Men at Work, by George F. Will
Novak, Robert D.
MEN AT WORK: THE CRAFT OF BASEBALL George F. Will/Macmillan/353 pp. $19.95 Robert D. Novak W by would George Will, the styl- a baseball fan since 1938 when at age ish and profound commentator...
...Since I had ly stressful and draining things" that heard that he was a committed political make a successful player...
...But they were us- My only quibble is that having turned ing a cuffed and dirty ball kept in the his skills as political philosopher to the game to save pennies, throwing fewer debate over the Designated Hitter, he than 100 pitches a game instead of the says "I have gotten nowhere" in de-130 to 140 required today thanks to ciding who is correct...
...ly colleagues in Washington have answered this question—that he wants to show he is a good old boy after all— An affinity for baseball would reaffirms for all who doubted that the seem required for this book, its nation's capital is a nasty place...
...As much as I ad-picky hitters...
...dreamed of...
...pitchers of yesteryear...
...The way his none too friend- nant came naturally...
...George Will is himself a because players `getting paid big "Man at Work," reflecting a work ethic money"—!`do not try to learn all the that his pygmy detractors in journalism fine points of the game as in the days would do well to emulate...
...of old, but simply try to get by...
...Critics who that men play, but they do not play at...
...lege baseball, both for aesthetic reasons Will suggests baseball is better than (the bat striking a baseball "makes a ever...
...La Russa While purposely engendering fear, is no stranger to laughter, but he does the pitcher subjects his own body to ex- not often laugh when he is within a fly quisite tortures unimaginable in foot- ball's distance of a ballpark...
...That was Will reverses the trend of applying reassuring to me, after wondering for sports analogies to politics that began years whether my courage was suspect with Teddy Roosevelt and culminated when, as an untalented Junior Ameri- with Richard Nixon and his successors...
...Will concludes that the fear the dead (and gray and battered) ball factor is "more important in baseball at fielders...
...The workaholic Gwynn terminals...
...subsidize wooden bats in college is He does mourn for the strong-armed laudatory...
...And that is when everything Field, the Pirates' home for genera-is going well...
...came to bury Will stayed to express sur-- In taking what he calls an "anti-prise...
...When the immortal mire Dr...
...Wee Willie Keeler won entry to the sound as distressing as that of finger-Hall of Fame by "hitting them where nails scraping a blackboard") and they ain't" only because the fielders of for debasing the game at the level ninety years ago weren't where they where many future Major Leaguers are should have been...
...His conclusion: "If Amer-began this season grossly overweight icans made goods and services the way and Hershiser's repeated performance Ripken makes double plays, Gwynn of "a highly unnatural" act has ruined makes hits, Hershiser makes pitches his rotator cuff and maybe his career...
...Number One position on the New York Will's own answer is forthright: "My Times bestseller list suggesting that the interest in writing this book has been grand old game is still the National to have fun exploring the spirit and Pastime...
...They did not know trained...
...Men at Work might more practice of something fun, a sport...
...and La Russa makes decisions, you would hear no more about the nation's trajectory having passed its apogee...
...Will's suggestion that the Ma-better," says Will, an astute critic of jors let loose some of their billions to defensive positioning...
...He book with a prejudice against him, but quotes Houston pitcher Mike Scott as I do very much like his book...
...Muscles stretch and tear donment and destruction of Forbes and bleed...
...W ill travels from his four heroes But Will is looking at the best of the across today's baseball land- brightest, the elite of the tiny fraction scape and back through its history...
...not in a mood to be amused...
...The book's odd title is The product is a delightful book that based on Will's contention about his has won uniformly favorable, if some- protagonists that "their work is a game times grudging, reviews...
...than in any other sport...
...Throwing a baseball example: "Not since Cromwell's troops, is a highly unnatural act," Will writes...
...First, I like George Will, even if I cannot share his misguided views about the economy and government...
...Another ball or hockey...
...Meanwhile, his batting average reslow, allowing weak hitters to dribble mains spectacularly high...
...19.95 Robert D. Novak W by would George Will, the styl- a baseball fan since 1938 when at age ish and profound commentator seven I was deluded into thinking that and columnist, write a book about the Cubs' winning a September pen-baseball...
...Will, he is not without fault—Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched in maintaining that Americans are thirty-eight complete games in 1916, undertaxed, and in becoming an agWill notes, he not only threw forty nostic about the wretched DH...
...in there...
...He that makes it to the Majors...
...Tony La Russa), a pitcher (Los Angel- This is a book about baseball...
...tions...
...His concluding sought out the best lathe operators, chapter begins with a quote from a secretaries, and computer operators, former manager and player that "base- I'm sure he would have found the same ball today is not what it should be" diligence...
...The after- by deploring "a tendency of Americans publication fate of two of these heroes to demand too little of themselves at demonstrates the inconstancy of base- their lathes, their desks, their computer ball fortune...
...If Will had does not play the Tory...
...This Earlier, Will mounts the soapbox to appeared in the Spalding Base Ball decry the use of aluminum bats in colGuide of 1916...
...Will's paragons of a sport that "you can not play with your teeth clenched [or] . . . with your mind idling in E" or the most part, though, Will neutral" are a manager (Oakland's checks his erudition at the door...
...Second, I have been Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist, a television commentator, and the publisher of the Evans and Novak Political Report...
...can Legion player forty-three summers An example: "A wit once said that it ago, I nearly died of fright while was not true that Gladstone lacked a awaiting the southpaw delivery of an sense of humor—Gladstone just was adolescent fast-baller...
...I admit to a double bias...
...conservative," Harris wrote in the It is, Will insists, not the drippy Washington Times, "I approached his pastoral game often apotheosized...
...But as fewer pitches a game than he would to- he writes, baseball is a "game of fail-day, but many of them "were fat and ure...
...My favorite is novelist Mark Har- romantic" look at baseball, he stresses ris, a baseball fan, Nixon-basher, and the "small and boring and cumulative-unreconstructed liberal...
...Although he never covered the police beat, Will in truth is both a stylist and a dogged gatherer of facts, whether about arms control or pitching control...
...their puritan sensibilities offended by "As the arm accelerates past the ear, it beauty, went around smashing decoragains terrific speed and then changes tive art in churches has there been an direction, turning down and deceler- act of folly comparable to the abanating sharply...
...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1990...
...Re- saying, "You've got to put a little fear viewers who are also journalists praise Will for his reportorial talents, but then turn mean and say he ought to put as much care and effort into his reporting of national affairs...
...It taught me, a without anybody knowing what he was lifelong baseball fan, things I never up to...
...properly be titled "Inside Baseball," Part of the fun was touring America's delving into strategies and tactics that baseball parks in the summer of 1989 have not been discussed in print or while carrying on his regular workload electronic journalism...
...Only at es's Orel Hershiser), a hitter (San the end does he say he cannot "fore-Diego's Tony Gwynn), and a fielder bear drawing a lesson" from baseball (Baltimore's Cal Ripken, Jr...
Vol. 23 • July 1990 • No. 7
