The Physics of Baseball by Robert K. Adair

I've always enjoyed playing baseball.  As I grew up, I played every position, though shortstop was my favorite.  I was a solid hitter, an excellent fielder, and a fast runner.  I had a strong but erratic arm, and I never had the size to play even college baseball.  I played for about eleven years, mostly during the summer.  This is my background as I began reading The Physics of Baseball, a book that really ought to appeal to me.  And it did.  Sort of.


The author, a Yale professor of physics, has the perfect credentials to write the book: a love of baseball, an understanding of the game, and a Ph.D. in physics.  I was looking forward to reading it, but I often found myself disappointed.  Parts were really interesting, as when he discussed pitch velocity, air resistance, and the challenges of batting.  There were other times when he seemed to get caught up in the particularities of an aspect of the game and didn't spend enough time pulling everything together.  I found myself thinking, "Now that's really interesting, but what are the implications for players and fans?"  There was a little of that, but not enough for me.  He did not include his calculations (thankfully), and he went into enough depth to convey a thorough understanding and fulfill the book's promise.  He seemed to know enough about the game to couch the ideas in clear examples, even if they were a bit dated.  I guess I was looking for him to take the next step and discuss what his theorizing meant for the manager or the fan.  How did his calculations impact game strategy?  How might a player use the book?  Who is the real audience for the book, anyway?


This is one of several baseball books I've read (or tried to read).  Ken Okrent's 9 Innings, which documents in great detail, a mid-summer game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles, is another.  It's a good book, but it moves away from the game to explore the personalities of the players and managers and bit too often and for too long a time.  However, I did get a real appreciation for the Oriole Way, Earl Weaver, and Paul Molitor.  The Curious Case of Sid Finch, a fiction novel which was as forgettable as the author, is a third.  I'm looking forward to reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  The movie was fun to watch, and hopefully the book will develop the ideas in more detail.

Couple more titles

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
This was a very cool book--one of the first ones I read this year.  A fictional narrative of the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 (or so) Spartans stood against the entire Persian army (reputed to be hundreds of thousands strong), the book is filled with great moments of heroism and leadership.  The Spartan king, Leonidas, comes up with inspiring messages to his troops and always seems to have the right answer to address any situation.  Pressfield does a great job preparing the historical landscape so that the battle is more meaningful.  It would be nice to see him do the same with the Athenian victory at sea against the Persians that followed soon after the Hot Gates fight, but better to celebrate what we do have than lament what we don't.  The book is filled with great insights into human nature and fascinating observations about war.


The characters are well-developed and interesting, and the history (which I hope is fairly accurate) of the time period is as engrossing as it is depressing and disturbing.  I've read The Iliad and The Odyssey several times each, and they suggest a bleak, unforgiving, survivalist mentality that pervaded Greek culture, and while this book reflects that perspective to a degree, King Leonidas of the Spartans seems much more pensive and philosophical than warlike and vindictive, as he is often portrayed.  The culture of the Spartans, as illustrated in the novel, is harsh and violent, but not mindless and one-dimensional, as with the movie 300.  Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the movie, but I admit it was cartoonish and unrealistic.  Gates of Fire is much more realistic and, as a result, more enjoyable in the empathy it develops.


True Grit by Charles Portis
This was a February choice, and the serendipity of the season matched the tone of the novel: Bleak, harsh, direct, and unforgiving.  The narrator, a woman reflecting on a significant event from her childhood, is the same as in the film versions.  She is caustic and opinionated, unyielding and resourceful.  She knows her own mind and is a great companion on this journey of vengeance.  I saw the film version with John Wayne many, many years ago, and then the more recent re-make with Jeff Bridges (which I liked better), but the book helped develop the characters in ways the films could not.  The wry observations made by the narrator and her frequent attempts to rationalize her decisions made the book a great companion for the films.  Lots of humor, lots of action.  The irascible Rooster Cogburn is difficult to root against.  The characters are well-developed and compelling, and each one is driven by his or her own goals, making this a realistic piece of fiction.  The grittiness and details of the book make it easy for readers to immerse themselves in the setting.  This is a good winter read--not for the beach.

A Guide to Fantasy Literature by Philip Martin

I read this a couple months ago and have just now gotten around to posting.  This was a somewhat disappointing text.  I was hoping for something new and challenging, but this lacked the authoritative voice and originality that I was looking for.  The author didn't seem scholarly so much as enthusiastic and amateurish.  It's a short, easy-to-read guide that would appeal more to a casual reader (or writer) of fantasy than a scholar. There are few academic references in the book, but there are a whole lot of quotes from fantasy novels and authors. The organization is logical, and the prose is readable if not elegant. There are a few errors in the book--typos, really--and the author does not risk much, intellectually-speaking, or open himself up for serious critique.  It's pretty bland, overall.  The divisions of fantasy literature, or "rings" as the author denotes them (possibly a nod to Tolkien), into High, Adventure, Fairy-tale, Magical Realism, and Dark are over-broad, rough, and expansive, like cutting a piece of paper with an axe. The way the author describes it, "Dark Fantasy" is actually just horror literature, and most serious scholars would put more distance than Martin between the category of fantasy and fairy-tale or magical realism.

The first half of this short book deals with fantasy from an academic perspective and is more interesting to a reader than the second half which deals with fantasy from a writer's perspective. The first half is also more illuminating; the second half is fairly generic, as the information can be found in most books that deal with fiction-writing as a craft.

I recommend this book to a casual reader who knows little about fantasy but would like to broaden their understanding. A serious reader or scholar would likely find little of value here that might expand their knowledge base or challenge their thinking.  Farah Mendlesohn is MUCH more illuminating to read.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Short post today.  A really fascinating book filled with great anecdotes and applications of Gladwell's central concept.  Essentially, he says we humans should trust our instincts because, generally speaking, we're accurate on our first impressions--even if they take place within the blink of an eye.  We may not be able to fully articulate these impressions, but we shouldn't let that stop us.  There's a caveat, though: If we don't have a significant experience with something, or if we let our prejudices cloud our judgments, then we are apt to make a poor choice.  I guess the upshot is, trust your reaction to something if you know enough about it, but make sure your position isn't influenced by prejudices.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I wasn't quite ready for this novel.  It was harsher than I anticipated.  By "harsh," I mean it involved rather seedy, nefarious characters who, generally speaking, were really not good people.  The novel documented some pretty unpleasant activities, but there were characters one could root for, even though they occasionally let you down.  (So far, these characters sound like real people, right?  That's what I liked best about the novel.)


By the time the title is illuminated--the "goon squad" as a metaphor for "death"--we are ready for it, and it makes much of the book make more sense.  The characters, for all their faults and deficiencies, are very much like us: They struggle, they feel fear, they try to get things right but too often fail, they sometimes recognize their flaws (sometimes not), and they push through the narrative with admirable courage in the face of death.


The novel is told in a series of related chapters, each one devoted to a particular character and written sympathetically from their perspective (in the third person).  The characters' lives interconnect in unusual ways.  Time shifts are frequent in the novel, and as each chapter begins, the first task is to orient yourself chronologically.  Characters introduced as rather minor players in one chapter are discovered to be the main attraction in the following chapter, providing a motif of linkages which illustrates the clever "six degrees of separation" theory.  (Note: Kevin Bacon does not actually appear in this novel.)


This is definitely a character-driven novel.  The events, though at times unbelievable and bordering on fantastic, move the narrative forward and give the characters something to react to, to bounce off while living their sordid lives.  The separate chapters and intertwined lives of the characters eventually do cohere into an overarching narrative with a satisfying, melancholy, and eerily beautiful ending.


This is a gritty novel of life and death that borders on pulp fiction.  The characters are fully developed, round, and differentiated in various ways.  Their voices (unlike those in The Martian) are unique to, and indicative of, their personalities.  Most of the characters were interesting, and while some of the narrative lines remained incomplete, we learned enough about each character to satisfy us.  Well, pretty much.  I would like to have learned more about the young actress who deliberately insulted the General/dictator.  And the overweight rocker who tries to exploit his long-dead career by launching a tour he promotes as a very public suicidal march toward oblivion, but who ends up actually resurrecting himself and his artistic life, ironically.


I finished the book about two months ago, so I can't recall too many specific details.  I enjoyed it, even though at times reading it was akin to slogging through knee-deep mud.  I just felt so dirty...  This was no light-hearted romp through Hogwarts, and though there was humor, it was dark and grim.


Kind of like life, no?