TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY IN MUDVILLE is Professor Stephen Gould's answer to the question, "Why do so many intellectuals love baseball?"
This book is a compilation of baseball-related articles that Professor Gould wrote over the years for the NEW YORK TIMES, AMERICAN HERITAGE, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS.
Many of these articles are "set-pieces." By that I mean Gould repeats parts of one article in another. For instance, as a child, Gould played stickball in the streets of New York City. This crops up over an over again. He also uses stickball as an explanation as to why so many intellectuals (Bart Giamati, George Will, David Halberstam to name a few) are/were so addicted to baseball. He disavows the notion that baseball imitates life or vice versa. His explanation is that many of these men played baseball as kids and are partial to the game.
Gould examines such issues as why there are no longer any .400 hitters. Gould's explanation is that the standard deviation between the best players and the poorest has lessened since the .400 hitters were in evidence. Later on he discusses sports biographies, using such professiorial words as "hagiographical" and "quotidian" to describe the two kinds. The first concentrates on the player's exploits on the field; whereas, the other would emphasize social commentary and the player's personal life. The quotidian sort of bio took center stage with Jim Boutin's BALL FOUR and has been imitated ever since.
Although he's spent most of his life in Boston, Gould has also been a Yankee fan since he was a kid, and as such, his favorite player has always been Joe Dimaggio. Gould considers Joltin' Joe's fifty-six game hitting streak the greatest achievement in the history of baseball, despite the fact that Joe did it twice actually, once as a player in the Pacific Coast league. Gould also doesn't mention Robin Ventura's similar accomplishment as a college player, nor does he consider the fact that, unlike Barry Bonds in 2002, the pitchers may have been directed to pitch to Joe. Dimaggio walked only seventy-six times that year.
Gould's writing comes alive when lets the players do the talking. I enjoyed Gould's article on Dummy Hoy, the deaf mute who played in the majors from 1888-1902. Hoy played center field, a commanding position on the field, and was one of the best fielders in the league. I also liked Gould's description of Casey Stengel's decimation of a TV reporter after losing the '57 World Series. Casey used the "f" word and scratched his behind, thereby destroying the reporter's audio and video. In another review, Gould shows Leo Durocher telling his racist players to "wipe their a---s" with their petition against Jackie Robinson. Click here to post or read comments.
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