The Batter’s Box: A Novel of Baseball, War, and Love
Those of you who have been following this blog for a while know my aversion to reviewing fiction. I am not educated in creative writing and feel ill-equipped to judge the hard work of others. Unless it’s really bad.
These days, however, I look for a change-up from the history and analysis and biography books I read on a constant basis. So when Andy Kutler sent me an email offering his new novel for Bookshelf consideration, I was intrigued. While I am in no way an expert on the subject, I enjoy (for lack of a better word) material about World War II. So when you couple that with baseball, how could I not give it a look?
The Batter’s Box follows the exploits of Will Jamison, a young standout catcher with a great future for the Washington Senators. Similar to such real-life stars as Ted Williams and Bob Feller (the latter of whom plays a key role in the story), Jamison puts his athletic career on hold and enlists in the Army after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.
He joins thousands of comrades in the Battle of the Bulge, perhaps the turning point of the war which Kutler presents in harrowing detail. (I took a break from reading to rewatch for the umpteenth time the episode of the HBO series Band of Brothers that dealt with Bastogne, Noville, and Foy, strategic Belgian towns in the fighting.) It’s no spoiler to say that Jamison survives, but his struggles are not over when he returns to America and, despite a leg wound, his old job with the ‘Nats.
His homecoming could be considered a “second front” as he tries to deal with PTSD, reluctant to ask for help because of the stigma attached with mental health issues.
The Batter’s Box is a fine work; Kutler has done his homework for both the baseball and military aspects. My only quibble, and it’s very minor, is the use of what they used to call “stock characters” to represent a cross-section of ethnic and regional groups — Jews, Poles, Irish, southerners, cowboys, etc. — which no doubt was an important device to show that “we’re all in this together.” Like I said, a minor point.
As the saying goes, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.” The same can be said about me when it comes to fiction. Without the baseball connection, I doubt I would have read The Batter’s Box. But having done so, it was a good call.
Just an aside: I recently watched the excellent documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball. I had no idea the title was a, well, bastardization of “The Battered Bastards of Bastogne,” which is what they called the fighting men who went through that conflict.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.