Finished Faithful by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan.
References to other books: The Shining and The Stand, plus mentions of The Dark Tower series and The Girl Who Loves Tom Gordon.
There’s no movie version, but you can see Fever Pitch with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon. Same Red Sox season and as a bonus, you can see Stephen King throw out the first pitch.
This is the second time I’ve read this book and, just like the first, it was very hard going for me. There are basically two aspects to this book. The first is a love letter to baseball, sometimes recounted in nearly an inning-by-inning fashion. As you can imagine, these sections are almost impossible for me to read.
But the second part—oh, the second part! That’s a love letter to obsession. And that I can rally behind. I don’t get people who love sports (although if forced at gunpoint to watch a sport, I’d probably pick baseball), but I figure most of them don’t understand why I’d willingly choose to re-read a prolific author’s entire body of work in one year (speaking of, now it’s two done and 66 to go!).
If you’re a baseball fan (or probably even a sports fan), you will love this book to the marrow of your soul. If you’re like me, you will hate yourself a lot of the time you’re reading this. I did. And then I realized that I’m just as obsessed as they are, just with different things. It keeps me from getting too smug about the sports people. ;)
I’m not a huge baseball fan anymore–meaning, I don’t really care about baseball games played today (I love the history and legends, and steep myself in both), but even I felt some twinge of goosebumpy awesomeness when the Bosox broke “The Curse of the Bambino.”
As far as obsession…hon, I watched “Casablanca” 46 straight nights Lent-before-last, so I’m right there with you, sitting on the bench, spitting sunflower seeds, and decked out in our “Team Obsessive” letter jackets:
“Give me an O!”
“O!!”
“Now give me a bunch more O’s for reasons apparent to nobody but me!”
*fist bump*