Missing baseball? Read ‘The Cactus League’

America’s favorite pastime is way past time. How can spring possibly have sprung without the crack of a bat or a ballpark vendor hawking beer, hot dogs, popcorn and peanuts? Major League Baseball and its younger and less professional versions all the way down to Pop Warner games are on hold, making the old rain delay of pre-coronavirus baseball feel like the flash of a second.

This time, it’s the longest delay ever, a contrast to the decision made during World War II when Major League Baseball was concerned about how frivolous it might appear to be playing baseball in the midst of a world war. President Franklin Roosevelt settled that with his “Green Light Letter” informing Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis at the time that he thought baseball would be good for Americans who were working hard to sustain the war effort and could use a little recreation after work.

So the umps yelled “play ball,” and players who were not drafted or volunteered for service took the field throughout the war. No doubt, the insidious nature of this coronavirus that would prey on fans in the stands requires a more cautious and much different approach.

But for those of us who hang on every pitch, marvel at outfielders chasing down fly balls and climbing center field walls for the catch or infielders turning a double play, these are the missing ingredients for summer living. It leaves a gaping hole in our viewing opportunities, not to mention the fodder it provides for jabbering at local watering holes or coffee joints. I even miss the announcers explaining the complexities of the game and adding color to an athletic contest that sometimes seem to move at a snail’s pace.

The coronavirus sent Bronco baseball to the dugout before it even had a chance to complete one season. Boise fans who remember the days when Bronco baseball was a sure sign of spring were locked out and players who had high hopes as the inaugural team of returning Bronco baseball found themselves leaving a season behind with only a few innings under their belts. Coach Gary Van Tol who left the Cubs organization in minor league baseball to become the head coach of the Broncos suddenly found himself practicing with players indoors until further notice on the future of play.

For some fans, there are the old games on TV, but they don’t do much for me, so I was off searching for the place holder that would satisfy my addiction to the game. Although a book may not sound like the perfect pinch hitter for a suspended baseball season, “The Cactus League” by Emily Nemens kept me in the game until we can all return to the ballpark or at least watch a game on TV.

Emily Nemens grew up a fan of major league baseball. Her dad, a Yankees fan, took her to the King Dome in Seattle to watch the Mariners, the only team in the Majors never to have played in a World Series. But that didn’t stop her from loving the game and following it no matter where her career took her.

Eventually her career path led to New York City where she serves as editor of The Paris Review, the prestigious literary magazine. When I interviewed Emily recently at Reader’s Corner, I suggested that readers might not expect a baseball novel to come from the literary heights of a magazine like The Paris Review, but she reminded me that the founding editor of the Review was George Plimpton, who not only wrote about sports, but also convinced the Detroit Lions, the Boston Celtics and professional baseball to allow him to compete. Among his many books, “Out of My League” is the account of his somewhat humiliating and humorous foray into Major League Baseball as a pitcher and “Paper Lion” about his experience in Detroit Lions training camp as a quarterback.

Emily Nemens has no problem keeping up with Plimpton when it comes to writing about sport. She throws a surgical strike right down the middle. I asked Emily how she managed to get inside the hopes and dreams of players, the struggles of those bit players at the ballpark who sell hot dogs and beer, the wives, ex-wives and groupies who hang out at the ballpark. Did you spend years hanging out at the back end of ballparks or find your way into the dugout or did you make it up? “I made it up,” she quickly replied.

Well, of course, all novels are made up, at least the imagined plots of the authors, but there is so much more novels teach us about ourselves and so many places novels take us in understanding what it must be like to walk in someone else’s shoes. Emily has done a remarkable job of inserting us into the lives of those in the game and ordinary folks in supporting roles who struggle to make a life worth living. Along the way, the reader will learn about baseball lore and culture, but as reviewers have noted, this is more than a novel about baseball. This is about people trying to figure out life and how to live it. That’s a lesson we can all learn, in this case through the lens of the game of baseball.

For baseball fans watching those old games on TV, turn your attention to the spring training adventure Emily Nemens offers in “The Cactus League.” For those of you who are not baseball fans, you won’t be disappointed as you meet up with a cast of characters with hopes and dreams you can find in any of life’s settings. Play ball!