Scoring From Second: Writers on Baseball (review)

When reviewing anthologies the temptation is to say that they contain something for everyone. Such would be the case for Deaver’s collection, where, like all good baseball writing, these pieces are about more than just baseball. In them, we hear both the fans’ and the players’ voices, which make up the overwhelming majority of the thirty-five selections included. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this collection illustrates what baseball writing can do, moving past writing that focuses on what baseball means, what baseball symbolizes, or what baseball says about America. Taken together, this book shows how we benefit from the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

The depth and breadth of the selections make it difficult—and almost unfair—to single out individual pieces. As Deaver notes in his introduction, one of the themes that emerges is the “quiet role” of baseball in people’s lives long after they cease to be active players (xviii), as well as how the game exists as a part of the lives of non-players. We see this in selections that are as wide-ranging as Gary Forrester’s novel excerpt, an ode to the late Jack Buck and Darryl Kile, and Dan O’Neill’s jargon-filled sports writing about the 2004 Cardinals (these two pieces perhaps reveal a bit of hometown bias on our editor’s part). The book contains a number of memoir pieces that validate Deaver’s decision to label his collection “creative non-fiction.” Many of the contributions contain the dual sight of retrospect: Cris Mazza combines the coming-of-age recollections of a player turned live-and-die San Diego Padres fan with the realizations of the behind-the-scenes machinations learned by an older and all-too-wiser fan.

The voices found in this collection are nearly evenly split between fans (who speak of the players) and players (who speak for themselves), with only two sportswriters (who speak for the players) represented. This collection also illustrates the limitations of such a characterization because many of these authors are former players who are writing after their playing days are over. On one end of the spectrum, Deaver includes Tim D. Stone’s piece about four generations of Boston Red Sox fans and how baseball helped them assimilate into American society (a common theme in baseball literature), but without any hint of whether playing baseball was a part of that process. At the other extreme, Michael Steinberg’s piece speaks with a player’s voice about his playing days and how baseball helped him come of age and deal with his Jewish background in the 1950s. Although he was a fan of the Dodgers, he was first and foremost a player.

Deaver’s collection illustrates the ways baseball provides a vehicle for us to tell stories about ourselves, thus helping us generate social and cultural bonds. These pieces are not descriptions of what baseball means or what baseball symbolizes; instead, they are illustrations of how baseball helps us come to terms with our lives. We see it when sons and daughters describe the links between baseball and their fathers and mothers, when women discuss the challenges that face them as players, and when men write about hanging onto their Sunday church leagues. What’s more, pieces like Rick Campbell’s actively examine how baseball stories work to accomplish this. He describes his grandfather’s baseball stories, which he wants and needs to be true, as well as the evolution of his own stories about Roberto Clemente. Taken together, the pieces in this collection show how baseball helps us give voice to our own stories.

As such, this book will appeal to a wide audience: fans, players, writers, and readers of baseball literature will all find much to enjoy here. The enriching quality of the selections make the book suitable for sport literature and creative nonfiction classes—especially as that genre continues to solidify a place in writing programs. The pieces...