The Golem's Mighty Swing

Narrated by Noah Strauss or as he calls himself “the Zion Lion,” manager and third baseman for the Stars of David minor league baseball club touring and playing other teams sometime in the early decades of the twentieth century. When the Stars of David, “The Bearded Wandering Wonders,” are hit with a perfect storm of economic woes, they turn to a promoter who proposes dressing their one African American player, Henry, or as he’s known on the field, “Hershl Bloom (member of the lost tribe),” into the costume of a golem to bring in the crowds and enrich the box office, and in turn the team. It’s a plan that has unanticipated results. Strum’s well-crafted and drawn story portrays American small town life with the unifying show more social mores of baseball and the divisive mores of antisemitism and racism. show less

THE GOLEM’S MIGHTY SWING snuck up on me. Despite being aware of some glowing reviews before my reading of the story, my expectations were subdued--I could not imagine that something so spare with its dialogue and relatively few frames for its hundred pages could wield such power. As I read though I began to feel the slights suffered by the almost all Jewish baseball team barnstorming 1920s America. Despite baseball’s laconic nature, the turns of fortune are usually sudden and thus hitting with all the more power. So it is for these characters. Race and religion should not impact the rules of baseball but they do. They should have no place on a ball field, but are carried onto it every time cleats cross the chalk lines. I felt the show more smooth wood of a bat and the rough hewn benches of the visitor’s dugout—Blacks and Jews are often still in the visitor’s dugout. Each character is indelible after just a few words so you have little choice but to feel what they feel. All of this sharpened the disappointment I felt at the conclusion. While I understood that realistically the final game couldn’t be completed, we are waiting for the finish of that game still, but ending the book so suddenly with an odd and detached “and many years later” little addendum left me flummoxed. I actually checked the binding of my copy to make sure there weren’t some pages missing. Aside from that unfortunate choice, still highly recommend this wonderful work. show less

In this thin and sparsely drawn black and white graphic, it can be easy to question at first how so much praise as been heaped on what appears to simply be a nostalgic peek at traveling baseball teams of the 20s. With each frame, it simply becomes so much more. Religious philosophy, race relations, family, the love of baseball, politics and even the perils of bad marketing ideas are all covered with the deceptive ease of caching a pop-up fly. And with the same speed of the catch, the topic moves on - the only topic Sturm clearly ruminates on at length is the love of baseball. After all, none of these things would be worth enduring (the least of which are the long hours on the road) if those players didn't love playing the game during show more the summer of the Golem despite their hardships. Of course, how the Golem impacts even this is part of the story... show less

Just realized I did not write a little note on this one after I read it. Anyhow, this was a nice little book looking at a Jewish baseball team in the 1920s. The book gives a good look not only at baseball in a time of traveling exhibition teams, but it also looks at a time when racism and ignorance were common and rampant (I could make the crack about how that has not changed. Oh wait, I just did). Anyhow, the book has a good story, and the art is very good. The art complements the story nicely, and it enhances the feel of the story's ambiance. I picked it up at the local public library, and I am glad I did for I got a chance to read something different. It did feel a bit short, but that's ok.

Absolutely fantastic. Magnificent art, and a tremendous story to boot. Noah Strauss leads the Stars of David, an all-Jewish barnstorming baseball team that travels through the Midwest taking on local town and factory teams. When money gets tight, the team adds a new attraction: the Mighty Golem. But the Golem may prove too much for the already anti-Semetic crowds . . .

A small, quiet book about a band of outsiders that reminded me in some ways of HBO's Carnivale. In this case, the protagonists are not a traveling circus, but an all-Jewish baseball team traveling through the American midwest in the 1930s. Atmospheric and quitely suspenseful, I really enjoyed this book.

Nice choice of setting and subject. Too much time on the minutaie of baseball. At 100 pages, feels a bit slight and incomplete.