Home Field: Nine Writers at Bat [Hardcover]

John Douglas Marshall (Editor), Tina Hoggatt (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

Nine all-star writers-including sherman Alexie, Lynda Barry, Bryan Di Salvatore, and Larry Colton-stretch the boundaries of America's Favorite pastime in this winning anthology.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This collection of essays by diverse writers (most of whom are from the Pacific Northwest) captures the whole baseball experience. Novelist Sherman Alexie reflects on his tortured Little League career on an Indian reservation, cartoonist Lynda Barry recalls Seattle's long-gone minor league park, essayist Robert Leo Heilman, author of Overstory: Zero, reports on an American Legion baseball tournament. In all, nine writers (of course) step up to the plate and hit 'em all over the park.

From Kirkus Reviews

Nine accomplished writers on baseball as it is played in the Northwest, and as it has played out in their lives, in a collection edited by Seattle Post-Intelligencer writer Marshall (Reconciliation Road, 1993). Several of these personal essays could be used by English teachers to illustrate the perils of overworking metaphors (baseball is life)--and to prove how hard it is to bring freshness to a subject more overworked than the sore-armed ace of a bad pitching staff. In fairness, even the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time, and the batting average on this collection is about as good as Ken Griffey Jr.'s (.303 in 1996). Griffey's name comes up often as the region's premier professional ballplayer, but these pieces are mostly about baseball on a much lower level: playing or coaching Little League or softball, or bonding over baseball with a child, a father, or friends. The two solid hits are barely about baseball at all: novelist Sherman Alexie wondering, in ``The Warriors,'' why he was so uninterested in the Native American girls who played on his Little League team, and Lynda Barry explaining, in ``What Pop Fly Gave His Daughter,'' why she stole her father's baseball glove, anticipating his imminent abandonment of his family. Typical of the whiffs in this nine-writer line-up is Bryan Di Salvatore's ``Team Photo,'' which describes why his Missoula, Mont., softball team reflects most aspects of the universe, then declares impatience with writers turning baseball ``into something hallowed and fraught with meaning.'' Di Salvatore will not be happy with most of his Home Field teammates. Every serious fan, player, and Little League parent knows how closely baseball resembles life. And every writer considering putting such thoughts on paper should think about how much of baseball is about striking out--a lesson verified by this collection. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570610967
• ISBN-13: 978-1570610967
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,126,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Two for nine won't keep you in the line-up, December 26, 2000

By 

"theparableofthebeast" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Field: Nine Writers at Bat (Hardcover)

Baseball as metaphor for life, or life as a metaphor for baseball has been pretty well covered. Unfortunately most of the writers in this book are caught in some personal vortex that can work only for them and has little to offer the reader. This collection is mostly about everyday people involved with some aspect of baseball and the inference tends to be that the essence of the game somehow lies in the milllions who participate in some form at some level. But it's a ruse, used to justify or validate many of the authors' opinions and maybe cherised moments. Not much here of merit.

Though most of the stories don't bridge the gap from the teller's personal interest to valid story telling, there are two exceptional pieces that belong in any first rate short story anthology.

They are "The Warriors," by Sherman Alexie, and "What Pop Fly Gave His Daugher," by Lynda Berry. These are excellent works. They are powerful, moving, informative, wonderful stories that happen to include baseball. Sherman Alexie brings humor, the quixotic mine fields of emerging adolesence, core questions about pecking orders, and schooling on and off the reservation in an engaging, entertaining, and authentic manner.

Lynda Berry offers a story in the life of a girl/emerging woman as she finds a way to deal with a near intolerable family. We are are shown a glimpse of the confusion and agony of this girl, and her determination and reslience as she survives and comes to grips with her noncaring and self-centered father. It's an excellent and informative read. And yes, baseball gloves, even if they only cost $.59, can work magic.

The remaining seven selections are meanderings of minimal interest. They are dull, and in the same breath as extolling the life virtues of baseball they tend justify ugliness and/or reflect/validate a sad personal perspective.

In "God's Tourney," Robert Leo Heilman treats American Legion regional playoff baseball with the devout obsequiosness of a budding acolyte of the true religion. He gives us a lot about being good enough, the quirks of the game, the usual about how baseball makes better people of those who play it, and becomes positively reverent when describing the hallowed ground of the Roseburg field. Seemingly unaware of the contradiction, he then plays the reality card: the very non amateur baseball commercial concessions necessary for legion ball to survive are dismissed as just a part of big thing called life. The official car (Buick), and so on. No dealing with reality and the obvious: you can't make nice something that isn't. Instead of letting the obvious just lie there, the author tries to validate it and somwhow attach it to the glow of those beautiful 600 wooden seats.

In "From the Church of Baseball: Different Hymns," by Timothy Eagon we have the modern blow up of all the coaches and parents who never figured out the value of games for children. While he does profess to come to some sort of epiphany at the end, he can't get past his obsession, not passion, about the game and "life."

From some dark recess he rails about the pathetic nature of T-ball and coach-pitch, everybody-is-a-winner stuff that is peddled at the lower ages. His squad is made up of nine year olds. He continues about how reality comes early for these kids - his team, which includes his daughter - about the pain the kids felt when Griffey broke his wrist running down a deep drive, or Ayala's "closings." He tells us that these kids know grit, triumph, and agony, and rambles on in a debasing monolouge, ending with "self-esteem, schmelf-esteem."

9 year old girls (and boys) just don't agonize over these things, unless they are tactical survival techniques for life at at home. With any luck, children at this age are encoureaged to learn and discover, allowed to be kids. The grit and agony too many of them know are obscene expectations to be adults by the age of nine, to validate adults instead of being validated by them, and to be bludgeoned into equating a hollow concept of "being a winner" with being valued. A quick look at the courts and social services shows us what too many 9 year olds, and younger, know about the agony of despair and abuse. That's real. Ayala and Griffey are nice diversions.

It's the game that's the thing, it's the game that rich and rewarding, unlike all but two of this collection.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Humor & Life Examined Through the Baseball Experience, February 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Home Field: Nine Writers at Bat (Hardcover)

The book and its essays are charming. Through these words you can feel the writer's life experiences as viewed through some association with baseball. Baseball is not the topic of this book, it is the illustration used to bring to you a number of life experiences - some joyful, others emotional - all worth reading and experiencing. Sort of a "Baseball - Soup for the Soul"!