Sweet dreams are made of these: Bill Lewers’ fan memoir

I’ve been putting this off for a long time, basically out of a sense that I had more important things to do, which is more a failing of mine than the actual truth.

I’m speaking here of the fan memoir, a book of recollections and anecdotes taken not from the life of a famous athlete, but from the average Joe who watches the game, either at the ballpark or by the TV or radio, and following along in the box scores in the newspapers.

I was that person once. In 1993 I clipped every article I could find about the Mets, filling several large scrapbooks. I watched and scored every single. The team was really awful that year, despite have a team full of all-stars such as Eddie Murray, Vince Coleman, Bret Saberhagen, and Bobby Bonilla, among others. I intended to turn it into a book following the season, with the title The Winter of Our Discontent: A Mets’ Fan’s Lament. Needless to say it never got published our you would have heard about it long ago. In those days there were few options outside of mainstream publishing houses. No print-on-demand or other such programs available. Sure there were a few vanity and subsidized presses, but I didn’t want to go that route. I occasional freelance for an outfit that reviews such books, and, frankly, most of them are wanting for an editor (or even a simple spell-check), which severely detracts from my enjoyment of what it obviously important to the writer.

Fast forward to “modern” times.

I did a review of Gene Hutmaker’s Banned in the Bronx: The Yankee Hater Memoirs, 1953-2005 a few months ago. It was all right, if somewhat rough around the edges. Now, long overdue, is Bill Lewers’ Six Decades of Baseball: A Personal Narrative.

Books such as this, as the subtitle notes, are personal. Every fan has his or her memories, but not everyone can express them as well as Lewers has. Beginning as a young Red Sox fan in the 1950s, Lewers’ love of the game did not so much “mature” as it “evolved” as other people and events came into his life. To be very honest, I read the book several months ago; the details are not clear in my mind and time does not allow me to re-read it, but I know when I was done I had a smile on my face from Lewer’s smart and gentle stories. I was a bit happy, a bit sad, seeing how time keeps moving along, as much as we want to stop and savor those special moments.

I’m certainly no New Testament scholar, but the phrase from Corinthians comes to mind: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” Baseball is not a childish thing, but for most of us, its importance does subside as school, work, and family move to the forefront and rearrange priorities. I hope Lewers’ family and friends appreciate his love for the game and his love for them, and the way he was able to achieve a contended balance. At this time of year, I think its book is a nice gift to them all.