Thomas Boswell had been one of baseball’s most prominent scribes for twenty years when this book came out. His snarky, witty, probing style established him as a worthwhile voice for analyzing changes in the game, like free agency and the rise of the running game. Baseball characters like Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson made regular and welcome appearances in his columns, and got off good quotes.
By the time of the period covered in The Heart Of The Order, 1983 to 1988,
baseball was beginning to move into a different space.
The labor issues that caused
baseball’s longest ever strike in 1981, its fourth in just ten years, were only
getting worse as both sides grew more entrenched in their positions. Cocaine
had become a clubhouse drug of choice, exposed in a series of high-profile
confessions. No one spoke openly of collusion or steroids just yet, but they
were beginning to cast their shadows, too.
Most critically for Boswell, the people he had cut his teeth following in the 1970s were fading away, slowly but
inevitably. Rose, Jackson, Rod Carew, Tom Seaver, Earl Weaver, Jim Palmer and
others were leaving the scene, and their replacements were apparently not as good, at
least as copy. Even the Baltimore Orioles, the team Boswell followed most
regularly as a Washington Post
reporter, fell in 1984 from a two-decade era of consistent excellence into divisional mopbucket.
This autumnal feeling was impressed upon
me reading The Heart Of The Order. It
starts out with a profile on Joe DiMaggio in which the Yankee
Clipper says he has only begun to appreciate his time in the spotlight now that
it is mostly over. “I try to live a normal life,” he says in a kid-gloves interview that reveals little.
The first season Boswell covers here, 1984, is
presented not with the rise of the Detroit Tigers, who rode to glory and fostered
new legends in the performances of pitcher Jack Morris and outfielder Kirk
Gibson; or even the San Diego Padres, who managed to win their first National League title with the help of young batting hero Tony Gwynn. Rather he keys on the fall of the Chicago Cubs in the final game of that
season’s National League Championship Series.
“When Tim Flannery’s ground ball
trickled into right field, knifing under Leon Durham’s glove and through his
Cub heart, baseball’s decade of romantic good luck had finally snapped,” Boswell writes.
A common theme of Boswell’s columns is
of players and coaches saying goodbye to the game they love, and trying to configure
a new life for themselves after baseball. These were the guys Boswell came up
with; it speaks well of him as a human being he had trouble leaving them
behind. But it casts a pall reading what should be lighter fare.
Normally a spry wordsmith, Boswell’s prose in this collection comes off tired and hacky:
Profiling Ozzie Smith, star shortstop
for the St. Louis Cardinals, Boswell writes: “On the back of his uniform should
be the word ‘shazam.’ Instead of ‘1,’ his number should be ‘8,’ but turned
sideways, because the possibilities he brings to his position are almost
infinite.”
On Cincinnati Reds centerfielder Eric
Davis, he manages to be more effusive: “Yes, Mark Fidrych, Fernando Valenzuela,
Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens, meet Eric Davis. What you were to pitching, he
is to playing.”
Davis was an exciting player for a while, but this proves one of several Boswellian examples of major
overstatement.
Even when he does get an undeniable baseball
legend, Boswell too often gilds the lily. Profiling former Oriole third-baseman
Brooks Robinson, Boswell is not content to talk up the ballplayer’s
on-the-field distinctions. Rather, he unleashes his inner Roy Firestone,
regaling us at length with Brooksie’s uncommon generosity even as he faced
deepening financial debt.
The touchy-feely is ever-present in this
tome: Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Pedro Guerrero comes home to the Dominican Republic to
give money to those who ask for it, even if he senses they don’t really need
it. Catcher Gary Carter ignores the jealous sniping of his Montreal Expos teammates, smiling all the way to Flushing, Queens and a new home with the New
York Mets. American League president Lee MacPhail spends downtime visiting art exhibits.
The best profile by far is the one
Boswell draws of journeyman pitcher Doyle Alexander, in 1987 enjoying a
terrific season for his latest of many teams, the Detroit Tigers. Alexander is depicted as an
ornery guy who initially snubs Boswell’s proffered hand; Boswell manages to
make this work for him anyway.
“When he turns back, he still ignores
your hand and looks you hard in the eye instead,” Boswell writes. “Then, the
instant you pull your hand back, he puts his forward and you have to shake on
his terms. He’s just changed speeds on another hitter and won again. If you’re
insulted or defensive, then he’s happy. Because he’s in control.”
To me, this is not only a worthy account
of a particular interaction, but sums up the spirit of the “have-gun-will-travel”
era of free agency as well as anything else in this book.
Other pluses on offer in The Heart Of The Order include Boswell’s
justly-celebrated list, “99 Reasons Why Baseball Is Better Than Football.”
[#64: “Baseball means Spring’s Here. Football means Winter’s Coming.”] His account
of the 1988 World Series, and the fabled Kirk Gibson home run that won Game 1
for the Los Angeles Dodgers, features some of Boswell’s best prose:
“Already, the home run, probably not a
400-footer, is growing by the hour. Now [Dodger second baseman Steve] Sax says
Gibson “hit with one hand.” There’s a palm tree, about 500 feet from home
plate. If it ever dies, folks here will swear Gibson killed it.”
A big negative of this book is the teams
Boswell covered most closely, and gives every indication of rooting for, had a
rough time of it in the mid-1980s. The Orioles had Cal Ripken’s streak, but not
much else. The Boston Red Sox made the 1986 World Series, but, well, you know...
As a New York Mets fan, I minded the
accent on the negative Boswell employed writing up that series. While his pre-Game
Six commentary on what he saw as the Red Sox’s biggest potential Achilles’
Heel, first-baseman Bill Buckner, proved apt [“Is he the worst player on the
field in this Series – an utter liability on offense, defense and the base
paths who should be on the bench in New York tonight in Game Six so Don Baylor,
who at least has joints that move, can play first base?”], the continuous poor-mouthing
about the curse of the Sox becomes shrill.
Elsewhere in the book Boswell bemoans “the
warping, wounding effects of a big persona in a public life;” the emotional
roller-coasters endured by pitchers Dwight Gooden and John Tudor as great
seasons gave way to hard times; and what Boswell calls “the flame of fame” that
singes more than it enlightens.
It singes Boswell at times, too. On
occasion, he manages to insert himself into his writings, to negative effect.
He brags about how a column he wrote bothered Orioles outfielder Fred
Lynn:
[Orioles Manager Earl] Weaver called my column “the most
irresponsible” ever written about his team. Coach Frank Robinson told me, “Thanks,
he [Lynn] needed that.” And, in fact, the next week Lynn was the American League’s
player of the week.
Obviously, it’s hard to find a calm
middle ground on Lynn. Perhaps Carlton Fisk, his teammate for six years in
Boston, does it as well as any.
“How bad did you nail Freddie, anyway?”
Fisk needled me.
“Maybe a six on a scale of ten.”
“That’s about right,” said Fisk.
Okay, so maybe I got the “six” upside
down.
I guess it’s meant to impress us how
much Boswell matters to the guys he wrote about. But bragging about his digs and how
they hit the targets seems crass.
Elsewhere, Boswell writes about cricket,
the introduction of lights at Wrigley Field, and newfangled fitness equipment
in ways that showcase his quipping more than anything else.
While liking Boswell enough, I was left
a bit flat at this collection. I remember the middle 1980s as generally being a
good time for baseball; something his prose here seems to shortchange.
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