<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">A fine review and if you like it do read Still Pitching a wonderful and unflinching book by the same author—who is also a fine guy <div>Bruce<br><br><div dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Nov 11, 2019, at 11:12 AM, Duncan Jamieson via Sport_literature_association <sport_literature_association@lists.ku.edu> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">All, <div>Please find below and attached Alan Zaremba's review of Michael Steinberg's <i>Elegy for Ebbets.</i></div><div>First, I've never commented on any of the reviews I've posted to the list, and there have been many. But I grew up in Queens and when I saw this book I hoped nobody would bite. But several of you did, and Alan won. His review is far better than I would have done, but I wanted to review it because my Dad was an avid Dodgers fan. He took me to Ebbets Field when I was in elementary school despite the fact that I was a Yankees fan! I remember riding there with Dad, and going into the stadium, but that's about it. I was too young to appreciate it, but I was with Dad, and my two older brothers weren't. Later, when the Dodgers decamped for Los Angeles, Dad never listened to nor watched another Dodgers game. He switched his loyalty to the New York Mets.</div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><i>Elegy for
Ebbets </i></b><b>by Michael Steinberg<i></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>Review by Alan
Zaremba, Associate Professor, Northeastern University</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>Elegy for Ebbets </i>by Michael Steinberg is a collection of
seven essays and a short introduction about the author’s experience with and
enthusiasm for baseball.<i> </i> Steinberg, according to the promotional
literature that arrived with the book, has had a “love affair” with baseball
since his days as an avid Brooklyn Dodger fan.
That affection for the game comes through in every essay and nearly
every page of this 100 page collection.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>“</i>Elegy for Ebbets<i>” </i>is one of the essays in the
anthology. It is a sentimental piece
about the old Brooklyn Dodgers’ ballpark, and, in general, the quality of older
baseball parks when compared to many of their replacements. Two of the other essays
(“Trading Off” and “Chin Music”) are about oppressive coaches the author had to
endure during his high school days. “LA Breakdown” centers on Steinberg’s
difficult first year of college at UCLA. That freshman year, however, included--as
a lone positive element--the author’s experience managing and playing on his
fraternity’s intramural softball team. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">“Surgical Strike” and “The Last Road Trip” attest to what borders
on the obsession Steinberg has for baseball. The former describes how seriously
the author prepared to throw out the first pitch at a Michigan State baseball
game. The latter--my favorite among the many very good pieces in the collection--describes
an eight hour night journey the author and his wife took so that Steinberg could
watch and potentially play in a championship softball game. The couple embarks
on the journey the day before they must make an eight hour return trip in order
to pack, and then travel two more hours to make a flight for a Paris vacation
that his wife had planned for months. We
are talking obsession. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The last article in the collection, “My Default Career<i>.” </i>describes
how and why Steinberg became a professor, and writer of personal sports
memoirs. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">If being able to relate to the author’s experience is an important
criterion, I am an excellent person to write a review of this book. Like the author, I am from Brooklyn, played
stoopball and stickball with a red rubber Spaulding ball which everyone
pronounced “spauldeen.” I went to Riis Park as a kid and was more
taken by the softball games there than the beach, played hardball inside school
gymnasiums, knew more than one Michael Saperstein (an obnoxious if skilled
athlete who appears in “Trading Off<i>”)</i>.
I’ve even had a hip replacement, write about sports, am a member of the
tribe, and am a college professor who has sat through many of what Steinberg
aptly labels “mind numbing meetings.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">So, as I read through the book, I said to myself, “I know this guy.”
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">And I like him and what he has written. It is an indication of my
reaction to the volume that as soon as I completed it, I went searching for,
found, and requested, another book by Steinberg, <i>Still Pitching.</i> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The author does an excellent job of describing situations and
characters. While I knew Sapersteins—I
never met a Jack Kerchman or Tom Sullivan—the tyrannical coaches in “Trading
Off<i>”</i> and “Chin Music<i>.” </i> I
know them now. They may be anomalies but are depicted realistically and not as
caricatures. Such coaches force teenagers to succumb to or challenge authority. Steinberg does the former in <i>“</i>Trading
Off<i>”</i> (for the trade-off) and earns the reader’s admiration for how
courageously he does the latter in “Chin Music.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Like Steinberg, I am a zealot. I’ve been known to assume peculiar postures
while watching ball games, irrationally believing that, for example, tapping
one foot while holding onto the top of a chair might bring good fortune to the
televised image of a baseball player in another time zone. However, my fanaticism pales in comparison to
his as effectively depicted in “The Last Road Trip<i>”</i> and “Surgical
Strike.” Those who study fandom can
learn much by reading these two essays.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Some suggestions. I get the
point in the title essay, “Elegy for Ebbets.<i>”</i> We look back nostalgically and sentimentally on
our childhood sports experiences. However, a key here is that sometimes our adult
recollections of these joyful times are the stuff of selective perception and
retention. While I think the author suggests this with the juxtaposition of
Ebbets Field and newer parks, it is not altogether clear that the critical
comments he makes about newer parks acknowledges a selective retention. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The description of Shea Stadium for example is not entirely accurate. The Mets began play there in ‘64 not ‘63, and
while some seats were not optimal, the same could be said for the old
parks. In ‘63 for example, when the Mets
were indeed still playing in the Polo Grounds, my dad took us to see Willie
Mays’s return with the Giants in a doubleheader against the Mets. (Mays homered
in his first at bat and I did not have to look it up). However, the fact is that we sat very near a
pole and had to sway this way and that to avoid staring at a concrete slab for
18 innings. The author speaks of his
positive experience with Fenway Park and how he once went there impulsively and
was delighted that he did. Well, he caught a break. Had he been seated on the
right field line beyond the foul pole he would have had to visit a chiropractor
the next day as those seats face center field and not home plate. Also, if you happen to be seated at Fenway, (or
the Polo Grounds, or Ebbets Field for that matter), next to a person who has
not missed the buffet line, it can be an uncomfortable afternoon or evening
despite the excitement on the field. I
don’t doubt that Steinberg knows all this, and that his point was not that the
stadiums of the past were jewels in every way, but it would have been good to
bang out the point about sentimentality distorting the lens when making
comparisons.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">All who have ever published a book or even an article have
experienced the embarrassment of having read and proofread, and have had others
proofread, their works only to see, upon publication, spelling errors that cause
one to cringe. I have certainly had that experience, even when a host of
editors have taken a turn staring at the pages, and I’ve meticulously read
through each line ten times. There are a
number of typos in this book, and I imagine the author has now seen them. I hope readers who have not published books
and not experienced this, are not off put by these errors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Readers from Brooklyn and those eligible for social security might
like this book especially, but any student of baseball and sports fandom
regardless of vintage or where they hail will be glad they read the essays in
this collection. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">And they will, after reading “Chin Music” make sure their children
read it as well.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:14pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:14pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:14pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.</div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>
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