Connection to World Series history makes compelling baseball

If all that had been conjured from Philip Beards presence in the audience at the first three World Series games ever played at Three Rivers Stadium were a story he could repeat years later Bob Feller Jersey over a cold Iron City and a lifetime infatuation with the Pittsburgh Pirates, well, that certainly would have been time well spent.
He got so much more, though.
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It wouldnt be fair or accurate to call . Its too rare for that. For all the many wonderful non-fiction books written directly about sports (say, Mark Kriegels The Good Son) and the novels written about characters inspired by real life (like John Grishams Calico Joe, who seems to be born of Tony Conigliaros experience), and the novels written about wholly fictional athletes (such as those in Chad Harbaughs marvelous The Art of Fielding), what Beard does with Swing is wonderfully uncommon.
Beard uses the real events of the 1971 World Series between the Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles, including some he observed from the seats behind home plate, as the backbone of a beautiful novel about how people become attached to sports teams as youths, how those attachments can impact family bonds and even, in a sense, create them.
Beard switches between the Bradley Zimmer Jersey experiences of lead character Henry as a boy in the Pittsburgh suburbs and as a married man teaching college English in upstate New York. The nine days of the Pirates-Orioles Series dominate what amount to flashback scenes, with intricate detail of the games that impact 11-year-old Henry as he watches his parents marriage splinter and his father become absentee. What the should be most joyous time of a boys childhood is mangled a bit by real life, but during this period Henry meets an unusual character named John Kostka, who becomes kind of a surrogate father.
Beyond the plays in the field and, eventually, the death of superstar Roberto Clemente in a plane crash 16 months later there are scenes that Beard witne sed in the stands woven into the story. At the first-ever World Series night game, he sat five rows behind home plate next to Dock Ellis wife and daughter, and the little girl borrowed Beards game program and doodled hearts on her fathers picture all night, from the first inning to the last out of the ninth. That became a beautifully realized scene in the book.
There is enough drawn from Beards own experiences watching the 1971 Series that its inevitable to ask whether the disaffection the adult Henry feels from baseball in general and the Pirates in particular also afflicted the author, perhaps as a result of the franchises 20 consecutive losing seasons from 1993-2012.
I think maybe part of Henrys character was me wishing I could become a disaffected fan, Beard said. Because the early drafts of this novel were written really at the height of that slump. I think the first draft was completed in 2008.
When you were a kid in the 70s Brad Hand Jersey in Pittsburgh, you just had no chance but to be in love with the Pirates and the Steelers. I fell early and I fell hard and I couldnt seem to give up. For that entire 20 years, I probably listened to or watched or at least read the Post-Gazette about every single game. Just hoping.
It was brutal, but for whatever reason I couldnt look away. I did expect it to get better.
One of the few similar uses of real sporting events in the course of a novel that I can find, anyway is the early part of Don DeLillos Underworld, in which the first 134 pages present Bobby Thompsons Shot Heard Round the World from the viewpoint of a boy who manages to retrieve the home run ball, as well as entertainers Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra.
The baseball aspect is chosen, as much as anything, as a vehicle to bring these two characters, Henry and John, together, Beard said. Baseball was something that brought my father and myself together when I was a kid, so to me Ricky Vaughn Jersey it was a natural vehicle to do that for this kid thats in search of a father.
Beards choice of the 1971 Pirates as a flex point in his novel is curious as it relates to the history of Pittsburgh sports. Profe sional sports teams won six championships for Pittsburgh in the 1970s, plus Pitt claimed the football national title behind Heisman winner Tony Dorsett in 1976. Clementes brilliance as Series MVP is well remembered, but the 71 Pirates might be the least beloved of those champions. Pittsburgh became a Steelers town with its four Super Bowls in six years, and the 1979 Fam-a-lee Pirates had that catch phrase to identify them.
Its like your lovers, right? You remember the first, Jose Ramirez Jersey Beard said. My uncle was a good friend of Dave Ricketts, the bullpen coach. I wound up at all three World Series games in Pittsburgh in 1971, right behind home plate. I was a goner at that point. Thats what cemented my love of the Pirates forever.
The bond was strong enough that Beard spent years trying to get Swing on the market during a challenging period in his career as a writer and an impo sible time in the publishing industry. He had a small hit with this first novel, Dear Zoe, but his follow-up Lost in the Garden was not as well supported and (though its terrific, as well) did not find a vast audience. Getting a third literary novel published without bestselling succe s for one of the first two, Beard said, is not easy. Getting that done at the heart of the financial crisis in 2009 was impo sible. So his agent talked him into making Swing self-published. Those whove read it are fortunate he followed that advice.
Reading the book could become a worthwhile pastime between October baseball games, of Tyler Clippard Jersey which Beard hopes there will be many for the Pirates. But he is aware they are guaranteed just one: a third consecutive appearance in the National League Wild Card playoff.
I think this team can win the World Series. I really do, he said, anyway.Beard is not nece sarily looking for sequel to Swing, just another celebration in Pittsburgh.