The first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of promise and innocence in America. Hardworking immigrants could achieve the American dream; heroes were truly heroic. Eric Rolfe Greenberg brilliantly and authentically chronicles the real-life saga of the first national baseball hero, Christy Mathewson, and the fictional story of a Jewish immigrant family of jewelers. In these pages Mathewson and other great players like John McGraw, Honus Wagner, and Connie Mack discover the realities behind the shining illusions: the burdens of being a hero and the temptations that taint success.
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Amazon.com Review
In the Ragtime tradition of revolving a fictional world around a factual core, Greenberg's 1983 novel is a polished gem, which is fitting because it is partly built around a jeweler. Though The Celebrant never caught on much with the general public, its adherents were virtual zealots; to them, reading the novel bordered on having a religious experience. Its sophisticated weaving together of the life of Christy Mathewson, the Giants' great hurler and role model, with a family of immigrant Jews in New York in the first quarter of the 20th century captured their imaginations--then sadly disappeared for almost a decade before its welcome reissue.
On the surface, The Celebrant is obviously a baseball story--many of "Matty's" greatest on-field feats are meticulously recreated--as well as a story of how deeply the game reached into the lives of new arrivals from the Old World desperate to become American. On a deeper level, it is a stunning meditation on the fragile balance between the heroism of a man who won World Series rings and the hero worship of the young jeweler who made those rings for him. Its simplicity is deceptive. The Celebrant does much more than celebrate; it paints the corners of another era and another ethos with the command and control Matty himself was known to exhibit. --Jeff Silverman
Review
"An oft-overlooked novel that blends fact and fiction to create a charming turn-of-the-century tale about the intertwined lives of New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson and the family of a young Jewish immigrant who makes his World Series rings."—Sports Illustrated
(Sports Illustrated )"In this fictionalization of the life and times of New York Giants pitching star Christy Mathewson, the author has written a richly detailed narrative."—Library Journal
(Library Journal )"The reconstructed accounts of Mathewson''s most famous games reflect painstaking research and a colorful imagination."—Booklist
(Booklist )"Greenberg splendidly evokes the essence of turn-of-the-century America by deftly mixing fact and fiction in the tradition of Ragtime."—Kansas City Star
(Kansas City Star )"A captivating novel."—People
(People )"Greenberg recreates the famous events of the era, from the Merkle saga to the Black Sox scandal, in enchanting detail. If this isn''t the best baseball novel ever written, it''s definitely in the top five. A real treasure!"—Elysian Fields Quarterly Review
(Elysian Fields Quarterly Review )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Baseball Novel,
By scutchen (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Celebrant: A Novel (Paperback)
I thought "The Natural" and the Kinsella books, "Shoeless Joe" and "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" were just too dark and odd. Coover's "Universal Baseball Association" was so obsessive-compusive... Until now, my favorite baseball novel was "If I Never Get Back", by Darryl Brock. This is a wonderful novel with a strong historical link to the 1869 Red Stockings, as the main character joins the Cincy team and travels with them throughout the East Coast and even off to San Fransisco. Add time travel, Mark Twain, buried treasure and a love interest, and this novel is a blast. But I now have a new favorite. "The Celebrant" by Erick Greenberg I read about this book on various lists of great baseball books, but the plot always seemed to sound a bit weak. Well, it is a masterpiece. The research done by Greenberg to get the Mathewson baseball correct is sooo cool. From the details of the Merkle Boner to the Snograss Muff and the subsequent call-off of Merkle in favor of Chief Meyers by Matty... From Matty quitting in shame as manager of Cincinnatti after the Hal Chase debacle and enlisting for WWI to the Black Sox World Series of 1919. Game after game sounds like a current event. Very cool, very accurate stuff. This is early 20th century baseball as if you were there. Combine that with the insight into the title character's immigrant family and their establishment of their jewelry business and its intertwining with baseball. Add some wonderful prose. A true masterpiece. Here's a favorite passage, describing Honus Wagner: =-=-=-= "Honus Wagner matched Mathewson for size, and in the infield he stood like a gnarled oak with bowed roots, his large arms branching nearly to the ground; with his oversized hands, he'd scoop up anything hit to his enormous range, gathering with the ball a large measure of infield dirt, and he would fling the whole package toward first base, debris trailing off like a comet's tail, the toss ever straight and true." =-=-=-= Another longer passage, on the difficulty of being Mathewson the hero. This was on the eve of Matty pitching the delayed game 7 of the 1912 World Seies at Fenway. All of the pressure of the failure of 1908 and the expectations of being Mathewson weigh on the great pitcher. Hugh Fullerton, the baseball writer, is talking to Kapp, the book's main character, who has just learned that Matty refers to him as the 'celebrant of his works' through his jewelry designs and gifts to the pitcher: =-=-=-= "Have you ever considered what he is to himself? What it's like to be Christy Mathewson? Imagine it. You know perhaps five hundred people by name, but fifty million know you. You make no more than ordinary demands upon people; you don't insist that the sandwich you order for lunch be the most marvelous sandwich ever made, or that the bootblack's shine dazzle the blind, yet the sandwich-maker and the bootblack and millions like them expect the superhuman from you, and finally they'll accept nothing less. Expectation becomes demand, and it extends to everyone and everything. You hear the crowd groan if you give up a single hit; they expect a no-hit game. Give up a run and people say you're off your game. Even your teammates turn to you to save them after they foul up the simplest plays. The writers make you a standard of excellence, and if a rival wins nineteen games in a row you're expected to win twenty. The world makes you a god and hates you for being human, and if you plead for understanding it hates you all the more. Heros are never forgiven their success, still less their failure." ... Fullerton put on his hat. "Matty told me you were once a pitcher. I suspect that your [jewelry design] work is infused with the wish that you were he. You're not alone. Inside every sportswriter there's a frustrated athlete, according to the old saw. Why not? The same thing is inside every fan, or anyone who ever picked up a bat and a ball. But Kapp, you ought to thank God that your arm went bum. It might be you in Gethsemane tonight." =-=-=-=
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great mix of baseball, history, and character development,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Celebrant: A Novel (Paperback)
One of the best baseball novels I have ever read! The author, Eric Rolfe Greenberg, wonderfully interweaves the era in American history before World War II, both baseball and non-baseball, as seen through the eyes of a fictitious immigrant Jewish family with the character development of that family. Every character, including the minor ones, is fully and realistically developed. My only minor criticism is that the denouement following the decision that climaxes the novel was handled somewhat clumsily, but that doesn't detract from this novel's 10 rating. The discerning reader will continue to ask himself two questions long after he has finished the novel: 1) Would I have made the same decision and 2) Who is the Celebrant? From a 1998 perspective, he will also have discovered some ticklish historical irony. My favorite dramatic moment is Giant manager John McGraw's dramatic confrontation with umpire Hunkerin' Hank O'Day after the famous Merkle incident.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing, richly detailed, and terribly haunting,
By
This review is from: The Celebrant: A Novel (Paperback)
Why are so many great baseball stories essentially tragic ones? This novel is the best baseball novel I've yet read, and I can understand how fans of the novel can consider it a religious experience. It's a story of worship, that most essential of human activities, a baseball fan's worship of the first true immortal of the game. Its details are rich without being overwhelming, its characterization classic and familiar but not trite. The dynamic between the celebrant--the jewel designer Jackie Kapinski--and the celebrated, Christy Mathewson, plays out like Greek myth or biblical narrative, and exposes the need for, and dangers of, someone to believe in.
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