If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.

Deciding what to post for TT is always challenging, but one of my Google Alerts today was “How John Grisham Lost His Love for Baseball” from Crimereads.com. Perfect.  It that reminded me of the time I reviewed his 2012 baseball novel, Calico Joe, for Bookreporter,com, reprinted here for your convenience:

John Grisham is highly regarded for his legal thrillers. A TIME TO KILL, THE FIRM, THE PELICAN BRIEF and more than 20 others comprise the main part of his oeuvre. He is also a die-hard baseball fan, and CALICO JOE is his long-awaited novel reflecting his love for the national pastime.

(This is not the first time Grisham has “done” baseball: he penned the screenplay for the 2004 film Mickey, which tells the story of a lawyer dad on the run and his son, a standout Little League player who has to make the trip with him. He’s also written about football in PLAYING FOR PIZZA and THE BLEACHERS.)

This relatively short tale about lost opportunities and unfulfilled potential considers, as do many baseball themes, the relationship between fathers and sons, hero worship, and the fickle fates of sports. It combines several fictional and historical events: a rookie who comes out of nowhere, as in The Natural and The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (more familiar perhaps as the musical Damn Yankees); and the mortal danger that lingers under the surface of the game, as evidenced by the death of Ray Chapman — the only major leaguer to die as the result of being hit by a pitch — and other “beanball” incidents that resulted in career-ending injuries to Boston Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro and, most recently, Adam Greenberg, who was hit in the head in his first and only big league appearance (for the Cubs, of all teams); he’s still trying to mount a comeback.

Instead of “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.”, we have Calico Joe Castle, from Calico Rock, Arkansas, an earnest player for the 1973 Chicago Cubs who has the chance to be something truly special as he takes the sports world by storm during his first few games. With the young man performing at such an unbelievable pace, could this be the year the long-cursed team makes it to the World Series?

Standing in his way, however, is Warren Tracey, a journeyman pitcher currently with the New York Mets, who falls into the role of villain á la Carl Mays, the hurler who threw that fatal pitch at Chapman. Castle is everything Tracey is not: young, talented, popular, and possessing a future. Their collision course serves as the focal point of the book, which jumps back and forth from 1973 to the present era, told from the point of view of Tracey’s now-adult son, Paul, who adored Calico Joe as a child while at the same time conflicted by his feelings for his abusive dad. These emotional scars carry well into adulthood and are barely ameliorated by the news that Warren is dying. This, Paul thinks, is Warren’s last chance to make amends for all the horrible things he’s done in his life — cheating on Paul’s mother and physically abusing him as a lad, among other things — but will Joe and those who protect his privacy be amenable?

CALICO JOE is not especially suspenseful; the reader knows practically from the beginning that things will not end well for the rookie. (The blurb on the dust jacket teases “Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever.”) What gives the novel a leg-up is the attention to detail in (re)creating the game some 40 years ago — the Mets beat the Cubs on the last day of the regular season to win the National League East title, which Grisham, in his book, attributes to the loss of Calico Joe’s services. The author has certainly done his homework, seamlessly incorporating real events and players such as Willie Mays (another of young Paul’s heroes), Tom Seaver, Rick Monday, and Don Kessinger, a real friend of Grisham.

In his author’s note, Grisham acknowledges the “tricky business” of mixing the real with the imaginary and admits changing actual “schedules, rosters, rotations, records, batting orders,” no doubt with sticklers like me in mind.

Tagged as: Calico Joe, John Grisham

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