In the name of baseball, amen

So I should probably hate Shoeless Joe.

I mean, really. I don't have much reason to like it. The language is, at least at first blush, really needlessly florid. Every sentence has a simile or a metaphor or an adjective, and it gets ridiculous. I don't know who talked to one Mr. Kinsella, but they forgot to tell him that not everything needs extra detailing. This florid language honestly tripped me up more than I really like to admit, so it was a pain getting in to the book in the first place.

And then you get to the subject matter, which really stopped me full on for most of the book. I mean, it's about baseball.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike baseball, per se, so much as I think it's the most boring and ridiculous sport that is actively played. And I say that knowing full well that some people take Quidditch seriously.

I mean, I just don't see the appeal. You put a bunch of people in a field, some guy throws a ball, some other guy hits it, and then the guy that hit it runs in a circle and the other guys throw a tiny white sphere around. At least hockey has brutal checks, football has pileups, and tennis and soccer are both way more kinetic. So, of all sports, baseball is the one that I absolutely have no attachment to. So I was happy enough to read through the book, and near around page 150 I was just slogging through to say that I've read it.

It doesn't help that it's pretty much the exact same as movie it inspired.

But then I hit page 150, and the book veered wildly, both from the movie and from my previous expectations of the book.

At that point, the book becomes something transcendant, something that isn't about baseball. Sure, it's based on and uses the lexicon and syntax of baseball. I've no idea what an ERA is besides a period of geologic time, but it's mentioned. I don't know exactly how good a .300 batting average is, and I don't care. The book knows, but it doesn't care. Baseball isn't the point anymore.

The point is finding something to love more than life. The point is finding something that drives you and a group of like minded individuals. The point is religion, but without that pesky God shit behind everything.  The point is being a fan, regardless of what happens when and to whomever it happens to. And that ultimately everything can be transcendant enough to become that way.

I don't understand the first thing about baseball. But I understand fandom to the point of obsession.

And at that point, the book had me, completely. I could, and did, forgive it for it's purple prose, because it needs its prose for something more. I could tolerate its baseball speak, because Kinsella is just using baseball as a relatively simple metaphor for a greater understanding of something uniquely huge and human. And I could based entirely on the strength of its convictions. Of its absolute acceptance of nostalgia and shared understanding and a religious fervor shared by all fans of a certain level of obsession of everything, from Jesus to Gundam to baseball to politics to Midwestern tourist traps.

When I was planning on writing this post (which was supposed to happen tomorrow), I was going to start off with "I hate Shoeless Joe" because that's how I was feeling at the time.

Then it had the gall to actually hit me right in the understanding. Right in the understanding! What a dick move! But it did it, and I think I actually have to say that I love Shoeless Joe. What a difference 100 pages can make.

That said, I'd really rather they had just left the author as a reference to J.D. Salinger rather than actually using J.D. Salinger. That bothers me, for whatever reason. Maybe because I really, really love the idea of Darth Vader talking about "Peace, love, and dope, man."