Calico Joe, John
Grisham
What is it about baseball that lends itself to such great
literature and movies – much better than most sports (boxing is close)? But once again I find a baseball novel that
has a reach far in excess of the nine innings, bats, and balls.
John Grisham has used his power as a story teller to take us
to an insight filled novel that revolves around a major leaguer who barely
makes the team, but ekes out a career that is marginal at best, but is painful
for the family as his drinking, carousing, and vicious anger terrorize the
family and the son, narrator who moves through life being everything his father
was not and attempting to avoid his father all together.
He hate his father for the treatment of his mother, the
cruelty that he endured and for one intentional beanball that ended the career
of the narrators heroes and a young rookie of tremendous potential who was
leading the always tragic cubs towards a pennant. Of course we know the cubs cannot win and we
can see the collision coming between the young, handsome, kind rookie and the
aging veteran.
It is the sound of collision between ball and ballplayer
that must be the echoing call to conscience that starts an unlikely change of
events to bring the now dying pitcher together with the disabled ballplayer
whose career he destroyed. It is about
making things right, connecting fathers and sons, heroes and villains, finding
the possibility of not making things right, but of doing something right that
rings through the chapters and the book flies by in fascinating narrative.
Like so many baseball books, the game lends itself to
personal issues and cultural examination.
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