A False Spring

Strange experience. Up until the last few pages, I was thinking 4 stars but there was no sort of resolution to the issues that would have provided that lift. Well written overall and I'm predisposed to appreciate memoirs and I thought the author took risks (laudable ones) in his willingness to expose his behavior in an honest, unadorned way. But at the end of the work, I simply did not like this person and while I do think it is possible to like book and not the main character, I just had no sympathy for the absence of a mortal center. He did not treat others well and that is a deal breaker for me. Also, a minor point but just in the last 12 pages, it felt self-published in that I found three typos. Seemed weird that there had been none show more before then, and then three in rapid order.

I got this recommendation from "1000 Books to Read Before You Die," which I'm starting to think is less effective than the preference-based stuff I get from Goodreads. show less

Perhaps the best book ever written about minor league baseball, A False Spring explores the reasons one youngster failed to fulfill his potential.

This is a powerful and frustrating memoir of Pat Jordan's three summers pitching in the low minor leagues, written when the author was in his thirties. At heart, it's an exploration of why he failed, and that story is pretty brutal: Much of the problem was immaturity; he comes off as a cocky kid, with obvious talent but no ability to put the talent to use. Except for a Winter Instructionals interlude, the path is ever downward, and the ending inevitable.

There's a Midwest League connection: Jordan spent 1960 with the Davenport Braves. Unfortunately, it's the book's weakest chapter. The author show more knows this, and discusses the reasons; it's closely tied to the greater failure of his baseball career.

The book's honesty is absolutely painful, though occasionally a bit forced. And Jordan's ability to sketch a portrait with a few sentences is really quite remarkable; almost everyone he turns his attention to comes to life on the page. I was particularly taken by his description of Travis Jackson's need to be physically involved in baseball's rituals, contrasted with his relative disdain for the ordinary necessities of the manager's job.

The author describes his career as a series of unnumbered photographic slides, scattered purposelessly on a table. This fundamental inability to find a way to tie the episodes of his young life into a coherent whole was, he judges, the reason he failed so miserably. That's perhaps not entirely fair, but it's a good first approximation.

This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal. show less

It started out with so much promise, but by the second chapter, I'd grown to loathe the narrator and found the entire thing to be an overly prose-y, jumbled account of this guy's failed attempts to prolong his minor league career. Then it just ends--both the career and the book--with a fizzle. I'd heard so many great things about this book, so this was incredibly disappointing.

Being the memoirs of a pitching prospect whose career abruptly sputtered out. This is, as has occasionally been noted, one of the finest memoirs ever writen. The author's prose at times made me shudder like no horror novel ever written could. I can't say enough nice things about this book.