One Hour to Read

This is basically a book about English professors getting laid. If you're into that sort of thing, well, then this is the book for you. Granted, if I were an English professor, like David Lodge, that's just the sort of thing I would want to write about too. Note to self: Add more sex to novel about college administrators.

Okay, I'm being a little too flippant about a book that I actually did enjoy. Lodge always sucks me in. This is the second novel in the Rummidge trilogy, and I've now accidentally read all three. I like Lodge, so I just keep picking up his novels, and gradually I've read a trilogy without knowing it. I started with the third book, then read the first book, thinking that the characters all seemed rather familiar, and now I've read the second book. I don't think there are any more in the series, but who knows?

The book also seems rather Dickensian in that it's full of coincidences. Pretty much everyone is running into everyone all over the world. I can go several days without running into my roommate, and yet these characters are constantly running into each other in Switzerland, Turkey, Amsterdam, Hawaii, and all sorts of other exotic locales. Just as with Dickens, there seem to be about 50 people in the entire world, and they are always bumping into each other.

Not so much like Dickens: they're screwing each other lots too.

Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball

I was skeptical of this book at first. I'm not a fan of syrupy books about baseball, nor about fatherhood. I don't think Leitch is either, and it's not what he did here, despite the title making it sound like that and despite its release near Father's Day. This is mostly a memoir of a baseball fan with an entertaining father who is also a baseball fan.

Some of it feels familiar, if only because I've read so much of Leitch's writing. He's mentioned some of the same stories in "Life as a Loser" and on his many autobiographical posts on Deadspin. That's okay. For someone who writes as much as Leitch, it's only natural that he repeats some stories. They're good stories too, so it's not like he's retelling anything dull.

This is basically the second book in a row I've read about one baseball game. The last one was about one of the greatest games ever and turned out to be a sort of a lackluster book. This is about a rather lackluster game that turned out to be sort of a great book. It took some time to grow on me though. As much of a fan as I am of him, I wasn't sure what I thought in the early innings.

I kept looking for some grand, overarching theme. I don't know that there really was one. In interviews, he says that the book is about his belief that this is the golden age of baseball, and how baseball is the way he communicates with his father. There's more than that here though. It's really just a meandering baseball memoir of a fan, and that's great.

It also feels like the type of book only an established writer can write. If I were to go to a publisher and ask, "Hey, I'd like to write a book about my observations as a fan," they would laugh at me. Luckily, they didn't laugh at him. In fact, you can tell how much the publishers like Leitch in that they let him keep in one chapter which was essentially a list of all the interesting baseball games he has ever attended. I want a publisher to like me that much.  

Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America's Pastime

Things I learned while reading this book:

Someone named Squeaky tried to assassinate Gerald Ford.

The first game of the 1903 World Series was probably fixed.

Eddie Futch, Joe Frazier's trainer, wouldn't allow Frazier to start the 15th round against Muhammad Ali in the "Thrilla in Manilla."

You'll notice that none of these are about Game Six of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds, which is what this book is presumably about. This is a book of tangents. For example, Gerald Ford's son was at the game, which somehow led not only to a discussion of the two assassination attempts on Ford but also to a page and a half about Patty Hearst. It became maddening at times.

I love the whole notion of a book based on one game. Daniel Okrent wrote a wonderful one called Nine Innings, and the next book on my baseball docket is Will Leitch's latest, which is set during one Cardinals-Cubs game. Still, I can't help but feel that Frost is padding this book. I mean, this book is about what some would call the greatest baseball game ever. I don't need to be reading about Spiro Agnew, "stagflation," and the Boston Red Stockings of 1882.

Having said all that, it wasn't an awful book, just frustrating. It was basically a not-so-great book about a great game, so in the end I still enjoyed reading it.

Incidentally, my parents were at this game. Unlike so many others, they really were. My father had season tickets, in the roof boxes above the third base line. However, because the Red Sox needed extra seats for the press, they made him move down below on the third base side, about twenty rows behind the visiting team's dugout. He was pretty happy about this, because in exchange they gave him three times as many tickets.

As the game was winding down, with the Reds winning 6-3, the owners of the Reds left their seats, presumably to get ready for the celebration in the locker room. One of the ushers who usually worked in the roof box seats was nearby. He recognized my parents and asked if they wanted to sit in those seats for the end of the game. ("I never really tipped him during the season, but I guess the people I sent down to use my seats tipped him really well, and he knew that.")

And so, they were in great seats to see Bernie Carbo's three-run homer, Dwight Evans' famous catch, and Carlton Fisk's game-winning home run. For my father, Dwight Evans' catch in right field, the one that stole a home run from Joe Morgan in the 10th inning, was the biggest moment. From his vantage point on the third base line, it seemed utterly impossible that Evans could catch that ball, and yet he did.

Oh, my father also enjoyed the part about the 1882 Boston Red Stockings.

I got this book through Swaptree, and the person who sent it to me included a sticky note that read, "Enjoy, or read it and weep." This is not exactly a happy book. I will read Michael Lewis about anything, but I think I prefer his sports books, rather than his books about the horrible collapse of the financial world. That might just be me though.

Many of his recent books have been about market inefficiencies. Moneyball was about how Billy Beane of the Oakland A's discovered that other teams were ignoring players with high on base percentages and decided to invest his dwindling resources on them. The Blind Side was about how, when free agency started in the NFL, teams suddenly started paying more for left tackles -- until they became the second highest paid players in the game -- all because they protected the quarterback's blind side. Or at least it was about that until almost accidentally the book became about a plucky Academy Award winning Mom who adopts a kid from the wrong side of town.

Here though, Lewis is writing about an entire market that is inefficient, and the few people who were smart enough to notice this and short it.

Still, he does find an interesting group of people who predicted the collapse of the housing bubble and were wise enough to short the market and make millions. It was a group that included a money manager incapable of censoring his thoughts and a one-eyed investor with Asperger's Syndrome.  I'm sure there are other people who shorted the market too, but Lewis probably found the only ones who weren't boring.

I love Michael Lewis, but I was kind of happy when I finished the book. And frankly -- despite the fact that the writing was great, the stories were entertaining, and the characters were amazing -- the ending kind of sucked. It's not really Lewis' fault. That's just what you get when you write about the collapse of the worldwide financial markets.

I feel like I have been missing out on P.G. Wodehouse all these years. I've long meant to read him, but I just never got around to it. I've always known he's supposed to be funny, but to be honest I didn't really believe he would be this funny.

I think I will just give him the Trollope treatment and throw up a few of my favorite quotes:

Blandings was sheltering a certain Miss Aileen Peavey, the mere thought of whom was enough to turn the sunshine off as with a tap.

Liz... when it comes to doping out a scheme, you're the snake's eyebrows!

Miss Clarkson, unless firmly checked, would pirouette round and round the point for minutes without ever touching it.

When it comes to the smooth stuff, old girl, you're the oyster's eye-tooth!

A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances.

The title character Psmith (the p is silent) for some reason reminds me of my friend Matt from high school. I'm not sure why, but Psmith just seems always to be taking bold chances with a calm confidence that all will work out well in the end. For example, in just a few seconds, Psmith decides to impersonate a Canadian poet in order to get Lord Emsworth to invite him to a country estate where a charming and beautiful woman he fancies will be staying. Seriously, that's just the sort of shit Matt would pull back in high school. Ah, those were the days.

It's interesting to read about Psmith in the same month that I read about Duddy Kravitz. Both are schemers, though Psmith is a whole lot less calculated about it. He always seems to be in the moment, as if he is practicing the zen of scheming.

A while back, I decided to have a Trollope novel going at all times for bedtime reading. I think I will amend that and have either a Wodehouse or Trollope novel going.

And finally, this is the first novel I have read to include both the words lalapaloosa and rannygazoo. That right there is worth the price of admission alone. 

I almost bailed on this book after thirty pages, but I kept at it, you know, for Canada (seeing as it's a bit of a Canadian classic). I think it was worth it. Duddy Kravitz is, after all, one of the more memorable characters I have come across. He reminds me a little of my father, although, whereas most of my father's schemes are no more than light gray on the black and white scale, Kravitz's schemes are more of a dark gray. In some ways, it was tiring to read the book with all the maneuvers young Duddy had going on. It was tough to keep up with them all.

Duddy is not exactly a likable character, except that I still found myself rooting for him at times even when I probably shouldn't have. There was one climatic moment where I felt happy that he had succeeded until I remembered, "Oh, wait, didn't he just screw over that other guy."

It's thanks to Stuart McLean of Vinyl Cafe that I read this book. On one episode, he talked of his favorite humorists, which included Richler, E.B. White, and Stephen Leacock. While I wouldn't exactly describe this book as humor, it was funny at times, and I'm anxious to read some of Richler's essays.

All Trollope novels I have read seem to be very dull at the start, and then slowly begin to fascinate me, even though, well, they should still be dull. There is always a point around page 200 when he just floors me, and the novel seems just amazing, even though again it should still be dull. Although fascinating, this book never quite reached that amazing point, but that might be because it (at least my copy) was only 165 pages long.

"The Warden" is the first of the Barsetshire series of novel, all about the life of clergymen. I much prefer reading about the politicians of the Palliser novels, so I think I will return to that series.

I still have this strange plan of reading all of Trollope's novels, although I have quite a ways to go.

My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come out and Play

I'm not entirely sure why, but Danny Wallace's stunt books seem more authentic than other people's stunt books. More than others, he really seems to live the projects that he undertakes. In this case, he has the goal of meeting twelve friends from childhood, dragging him all the way from Los Angeles to Tokyo.

In other hands, much of this would seem staged. I mean, I know it's a book project. The impetus for this journey back to his childhood is his fear of turning thirty and becoming a grown up. Of course, another impetus is probably the fact that he had a book contract. Still, Wallace is so utterly open in all his books that it's easy to forget this. I get the feeling that he would still be going on these adventures even if he didn't have a book contract.

Danny Wallace is always entertaining, though I'm not sure how I would feel if a friend from grade school showed up at my door! I've forgotten grade school, so I probably wouldn't even know who they were. "Paste? We used to eat paste together? What are you talking about? Who are you?"

This book was written over thirty years ago, and two of the three umpires primarily featured in it haven't spoken to the author since. One of them, Harry Wendelstedt, denies he even talked to Gutkind for the book, which is impressive since Wendelstedt is such a frequent presence in it.

Of course, you'd deny having anything to do with the author too, if you were depicted running around the locker room butt naked, except for a small t-shirt with a swastika and the words "Super Kraut" on it. (As bad as that sounds, it wasn't meant maliciously, in that he was making fun of himself for being German, but, you know, still...)

This is a different kind of book than Bruce Weber's, depicting the hard-living life of an umpire. While I enjoyed it, I don't entirely blame the umpires for hating Gutkind. In the afterword, he explains all the lengths he went to to get his stories, such as pretending to be passed out drunk during critical conversations between umpires. Much of his method involved getting the umpires drunk, while only pretending to get drunk himself. It feels a little seedy at times, and yet the result is fascinating

Finally, here's an important life lesson courtesy of umpire Doug Harvey in a discussion with a fellow umpire:

What I'm going to say now is the most important thing I have ever tried to tell you. This is the key to being a good umpire. This is what separates the men from the boys. This is what makes a man's man out of a mortal man. Now listen to me, Art . . . . I tell you now like I was your father, I talk to you with the warmth of a brother, so you listen to me closely and you listen good 'cause here it is: Don't let anybody ever call you horseshit.

This week has been all umpires all the time, on the reading front. I wrote a column partly about this book, so I will refrain from saying too much here -- except that this book was a revelation. It truly was, because up until reading this, I had never even thought about umpires -- unless I felt they were screwing over the Red Sox. In this young season, I've already been concentrating on umpiring more than I have ever done before. 

Here's something I learned about the strike zone, which I had never really thought about:

The zone as it is represented on the television screen has a number of obvious shortcomings. One is that it isn't adjusted for the stride of the hitter. Second, the television strike zone is two-dimensional but the strike zone is three. Usually, the represented zone is set on a plane at the front edge of the plate, which means that any pitch that doesn't pass over the plate's front lip won't show up on the screen as a strike; in the big leagues especially, pitches break so sharply that they frequently go around the front of the plate but enter the strike zone from the side.

My only real umpiring experience came in fourth grade when a few friends needed someone to call balls and strikes. The whole thing is a bit foggy and frankly doesn't make a lot of sense. We were eight.  Were we even tall enough to have strike zones? And yet I have a clear memory of messing up a call when I called a clearly foul ball fair. It was such a bad call that even the beneficiary of it was a bit embarrassed, and everyone on one team ended up hating me.

Of course, as an umpire, I knew I could not admit I was wrong, and so I didn't change the call even when I knew how bad it was. What I did was calmly wait a minute and make an excruciatingly bad call in the other direction to even things up. This only resulted in everyone on the other team hating me too, and I knew even then that I couldn't be handle the pressure of being an umpire. It would take a few more years for me to figure out that I couldn't handle the pressure of being a ballplayer.