Baseball from the cow’s perspective

Picked up an audio copy of Holy Cow: A Novel by David Duchovny, a kinder, gentler answer to Orwell’s Animal Farm (as opposed to a book about Phil Rizzuto).

I won’t go into a whole lot of detail about the overall premise. Suffice it to say it’s told — quite entertainingly — from a the cow’s point of view and includes the following passage where she learns about the inherent evil of humankind.

Then the older, obnoxious son runs into the room, grabs the magic wand, and switches the channel to a bunch of men in uniform hitting and chasing and trying to catch a ball. And I learn that the ball is made of the hide of dead horses (cowhide since ’74 — that awful summer) and each time the ball gets the slightest bit dirty, they throw it out like it’s no good, like there’s an inexhaustible supply of horses to kill to make even more balls, and for all I know there is. And the thing the men wear to cushion their soft little human hands from the hard ball is called a “glove” and is made of something called “leather,” which is just a polite way of saying “the skin of dead cows.” And right before I pass out I think: Is there no end to your cruelty?

I always recommend trying to find the author reading his or her own work. More “authentic” that way, I believe.

By the way, Duchovny’s series, The X-Files, included an episode “about” baseball: “The Unnatural” (season 6, episode 19).

From the Wikipedia entry:

In this episode, Arthur Dales (M. Emmet Walsh), the brother of a previously recurring retired FBI agent with the same name, tells Mulder the story of a black baseball player who played for the Roswell Grays in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 under the pseudonym “Josh Exley” (Jesse L. Martin). Exley was actually an alien with a love of baseball. Exley is later tracked down by the Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson) and executed for betraying his people.

Among other things, the episode was inspired by the history of baseball in Roswell, as well as the infamous 1947 Roswell Incident. Jesse Martin was offered the lead guest role as Exley after Duchovny noticed him in a production of the musical Rent and an episode of Ally McBeal…. Many of the outdoor baseball scenes were filmed at Jay Littleton Ballfield, an all-wood stadium located in Ontario, California. The episode has been critically examined for its use of literary motifs, its fairy tale-like structure, and its themes concerning racism and alienation.