether – are the biggest challenges they could ever face. And therein lies the drama.
Anyone who follows professional sports knows that in very few instances do athletes face the end decently. They stick it out too long, take one too many hits in the boxing ring, throw one too many pitches on the mound, get sacked one too many times, and so on. Players a shade of what they used to be thinking that they still have the strength and the agility to do the impossible, as they once did. Bodies break down and ability goes with it. More inventive and worse endings are possible today. Or they get brought down in the steroid era in nervous, shaky voices offering testimony before Congress. The ends are generally not good.
The loss of ability and injury are a ballplayer’s greatest fears. They are competitors, by nature, and losing the ability to compete is to lose something of themselves. This is a greater loss than they could ever face on the field. On the field, there is the possibility of luck. You can have a good day amid a slump. You could at least play and strike up some familiarity with the person you used to be. Off the field, unless you take the mirrors down, you have to look at a changing face. You have all the time in the world, suddenly, not to play. Not to be yourself. Again, the end is tough for ballplayers.
I thought about this deterioration and the risk an athlete faces when I was a freshman in high school. my brother was a highly recruited fullback his senior year. I was about six years behind him and I had time to contemplate what happened to him. The summer before he played his senior year, a freshman flew up during a light practice to make a hit on him and took his knee out. He played six games that year and he never fully recovered his strength.
So I found my way into books, into writing. I still played sports, but never with any real intention of having fun. I dropped baseball sometime in middle school after my favorite coach quit. That wasn’t smart. I was moving on to another school, my body was changing – I felt weak – and along with it went my confidence. Not until I was a senior starter on the football team did I really become an intimidating hitter. I grew into my size too late. I never had to face a decline. My experience was all on the rise. And I wasn’t that great.
Now, if something were to come along and take away my ability to write, then I’d be done. I wouldn’t be able to process things. I’d see the world a different way. I’d feel useless. Probably a lot like a ballplayer would.
