Play Ball

Many, many moons ago I read Bernard Malamud’s THE NATURAL, and fell head-over-heels for baseball. So profound was the experience that I’ve been unable to read another Malamud to this day, on the basis that, to the best of my knowledge at least, none of his other books are about baseball.
  Of course, it was a young man’s love. By which I mean, I fell in love with the idea of baseball, with its lore and language and what it represented, and particularly its mythic status as America’s national pastime. And so, over the years, I’ve watched plenty of baseball movies, and read some books, in the process putting together a very sketchy understanding of the game its great names, among them Di Maggio, Ruth, Robinson, Mays, Williams, Jackson, Gehrig, and the gloriously despised Ty Cobb. And then there are the team names; the Cubs and the various Sox, the Cardinals, the Tigers and Pirates and Indians and the perfidious Dodgers; and the ball parks themselves, from Fenway to Candlestick.
  It’s impossible to engage with American popular culture and not be infected by baseball by a process of osmosis. One of my favourite novels, for example, William Goldman’s MARATHON MAN, is steeped in the game; the game’s argot is pervasive, seeping into the language of film and novel and play, of casual conversation and political speech. I understood the audacity of stealing a base before I knew what base-stealing was; I could contextualise curveballs and pinch hitters and double plays and the bottom of the ninth long before I understood their technical meaning.
  Fast forward to many moons ago, when I spent a very pleasant week in Atlanta in the company of a very pleasant young woman, who very kindly showed me the town, the highlight of which was a tour of Turner Field. That was in March, unfortunately; still, it was nice to finally step into a ball park.
  But it wasn’t until about a month ago that I actually sat down to watch an entire game of baseball on TV. I have no idea why I did so; these days I don’t even have time to watch a full game of hurling, and I couldn’t even tell you who was playing that night. It took about two innings before I was hooked. Given that most live baseball games run three to four hours, and that most games shown here are on ESPN around midnight, I’ve developed the very bad (i.e., time-consuming) habit of recording a night’s game and watching it the following evening. I’m not rooting for any one team; to be honest, I don’t even care who wins, or the score. I’m just fascinated by what these guys are doing, their technical proficiency in a game of millimetres. And I’m less interested in the Hollywood plays, the booming homer to the second tier, as I am by the more mundane plays; my favourite, as it happens, is the third baseman or short stop picking up an infield drive and rifling it across to the hungry glove on first base. Overall, and contrary to what I would have believed from watching baseball movies, and as thrilling as it is to watch a guy lean back and smack the pill into the middle of next week, I’m far more interested in watching the pitchers than the batters, and the fielding, and particularly that of the infielders.
  When I opened Dennis Lehane’s superb THE GIVEN DAY last week, and discovered that the opening chapter was a beautifully written fictional account of the Babe stepping down off a stalled train to go play ball in a field in the middle of nowhere, it’s safe to say that Lehane was pushing at an open door.
  Which brings me to the point of this post. I have THE NATURAL lined up for a long overdue re-read, but I’m open to suggestions about other books about baseball. I’ve read SHOELESS JOE, and it’s probably a bit too soon to go back to it; but if anyone can suggest a novel about baseball, I’m all ears (suggestions on college baseball particularly welcome). Short stories would work too, given the nature of the game. And if anyone can recommend a good history of baseball, preferably one containing potted histories of the great players and teams, that would be a bonus.
  Finally, I have a Baseball Reader around here somewhere, which I’ve been looking for in vain for the last couple of weeks, one which contains Ty Cobb’s letter to the Hall of Fame detailing his Greatest Team. If anyone can tell me which book that’s in, I’d be very grateful.
  Play ball …

Publishing: If It Was A Dog, You’d Shoot It

I’ve been feeling a bit off about the whole writing bit lately, which is maybe a consequence of finishing a draft of a novel before I went on holiday. I’d planned to Kindle said novel, THE BIG EMPTY, and wanted to give it one last quick polish before I released it into the wild. Except 20 or 30 pages in I was thinking, ‘Actually, this isn’t as bad as I remember’ (it’s about five years since I wrote it). By the end I was fairly consumed by the story, and decided it needed a serious bit of work, but that it was worth it. Right now it’s out there in the tender care of some people I respect, and an opinion or two has started to waft back through the ether … mostly positive, happily enough.
  So maybe that’s why I’m feeling a bit drained and take-it-or-leave-it right now. And maybe the ennui has to do with the fact that there’s a couple of novels out there doing the rounds, THE BIG EMPTY and BAD FOR GOOD. Trying to maintain positive karma on behalf of both of them could wind up sucking me dry, and ruining the engine entirely, so maybe my subconscious has decided to temporarily promote the ‘don’t-really-give-a-shite’ defence.
  There are other reasons, though. The naked greed and gross stupidity of the industry in which I want to thrive is one of them. Another is the ongoing and relentless confirmation that the writing industry is not the meritocracy I’d always presumed it to be. Another is the daily confirmation of the fact that quite a lot of writers today aren’t writers at all, but simply businessmen (and women) with typewriters, who are far better at the business side of things than they are at the typing.
  Incidentally, today was the day I realised that the very fine website Crime Spot positions this blog in the category ‘The Business of Writing’, as opposed to the category ‘The Art of Writing’. It’s not that I think that my writing is art; it’s that I never thought of getting into writing for the sake of business. And I know that a goodly chunk of the output here is about promoting other writers … but is that necessarily ‘Business’ as opposed to ‘Art’?
  Anyway, by a pure fluke, I subsequently came across the Taint website, which was rating Irish blogs. And lo! Crime Always Pays comes in 43rd in the Top 100 Irish Blogs, which cheered me up no end. But lo-lo! It comes in 21st when the blogs are rated by ‘In-Bound Links’. I don’t really know what ‘In-Bound Links’ means, although I’m guessing it has to do with other websites et al linking to CAP …? Either way, I’m presuming it’s good.
  Cheered immeasurably by the news, I promptly went and ‘valued’ Crime Always Pays, and discovered that the blog is worth anywhere between $40k and $132k, depending on which website you believe.
  Bugger that ‘Art’ malarkey, we’re back in ‘Business’. Right?
  Erm, not really, although if anyone wants to make me an offer, I’m listening … Seriously, the best news I heard all day came via Ray Banks on Twitter, which directed me (eventually) to the video below. It’s a mission statement of sorts on behalf of publishing newbies Tyrus Books, which appears to take its philosophy from Ty Cobb, which is all sorts of alright with me. If we had even a tiny amount more people like this in the publishing industry, people, the world would be a hell of a better place. Or, for that matter, people like Stona Fitch, who was kind enough to send me a copy of his rather excellent novel SENSELESS recently. Roll it there, Collette …