For Love of the Game [Paperback]

Michael Shaara (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1997

Billy Chapel is a baseball legend, a man who has devoted his life to the game he loves and plays so well. But because of his unsurpassed skill and innocent faith, he has been betrayed. Now it's the final game of the season, and Billy's got one last chance to prove who he is and what he can do, a chance to prove what really matters in this life. A taut, compelling story of one man's coming of age, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME is Michael Shaara's final novel, the classic finish to a brilliantly distinguished literary career.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Serious sports novels often fall through the literary cracks simply because of the arena they play in. Michael Shaara earned his battle stripes--and a Pulitzer Prize--for The Killer Angels, a fictional resurrection of the Battle of Gettysburg, as serious a subject as a writer can confront. Yet, it's no more profound, in the end, than the personal dilemmas protagonist Billy Chapel faces in this, Shaara's final novel, found stashed in a desk after his death and published posthumously.

A certain Hall of Famer, Chapel is a major-league anomaly, a contemporary throwback to another sporting era. He's pitched 17 stellar seasons for the same club, and his love of the game has remained paramount; neither money nor fame has been his motivation. But on the single day this story takes place, he finds himself in crisis. At the crossroads of his life, his career, and his future, he must make the hard choices that will define the direction of the rest of his life. It's the end of the season, his team's out of contention, there's a rumor he may have been traded, and the woman he can't fully acknowledge that he loves announces she's leaving him. It is, as he tells himself, "Time to grow up, Daydreamer." Still, he dreams, but he also acts. As Billy takes the mound for his final start of the year--and maybe forever--we enter his stream of consciousness, and rush with him over the sometimes treacherous rapids of what has preceded this moment, and what may come. Amazingly, though his mind seems to wander through time, his concentration is fierce. Pitch by pitch, inning by inning, he remains focused, honoring his job and his legacy as he pitches a masterpiece of mythic proportion, ultimately leaving the field more a man than when he took it. Using baseball to sound the depths of human experience, Shaara delivers a masterpiece, as well. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly

Reading this posthumously published baseball novel is best compared to watching a gifted young player whose promise slowly fades with every strikeout and weak groundball, despite occasional flashes of potential. Shaara, who won a Pulitzer in 1975 for The Killer Angels , died just after the book was finished, and one feels he might have liked to give it a rewrite. Just before the last game of the season, star pitcher Billy Chapel, a veteran of 17 years in the major leagues, discovers that his team plans to trade him. Moreover, he learns that his New York editor/girlfriend has inexplicably ended their romance--leaving him adrift and the reader more than a little indifferent. The love affair, seen in flashbacks (notably a scene in which they achieve congress in a small airplane), must compete with an unhealthy number of baseball cliches and a series of featureless characters; even Billy, whose thoughts we share, seems a blank. The book does come to life, fittingly enough, as Chapel takes the mound for his final and greatest game. Shaara succeeds in conveying the extraordinary physical and psychological demands of the professional game as well as the dizzying pleasures of its triumphs. But even the account of Chapel's greatest victory is marred by a trite ending. While flawed, however, this is a noteworthy attempt to capture the simultaneous loss of a life's love and a life's obsession.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (March 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345408926
• ISBN-13: 978-0345408921
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Introspective and moving, November 7, 2001

By 

J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For Love of the Game (Mass Market Paperback)

This book, found in manuscript form among the author's papers after his death, is like an ode to the purity of the game of baseball. The protagonist, Billy Chapel, is a throwback to the old glory days of the sport, when players spent their whole careers with one team, and had annual meetings with the team owner to iron out next year's contract.

Chapel is about to take the mound at the end of his 17th big-league season, for a losing team, playing before 80,000 fans in Yankee Stadium (must have been the old, larger House that Ruth built) against a team desperately needing the win for a playoff berth. Amidst personal crisis (Chapel hears a rumor that he's been traded, and his girlfriend is destined to marry another), he tries to block out everything and go out in style, giving it all he's got for one majestic, final game.

The book is written like an internal monologue, and especially in between innings Chapel reminisces about childhood, about his chance encounter with the beautiful Carol and their amorous adventures together, and about his departed parents. The scene of Billy pretending to sleep in the backseat of his folks' car, while they marvel at his talent and discuss how special he is, was especially moving. Chapel is so introspective that he is essentially roused out of his reverie to take the mound each inning by his catcher and best friend Gus.

I liked the interplay between the baseball game and the dream-like flashbacks, although readers should understand that this is more than just a novel about baseball. Themes such as solitude, grace under pressure, camaraderie between the pitcher and catcher, and the recognition that Billy is an aging athlete playing what could be his last game are all explored in moving detail. I read the book this past week, against the backdrop of a classic game 7 World Series matchup between two old warhorses Clemens and Schilling, and could appreciate even more the way pitchers ignore the pain and lay it all on the line in big games. Shaara, whose masterpiece "The Killer Angels" explored the psyche of civil war veterans like Lee, Longstreet, Armistead and Hancock, does a good job getting inside the head of a hall of fame pitcher. The book is also nice and short, susceptible of being completed in one long sitting if desired. While some of his references may seem a bit dated (like athletes listening to Neil Diamond tapes the night before a game), the book is a winner.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Wonderful Book, August 19, 1999

By 

Stefan Herpel - See all my reviews

This review is from: For Love of the Game (Paperback)

I read this novel for the first time two months ago. I am difficult to please, and I find most "serious" contemporary fiction mediocre or worse. "For Love of the Game" was outstanding in almost every respect, and reminded me of the joys of reading great fiction.

There are many things that truly impressed me about this novel: the compact, but rich telling of the two stories in the book -- the aging ballplayer's last game and his breakup with his girlfriend of four years; the compelling descriptions of the ballplayer's inner thoughts as the game progresses; the riveting description of the final play of the game; and finally, the moving end to the story.

This short novel is far more than a book for sports fans -- it is truly a work of art.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transcending Baseball, June 8, 2000

By 

Liuco - See all my reviews

This review is from: For Love of the Game (Mass Market Paperback)

As a rule, I generally avoid contemporary books which focus on too narrow a subject (see Tom Clancy, Robin Cook) because I can't stand how the technical subject becomes the focus of the book instead of mere table dressing. In reading For Love of the Game, I was apprehensive because I'm no real fan of baseball. But, to my delight, the game is not "about" baseball. It's about a man, a success by any measure, struggling with what he has really accomplished and what he can look foward to after being told that he is no longer wanted by the team that he has loyally served for so many years. Shaara does a good job of melding several different memories into a coherent concious and the reader, in the end, gains not only perspective into the main character, Billy Chaple, but also into himself.