The Scruffy Rube’s #CBR4 Review #25 Columbus Slaughters Braves

Columbus Slaughters Braves is another in a long line of baseball books that I’ve read. But it goes beyond the box scores, beyond the paeans to “America’s Game”. Instead it focuses on the relationship between two brothers: CJ and Joe Columbus. The former is the fastest rising star on a late-nineties Cubs team that was going nowhere (as Cubs teams are wont to do), the latter is a little older and much more cynical, bitter and cruel.

With Joe Columbus as our narrator, we’re subject to all the pangs of primal self-doubt as every overlooked brother since Cain. It’s not the most comfortable feeling in the world (especially if, like me, you can think of several dozen ways in which your real life brothers are superior to you), but few of us would go inf or the kind of cruel and silent psychological warfare that Joe perpetrates on his little brother.

What keeps the story readable is Joe’s honesty in the narration. The childhood jealousy and immature disdain is not excused or qualified, it simply is, the way that childish behavior simply is childish. As the book goes on there is no miraculous change. Like an actual person, Joe acknowledges his failings but is torn between the easy act of ignoring it and the more problematic act of changing himself.

You might not like Joe (as a narrator he seems to suspect as much), but you have to respect the honesty of the character as well as  the unflinching commitment of author Mark Friedman to writing a work like this. Though the plot hits some familiar and occasionally melodramatic notes, accomplishing the tricky task of a difficult but compelling protagonist makes it notable.

The Scruffy Rube’s #CBR4 Review #11 We’re Gonna Win Twins

You can read this review in the context of me defending sports at my personal blog, or you can just read about my moronic thoughts on baseball at my ultra-nerdy Twins blog

To the ambivalent and indifferent observers, sports culture can seem down right idiotic, but believe me it’s something special to love a team. It takes you beyond the nationalistic fervor of the Olympics or World Cup and ties you to a more regional, more specific tribe–a feeling often lost in an increasingly isolated, hyper-individualized society. They’re part of your family, on the tv or radio 162 days a year. Blustering cliches and bombast through offseason “special reports”. The longer they last with a team, the more you care about them–absurd as that feeling might be–because they’re one of your own.

That’s where We’re Gonna Win Twins! hits the mark. Author Doug Grow, a local Twin Cities sportswriter, offers no quarter for owners, players or fans–when any one of them behaved poorly he points it out in blunt, direct reporting; but beyond the foibles lie the anecdotes and memories that endear this particular team to this particular region of the country.

This is not a paean to the glory of the powder blue and norse red.  Owners seem conspiratorial and miserly. Contract disputes of hall-of-famers (Bert Blyleven & Rod Carew) and all-stars (Torii Hunter & Johan Santana) paint a picture of disingenuous greed. Even supposedly admirable, die-hard fans seem like abusive pinheads when they throw garbage at a returning prima donna (Chuck Knoblauch). But there’s something to admire in all the same people, things that make the Griffiths and Pohlads, Blyleven, and Carew, Hunter and Santana beloved figures when they return home. [Though the jury is still out on Knoblauch.]

Little stories about Cuban-born Tony Oliva navigating America in a state of deep anxiety over the chaos in his home and finding a home among the mallards and mosquitos remind you of how welcoming the midwest can be to those who are different. Conveying the eardrum destroying mania of fans reminds you how fiercely passionate the supposedly “phlegmatic swedes” of our region can get. Even little story-lines about born-agains, bonding bills and bloggers demonstrate how locals enact their reticence to accept change.

You can learn a lot about society through the ways it entertains itself. So, you can learn a lot about Minnesota (and other parts of the upper-midwest) through this comprehensive history of the one local team who has won multiple World Championships. You may not be a baseball fan, you may not care about Minnesota. But if you’re interested in exploring a different culture (either in sports or in our own country), We’re Gonna Win Twins! is a great guide into this little segment of our world. (Oh, and if you’re an actual Twins fan…you’ll be happy)

HelloKatieO’s #CBR4 Review #26: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

In Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, the depiction of a certain aspect of college, that nagging fear that you cannot possibly exist in a world outside the small fishbowl of your university, is beautifully rendered.  The characters in this book absolutely cannot exist without their alma mater. The fear of graduating, and losing their familiar world, is crippling. Henry Skrimshander, Mike Schwartz and Guert Affenlight are like my worst fears come to life: they are what happens if you don’t force yourself to move on after university.

This is the story of Henry Skrimshander, whom Mike Schwartz discovers and recruits to play baseball at Westish College, and his friends and associates. The baseball is a powerful force throughout the book.  The book is a stream of descriptions of the rhythm of the game, the reliance on your teammates, and the excruciating struggle to push your body beyond it’s limits. The characters melt downs are reflected in their bodies; and the author has a scientific, but kind of poetic way, of describing the body.

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