[ARETE] Nemens, The Cactus League

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find below and attached Scott Peterson's review of Emily Nemens, *The
Cactus League*

Emily Nemens, *The Cactus League*, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020, 278
pages, hardbound.

Reviewed by Scott D. Peterson

University of Missouri—St. Louis





            Reading this sun-filled novel-in-stories during the shortest
days of December is a treat. The narrative of “carnival and community,” as
the author described it, chronicles events from the 2011 pre-season of the
Los Angeles Lions, who belong to the American League. The team comes by its
moniker honestly through an association with MGM, though the reflexive
response to the name is the football team from Detroit, and there have been
very few—if any—fictional baseball teams so named in my wide reading. The
book nonetheless achieves a high level of actuality with this narrative
foundation. Baseball literature readers will feel right at home with the
nine connected tales that make up the novel, and they will be familiar with
the narrative voice of the wizened, well-traveled sportswriter who frames
and sets up each of the pieces. A colleague and *Aethlon *contributor told
me, “There isn’t much baseball in that one,” and he was right if he was
seeking the usual formula of play-by-play, the progress of a season, and
the crowning of a world champion. When Emily Nemens spoke of her book at
the Key West Literary Seminary last January, she recognized this element
herself when she characterized her work as “an un-baseball baseball book,”
adding that she went in this direction because “a lot happens in the
parking lot”—even if that stretch of concrete acts as a griddle on a hot
Arizona afternoon. Baseball is also baked into the DNA of *The Cactus
League *(TCL) to the degree that it meets Michael Oriard’s definition of
sport literature because swapping in another sport would do irreparable
harm to the fabric of a story arc that blends *Winesburg, OH* with Eliot
Asinof’s *Man on Spikes* while tossing in a little *Love Actually*.

            Encompassing what Nemens described as a “whole eco-system of
sport culture—men on the field; women interested and involved,” nearly
everyone present for spring training gets their turn in the rejuvenating
March sun: the people preparing concessions through the ballpark organist,
forty-something baseball Annies, players’ wives, agents, overwhelmed first
round draft picks, comeback players, stars, and partial team owners all
have cameos and/or whole stories woven around them. As someone who has been
to Arizona for spring training, I was transported back to the Valley of the
Sun and immersed into the experience all over again—and that’s not just the
COVID isolation talking! I was drawn into the web of characters, wondering
who would appear next and how he or she might be tied back into the overall
web of the tales.

            Along with the major league milieu, Nemens makes use of
numerous actual details to add the sort of verisimilitude readers of
baseball literature have been expecting since Ring Lardner used the same
technique more than a hundred years ago in the six linked short stories
that became *You Know Me Al*.  In the opening tale, the Yankee Clipper gets
a central role as a spirit guide: a WWJDD tattoo translating to “What Would
Joe DiMaggio Do?” directs the actions of the Lions’ AAA batting coach, who,
as a player went to the 1974 World Series and lost to the Cardinals. While
this detail is a departure from our universe where the A’s beat the Dodgers
for their third straight championship that year, the narrative does seem to
offer some comfort to the boys in blue by recognizing that LA is a Dodger
town (254). The book’s main setting is the actual spring training facility
built in 2011 at Talking Stick, which is shared by the Diamondbacks and the
Rockies. The actuality of this setting grounds the narrative in the
geological and anthropological histories of Arizona as the local rocks,
fossils, and native peoples all factor integrally—if somewhat incongruously
and unexpectedly—into the sportswriter’s between-the-tale interludes.

            *The Cactus League* is more than a baseball book, as is the
case for all sports literature. The novel-in-stories grew out of Nemens’
MFA work and it shows in the quality of the writing. There are a number of
nuanced moments and turns of phrase in every tale. From the stool softeners
as the only medicine left behind by squatters in the opening story to the
parallels drawn between uniform stirrups and sweatbands favored by female
baseball and basketball fans to the players’ wives being described as a
“necessary sorority” (172), textual highlights abound. The plot weaving is
also impressive: Jason Goodyear, the star left fielder who appears in some
way in all of the tales, is the book’s George Willard (with a nod to
Sherwood Anderson). In another nice touch, Goodyear reveals at the end of
the book that he already knows the rumors that were being repeated about
him and his ex-wife throughout the book. Another effective piece of
plotting has the first-round draft pick being played off the field by the
ballpark organist in the tale shared by the two.

            The inevitable quibbles are minor and not numerous. As hinted
at already, the narrator’s focus on the history of Arizona feels a bit like
a forced throwback to James Michener’s novels: even if the Hohokam did have
ballparks, no anthropologists or archaeologists that I know of have gone so
far as to call them the “Masters of the Desert”—unless this is just our
narrator momentarily giving into the over-the-top style of a sportswriter.
For the novel’s primary—and recurring—baseball Annie to be a fan of Frank
Lloyd Wright as part of a larger thematic concern with architecture is
equally jarring—and perhaps refreshing. And in one tale, the three African
American characters seem to be over-tasked with carrying much of the book’s
commentary on contemporary issues of race, class, *and* sexuality. Upon
further reflection, however, the representation strikes me as a reflection
of these exact issues within our larger cultural conversation.

            As noted above, *The Cactus League* will appeal equally to fans
of the game and fans of good writing. A 2011 article in *The Atlantic* had
Reeves Wiedeman asking why great sports novels are so rare. SLA members
would most likely argue that high quality sport literature is more common
and more substantial than most anti-sports critics would have it. Whether
she read Wiedeman or not, Nemens does seem to be making a conscious effort
to move her book away from charges that it might be “unsubstantial” or
“frivolous.” By making only sporadic use of the century-old baseball
fiction formula and expanding her cast beyond just the men in uniforms,
Nemens might avoid such charges and perhaps reach a wider audience if the
women who buy the book for the men in their lives—or better yet, acquire
and read it for themselves—realize it is not just another baseball book
filled with stats and scores and a race to the World Series. The stats and
a few scores are present in TCL, but there are also plenty of other
elements to push back at the literary snobs who would disqualify the book
upon seeing the baseball on the cover. Even without giving us a strong
sense of whether or not the Lions had a successful spring training, Nemens’
character-driven book, baseball or un-, might just bring us some sun until
the start of 2021’s Cactus League in a few months.
Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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