Have a Happy Thursday, Because, You Know...

Watching the World Series

I'm trying not to root against the Red Sox. They are, objectively speaking, the better team in this World Series. I'm trying to root for the Cardinals, instead.

But it's not easy. As I watch David Ortiz destroy the ball I can't helping thinking... 38 years old, indicted in the same unsealed, supposedly anonymous drug testing that originally entangled Alex Rodriguez, a user who denies using, who is abetted by the media (I think) because he is friendly and engaging where Rodriguez is aloof and self-centered.

As I watch this entire Red Sox team, now only a game from a championship, I can't help thinking...
Their starting shortstop hasn't played over 100 games since 2010, until this year.
Their starting catcher turned in a near All-Star season after years as a backup, posting a batting average and OBP 30 points better than his career averages, this year.
Their 32 year old right fielder had his best season after years of gradual decline, this year.
Every member of their starting rotation produced a better WHIP and ERA than last year, this year. (Except Ryan Dempster, who was just as awful as last year, but at least he wasn't worse).

Maybe steroids have finally ruined baseball for me. Because I know flukes like this happen.

Review: Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

When I don't know, I turn to Wikipedia: 

In 2012, Peter Hitchens wrote that The Daughter of Time was "one of the most important books ever written."

On its publication Anthony Boucher called the book "one of the permanent classics in the detective field.... one of the best, not of the year, but of all time."

Dorothy B. Hughes also praised it, saying it is "not only one of the most important mysteries of the year, but of all years of mystery".

This book was voted number one in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list by the UK Crime Writers' Association in 1990.

But why?

I am not a mystery reader, but The Daughter of Time came up in my book club, so I read it.

Most mysteries fall in one of two camps: the transparent mystery, where we know the guilty party by the end of the third chapter and merely mark time until the hero figures it out; or the deus ex machina mystery, where the hero has deduced some vital clue that is withheld from the readers until after the final confrontation (you could also call this The Sherlock).

Daughter of Time is neither of these. Our hero is bedridden, convalescing after being injured while capturing the last baddie. Stuck in his bed, Daughter... breaks one of the cardinals rules of story-telling: almost none of the action happens in front of us. Instead, characters enter the hospital room, tell the hero what's happened and then leave to have more adventures while hero stays home.

In this way, Daughter... has elements of psychological thriller and melodrama. I was far more interested in how the hero handled his incapacitation than I was in the mystery that he was engaged in.

Maybe we live too much in the reality tv era. CSI and Law & Order regularly take their fictional characters into contact with "real world" cases. But I'm sure this must have been a novel approach for a novel in 1951.

Is that what made reviewers hail Daughter... as an instant classic? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Word of the Week

hobbledehoy

PRONUNCIATION:

(HOB-uhl-dee-hoy) 

MEANING:

noun: An awkward young fellow.

ETYMOLOGY:

Of uncertain origin. Earliest documented use: 1540.

Happy Friday

Review: Hutch by Shannon and Hannig

From Hutch: Baseball’s Fred Hutchinson and a Legacy of Courage
© 2011 Written by Mike Shannon Illustrated by Scott Hannig
by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc.
Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. www.mcfarlandpub.com.

NB: Having received permission to use the image on the right from the kind folks at McFarland & Company, I'm reposting this review to draw attention to Scott Hanning's lovely art work.

While the Pirates rolled over the Reds on Tuesday night, I read Mike Shannon and Scott Hannig's graphic novel biography of Fred Hutchinson, Hutch.

An under-appreciated pitcher in his era, Hutch boasted great command but never racked up enough wins to garner more than a single All-Star appearance. His Tigers teams of baseball's golden age were overshadowed in the American League by the Yankees, who would take the pennant in seven of Hutch's ten seasons. In the only World Series appearance of his career, at age 20, he pitched one inning, gave up a homerun and walked a batter.

Clearly, this is the story of a good man who never stood at the peak of his craft, but who loved the game and worked hard anyway. He'd become a player-manager with the Tigers, and then win Manager of the Year for the Cardinals. Then, he'd lead the Cincinnati Reds to the 1961 pennant. But the Yankees in '61 where the Yankees of Mantle and Maris, and the Reds would lose in five games. That was Hutch's last pennant; in the spring of 1964, he'd share with the world that he was battling lung cancer, and 3 weeks after the end of the season, he died. Baseball would create the Hutch Award in his memory.

Ban All the Classic Books

And the Washington Post for the win:

“Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!”

Moby Dick