The Great American Novel

Roth, Phillip. The Great American Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. 1973. Print

First Sentences: 

Call me Smitty.

That's what everybody else called me -- the ballplayers, the bankers, the bareback riders, the baritones, the bartenders, the bastards, the best-selling writers (excepting Hem who dubbed my Frederico), the bicyclists, the big-game hunters (Hem the exception again), the billiards champs, the bishops, the blacklisted (myself included), the black marketeers, the blonds, the bloodsuckers, the bluebloods, the bookies, the Bolsheviks (some of my best friends, Mr. Chairman - what of it?), the bombardiers, the bootblacks, the bootlicks, the bosses, the boxers, the Brahmins, the brass hats, the British (Sir Smitty as of '36), the broads, the broadcasters, the broncobusters, the brunettes, the black bucks down in Barbados (Mistah Smitty), the Buddhist monks in Burma, one Bulkington, the bullfighters, the bull throwers, the burlesque comics, the burlesque stars, the bushman, the bums, and the butlers. And that's only the letter B fans, only one of the big Twenty Six.

Description:

Honestly, Phillip Roth's The Great American Novel is definitely not for everyone. First, you must be a baseball enthusiast, well-versed in and delighted by the nuances, jargon, and insider goings-on of a major league team. Second, you have to enjoy black humor with its irony, biting wit, and uncomfortable situations. Third, a working knowledge of some classical literature and literary techniques (e.g., over-long sentences, revered writers, famous novels, etc) helps. It also would help if you can recognize a few mythological names and places since most of the novel's characters and locales use these names. 

Right from the first sentence there is the tongue-in-cheek reference to the first line of Moby Dick ("Call me Ishmael") and Roth takes off from there. The Prologue is a long rant by Wordsmith "Smitty" Smith, the aged sports reporter from a by-gone era, who is attending the sportswriters gathering at the Baseball Hall of Fame. To everyone else's mocking ridicule, Smitty plans to cast his vote for Luke Gafaloon, the great hitter from the Ruppert Mundys. Never heard of them? Well, that's because the Mundys were part of the Patriot League, the forgotten/suppressed third major league from the Depression and World War II eras. 

When the other baseball writers claim never to have heard of Gafaloon or the Patriot League, Smitty decides to write the epic story of that era and the shenanigans that led to that League's demise. It will be the Great American Novel because Smitty disparages other claimants to that title, from Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and many others.

Smitty's Prologue might be a slog for anyone not fascinated by literature and black humor, so skip it if you get bored. Soon Smitty begins his history of the ill-fated Patriot League and its quirky players when the best players had been drafter into military service during World War II. There are stories of luminaries like Gil Gammesh, the fireballer who pitches a perfect game of all strikes ... until with two out in the ninth and two strikes on the final hitter when the umpire calls a ball on a close pitch. Fireworks ensue.

Here's a partial list of a few of the major characters Smitty follows on and off field:

• Roland Agni, the brilliant fielding, hard-hitting player whose father makes him play for free for the worst team in order to instill humility in Roland;

• Bob Yamm, uniform number 1/4, the pinch-hitting midget instructed never to swing his bat in order to draw a needed walk, but decides one infamous day to take a cut at the ball;

• Nickname Dumar, the young kid who longs for a big-league nickname but gets "Nickname" as his moniker instead;

• Luke Gofannon, the most prolific home run hitter in the majors, but who loves triples best;

• Hothead Ptah, the wooden-legged former legend now dubbed "the most irritating player in baseball";

• Isaac Ellis, the genius teenager who develops a secret formula to make the Mundys unbeatable;

• Angela Trust, the elderly owner of the Mundys who has torrid affairs with the best players;

• Ulysses S. Fairsmith, the Mundys' manager who brought baseball to the darkest regions of Africa;

• General Oakhart, President of the Patriot League, who gives away the Mundys' stadium to the US military for wartime training, forcing the Mundys to play all their home games on the road.

The Great American Novel documents these oddball characters as they play games, carouse, and do their best to win games with their limited talent. Then the unthinkable happens: the Mundys start winning. But there are Russians and international politics involved, plots laid and nefarious schemes undertaken. Soon the Mundys are disgraced and the Patriot League abolished from all baseball records.

Smitty's narration can be crude, demeaning to women (and also men), and definitely strongly-opinionated on baseball, its players, and administrators. For Smitty, baseball is a beautiful game, wonderfully played by the greats, yet the Patriot League is full of quirky impostors, greedy owners, blind umpires, and corrupt league officials. It is up to him to record an honest report to preserve the memory of this ill-fated league, the teams, and the characters that make up this era.

It is a colorful tale indeed, full of baseball games and behind-the-scenes plotting, of players you grown to love or hate, and a world of sports rarely portrayed so cleverly. For the right reader, The Great American Novel is an absorbing, fantastic, and very, very funny novel. I, of course, loved it!

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out: 

Tye, Larry. Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend.

Thoroughly researched and highly entertaining, Tye explores the facts behind the greatest Negro Leagues pitcher, sorting through interviews, newspapers clippings, box scores, and recordings. Even solves the ongoing mystery of how old Satch was. One of my absolute favorites.

Brosnan, Jim. The Long Season.

Probably one of the best books ever written about baseball from an insider, pitcher Jim Brosnan of the St. Louis Cardinal, who kept a diary during the 1959 season, documenting the players, life, and struggles of that year in the language of a real ball player. Highly recommended for its authentic language and honest look at America's game.

The Glory of Their Times

Ritter, Lawrence. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It. New York: Macmillan. 1984. Print.

First Sentences:

This is a book about the early days of baseball

It is a book about what it was like and how it felt to be a baseball player at the turn of the century and tin the decades shortly thereafter.

At least that way my intent when I bean working on the book five years and 75,000 miles ago. But now that it has been completed, I am not so sure..

Description:

I grew up collecting baseball cards, listening to my hometown team on the radio, and reading biographies of the great players from past ages: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, and many, many more. 

I seemed to be fascinated by baseball historic figures, especially in the eras in the glory days of the early 1900s through the 1930s. I particularly loved trivia books with oddities that occurred during games as recounted by the players themselves: the batter who held a match over his head in a darkening game "so Bob Feller could see him;" the pitcher who tossed a complete nine inning no-hitter, then lost; Ted Williams when he hit a home run in his very last at bat; Home Run Baker who hit a high of 12 homers in one season; etc, etc. etc.

You can imagine my joy when I discovered Lawrence Ritter's  The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It. Here is a book with narratives from the greatest players from the late 1800s and early 1900s: Wahoo Sam Crawford, Rube Marquard, Smokey Joe Wood, Chief  Meyers, Wee Willie Keeler, Three-Fingered Brown, Dummy Taylor, Greasy Neale, Specs Toporcer, Babe Herman (I had his son as my high school math teacher!), Goose Goslin, Hank Greenberg, and Big Poison Paul Waner.

Just the nicknames alone are enough to tickle the curiosity of even a passing fan. To read their recollections in their own uniquely-colored words is breath-taking,. Their descriptive language range from college graduate diction to forgotten colloquialisms offered by those who left school before the sixth grade. 

They tell of a wide range of topics: the dead ball era where all homer were inside-the-park; trying to hit spit balls, licorice balls, shine and emery balls which became almost immediately blackened and difficult to see (only 6 or 7 balls were used in a game compared with 60-70 balls nowadays). No wonder they choked way up on huge 48 oz. bats, just trying to make contact and poke out hits rather than trying to swing from their heels.

Here's just a random sampling of the personalities and the stories:

• Rube Marquard (pitcher) - after jumping trains, walking, and hitching rides to get to a tryout at age 16, he told his father he signed a contract to become a professional ball player (a disreputable profession in 1907). His father said "You're breaking my heart, and I don't ever want to see you again;"

• Specs Toporcer (second base) - Earned 50 cents a week in 1912 posting running scores on a chalkboard at a corner saloon using the Western Union ticker tape and a blackboard. He later had four operations on his eyes that made him lay completely still in bed for 30 days after each operation, but all failed and he went completely blind.

• Big Ed Delahanty (outfield) - first player to hit four homers in a game and also 6 hits in another game. He stepped off his team train that had stopped before crossing a suspension bridge over Niagara Falls and somehow fell to his death into the water;

• Walter Johnson (pitcher) - threw 56 consecutive scoreless innings and was virtually unhittable with his fastball, the best pitch ever thrown according to these players;

• Fred Snodgrass (outfield) - the truth behind the famous play where he neglected to touch second base and lost a World Series game;

• Luther "Dummy" Taylor (pitcher) - taught everyone on his team sign language so he could become a full-fledged member of the team. Also caused umpires to physically signal balls and strikes and safe/out with their arms so he could understand the calls;

• Harry "Giant Killer" Coveleski (pitcher) - spitball-pitcher who won three games in a single week to knock the Giants out of the 1908 pennant race;

• Smokey Joe Wood (pitcher) - started his career as a Bloomer Girl masquerading as a woman on an "all-female" traveling team, as did several other male players (in wigs and skirts);

• Lefty O'Doul (pitcher, outfield) - hit a lifetime.349, fourth best all time, but when he led the National League in hitting in 1932 with a .368 average, his salary was cut $1,000 from his original $8,000;

• Christy Mathewson  (pitcher) - pitched 68 consecutive innings without walking a man in 1913 and only walked 25 for the entire year;

• Grover Cleveland Alexander (pitcher) - pitched 16 shutouts in 1916 and won 30 games three years in a row - and probably would have won more had he not been an alcoholic;

• Bob Feller (pitcher) - one of the greatest fastballers ever, was so wild early in his career that batters feared to step up to the plate, especially after Feller, a righty, accidentally threw a smoking pitch behind a left-handed batter;

• Paul Waner (outfield) - got 6 hits in one game using six different, randomly selected bats just on a whim that seemed to be lucky for that day (it didn't work the next game, though)..

I could go on and on. Here are primary source stories of playing with balls of tape, gas lamps and cinders in team train cars, taking up collections from fans to meet expenses, riding to the ballpark in a horse-drawn bus. These men comfortably narrate their memories in their unique voices, the ups and downs they experienced trying to make a living playing the game they love next to respected teammates and hated rivals. 

There is a deep-felt passion for the game, the players and managers, and intricacies of daily life on and off the field that comes across on every page of their narratives. For any lover of baseball or a bygone era of the turn of the century sports, The Glory of Their Times is a peak into this world by the men who lived it. Highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Parry, Danny. We Played the Game: Memoirs of Baseball's Greatest Era

More wonderful recollections from Hall of Fame baseball players from the years 1947 - 1964, including Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams,  Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, and many, many more.

Tye, Larry. Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend

One of the best, most painstakingly researched biographies of a baseball player ever. Paige, the irrepressible fast-ball pitcher lived during the Negro League days, jumping from team to team, year after year, living the flamboyant life, naming his different fastballs with peculiar monikers, and striking out everyone who faced him. Fantastically entertaining reading.