What I'm Reading: Where They Ain't

Where They Ain't, by Burt Solomon, is an excellent look at baseball in the immedate pre-modern era, from 1894 to 1902. It observes this era through the lens of the Baltimore Orioles, who invented a new style of baseball that made them the most successful team of the 1890s, and when they broke up, whose key players and manager formed the core of many of the most successful teams of the early 1900s.

Baseball in the 1880s was a leisurely affair of getting a man or two and base and waiting for a big home run to score (a lot like the 1950s--and to an extent, today's game as well). But after the 1892 season, the National League (the only league at the time) moved the pitcher's mound back to 60 feet, six inches, from its previous distance of 50 feet, and also required the pitcher to keep one foot on the pitching rubber when pitching. That may not seem like much of a change, but it was just enough. That extra split second the ball takes to get to the plate was just enough to give a quick player the time to judge what part of the field he could hit the ball to, allowing more precise hitting. It was just enough to make it that much harder for a pitcher to field a bunt. And it was just enough extra time for a sneaky base stealer to successfully make it to second or third before the catcher could throw him out.

The four main players on the Orioles--"Wee" Willie Keeler, John McGraw, Hughie Jennings, and Joe Kelley--along with their manager, "Foxy" Ned Hanlon, were the first to recognize the kind of baseball the change allowed: a scrappy, fast-paced, hitting and running type of game (similar to the 1970s-80s game) they called "scientific baseball." And they rode that recognition to first place finishes from 1894-96, and second place finishes in 1897-98, behind the Boston Beaneaters (later the Boston Braves), who had largely adopted their methods.

Unfortunately, the National League, and after 1901, the American League, used Baltimore as a pawn in fairly baroque baseball politics, and the result was that the Orioles after the 1902 season moved to New York and became the Highlanders (later named the Yankees), with the team's personnel spread across the major leagues. John McGraw, the diminutive but fiercely-willed third baseman for the Orioles, became the manager of the New York Giants in 1902 where he was known as the "Little Napoleon" for his controlling but winning style. He won 10 National League pennants and three World Series with the Giants and still holds the National League record for most wins.

From 1899 to 1905, Ned Hanlon managed the Brooklyn Superbas (later the Dodgers), bringing Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings, and Joe Kelley with him as the right fielder, shortstop, and pitcher, respectively. Hanlon, Keeler, Jennings, and Kelley led the Superbas to first place finishes in 1899-1900. Jennings also managed the Detroit Tigers from 1907-1920, where he coached Ty Cobb and led the Tigers to three American League champtionships and several other good seasons.

One idiosyncrasy of the book is that it adopts some of the conventions of the language and baseball lingo of the 1890s. For instance, at that time fans were known as "cranks" and pitchers were called "twirlers." Fine. I probably could have done without not capitalizing avenues and streets in street names, i.e. 21st street or Maryland avenue. But after a few pages, you get used to it, and it does help with the effect of placing you in the 1890s.

I really like the way Solomon interwove history and current events into the baseball story. For instance, he describes the way attendance dropped off in the 1898 season because of the Spanish-American War--who worried about baseball when American sons were fighting overseas? Or how in 1902, Willie Keeler went to St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn with a suspected shoulder fracture to take advantage of a brand new invention--an X-ray machine, which St. Mary's was one of the first hospitals in the world to possess.

And those are just two examples of many. It is for that reason that Where They Ain't receives one of my coveted Shortcuts to Smartness awards, for books that provide a whole education in and of themselves. (Congratulations, Burt Solomon!) In this book you learn not just about baseball history, but also American history, and the history of the cities of Baltimore and Brooklyn, and 1890s politics, and what makes a team work, and how to achieve success. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in any of those subjects.

Ranking: Black Panther

Okay, I should've reviewed Black Panther weeks ago. I'm finally getting to it!

I have previously ranked the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the other DC movies, the Avengers movies, the X-Men movies, the summer 2015 comic movies, the Spider-Man movies, the non-Marvel and non-DC comic movies, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the Man-Thing, Thor: Ragnarok, and Wonder Woman.

I have a friend who mentioned this was his favorite Marvel superhero movie so far because the setting is different. It's not set in New York or San Francisco, with fights taking place in the city streets. Rather, it takes place in the jungles, mountains, and waterfalls of Wakanda, a fictional African country that enjoys advanced technology that it has long hidden from the world.

I agree, the settings were a high point of this movie. The first time we saw the capital of Wakanda, with its Afrocentric skyscrapers drawing on traditional African building styles for its architectural themes, I almost gasped. It was beautifully done in a way we haven't seen in Marvel movies before--maybe to an extent with Asgard in the Thor movies, but really Asgard is kind of cheesy. This felt like an architectural style that really should exist in the world--why don't Lagos or Nairobi or Johannesburg have buildings like that?

Alas, the rest of the movie wasn't quite as good. I mean, the plot, with Black Panther having to take back the kingdom from his nephew, who's usurped it, was more than serviceable. But the movie sort of struck me strangely--it's message seemed to be that what an advanced African economy really needs as an enlightened king to be in charge? I mean, shouldn't the Black Panther be trying to make the country into a democracy, rather than just being the best king he can be?

I was also disappointed in Klaw, although probably for a reason most movie-goers won't share. It's because in the comics, Klaw is a villain with an awesome costume, who after he lost his arm, crafted a new arm for himself out of pure sound, and can use his arm to blast concentrated sound waves at heroes. In the movie, he's just a mercenary who lost his arm and replaced it with a metal one. Ho hum. Definitely would've benefited from following the comics more closely, in this case.

I know this one was highly regarded, but other than the settings, it didn't really strike me as terrible memorable. It falls into the Okay category, although near the top.

As ever, my ranking system is
Green=excellent  Blue=pretty good  Black=Okay  Red=avoid

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Here's the master list of all comics movies I've rated so far, in order from best to worst:

Crumb
American Splendor
Iron Man
Heavy Metal (1981)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Avengers
Superman (1978)
Captain America
Wonder Woman (2017)
Batman Begins (2005)
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier
Spider-Man (2002)
X-Men 2: X-Men United
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Superman II
Batman (1989)
Ant-Man
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Dr. Strange
The Dark Knight (2008)
Iron Man 3
The Wolverine (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Sin City (2005)
X-Men: First Class
X-Men (2000)
Black Panther
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
Swamp Thing (1982)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Iron Man 2
Watchmen (2009)
Batman Forever (1995)
Superman Returns (2006)
Thor 2: The Dark World
Incredible Hulk (2008)
Mystery Men (1999)
Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Man-Thing (2005)
Superman III
Supergirl (1984)
Thor
X-Men 3: Last Stand
Hulk (2003)
Fritz the Cat (1972)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Batman Returns (1992)
Superman IV

Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (Haven't seen)
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) (Haven't seen)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) (Haven't seen)
Batman (1966) (Haven't seen)
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Haven't seen)
Catwoman (Haven't seen)
Constantine (Haven't seen)
Deadpool (Haven't seen)
Green Lantern (Haven't seen)
Hellboy (Haven't seen)
Judge Dredd (Haven't seen)
Man of Steel (Haven't seen)
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Haven't seen)
V for Vendetta (Haven't seen)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Haven't seen)

Scary Movies: A Quiet Place

I'm not sure why, but for some reason my kids really wanted to see A Quiet Place, a horror movie that's recently been in theaters. Maybe other kids at school were talking about it, I don't know. After researching the movie a little bit, my wife and I decided we'd go ahead and take them.

Actually, for kids, this is a pretty good horror movie--very little actual violence or gore and no cursing (not much talking at all, actually, as I'll explain in a minute). Still, it was probably a little scarier than I would have wanted my kids, especially my daughter, to see. And yet, on balance, maybe it was worthwhile, because we discussed this movie a lot in the following days. It does a lot to raise interesting questions, always a sign of a good movie.

It follows the Abbott family, who live on a farm in upstate New York. Earth has been invaded by aliens, who are blind and hunt humans with their extremely sharp hearing. Any sound above a whisper can be deadly, bringing a ravenous insectoid alien leaping from out of the trees. The Abbotts, in a way, have an advantage, for their teenage daughter is deaf, and they are able to communicate with each other in sign language. They also have a son, maybe 11 or 12, and they used to have a young son, who got eaten in the first scene in the movie. Also the mother, Evelyn, is pregnant and almost due. I'm not real sure what the parents were thinking, getting pregnant under these circumstances, but it certainly makes for a lot of tension when Evelyn goes into labor.

I can't remember the last movie I saw that was as quiet as this. Everybody in the movie is trying to be as silent as possible, and it spills over to the audience, which at our showing was absolutely hushed. Small sounds--a leaf crunching, a spoon falling--take on huge significance. Maybe some of M. Night Shyamalan's movies had this sort of quiet intensity--and actually, this reminds me more than a little of his movie, Signs. But whereas I was disappointed with that movie's ending, this movie had a twist at the end that was completely satisfying.

A Quiet Place (2018)

Story/Plot/Characters--Really top-notch acting, characters are believable and rounded, plot is perfectly executed. (4 points)
Special Effects-- Not much of a special effects movie and the aliens themselves were nothing special. (1 point)
Scariness--My children were quite frightened in the theater! Not the scariest movie I've ever seen, but up there. (1.5 points)
Atmosphere/Freakiness--An isolated and lonely farmhouse in a beautiful but spare natural setting, absolutely separate from the rest of the world, with abandoned barns and tractors littering the nearby countryside: this was exactly what I'm looking for in a horror movie. (2 points)
Total=8.5 points (Excellent)

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Here's the master list of horror movies I've rated so far. (Click the title for a link to a review of the movie.)

Excellent
Alien (1979)=10 points
Day of the Dead (1978)=9.5 points
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)=8.5 points
A Quiet Place (2018)=8.5 points
Frankenstein (1931)=8 points
King Kong (1933)=8 points
Village of the Damned (1960)=8 points
Night of the Living Dead (1968)=7.5 points
Carrie (1976)=7.5 points
Jaws (1975)=7 points
Pretty Good
Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)=6.5 points
Aliens (1986)=6.5 points
The Birds (1963)=6.5 points
Carnival of Souls (1962)=6.5 points
Night Creatures (1962)=6.5 points
Phantom of the Opera (1962)=6.5 points
The Thing (1982)=6 points
Tales of Terror (1962)=6 points
Okay
The House on Haunted Hill (1959)=5 points
Gremlins (1984)=5 points
Lady Frankenstein (1971)=4.5 points
Man-Thing (2005)=4 points
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)=3.5 points
Avoid
Alien 3 (1992)=3 points
The Wolf Man (1941)=3 points
The Last Man on Earth (1964)=2 points

What I'm Reading: Roundup

A quick roundup of some the things I've been reading:

The Reptile Room The second book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series. I read the first one but it must have been before I started this blog as I couldn't find an entry for it.

The series follows the Baudelaire children--14-year-old Violet, who loves inventing; 12-year-old Klaus, who's read thousands of books; and infant Sunny, who has really sharp teeth. The Baudelaire children are orphans and must fend off the dastardly Count Olaf, who wants to worm his way into the great fortune the children are due to inherit when they come of age.

In this book, the children go to live with their kindly Uncle Monty, a herpetologist (snake researcher!). Unfortunately, Uncle Monty has hired a new assistant, Stephano, who is really Count Olaf in disguise, though nobody believes the children when they try to explain this. When Uncle Monty turns up dead of snakebite, it's up to the children to prove Count Olaf is the murderer.

The series specializes in black humor, when horrible things happen to the Baudelaire children with such regularity that it becomes humorous. Maybe it sounds morbid for a kid's series, but my third-grade daughter loves it. It helps that the children are brave and plucky and polite, despite all their misfortune. I think it's great--the author, Lemony Snicket, strikes just the right balance in tone so it's not too scary but not too tame for late elementary-schoolers.

Silman's Complete Endgame Course--The latest book I'm reading in my not-especially effective quest to become a better chess player. This, by Jeremy Silman, is the recommended book for learning about endgames.

What I like about this book is that chapters aren't organized thematically, but rather progress according to your rating level. The first couple chapters cover endgames beginners are mostly likely to encounter, with each succeeding chapter increasing in sophistication. It makes a lot of sense-- you don't have to waste a lot of time early on learning about weird endgame situations you'll hardly ever run into unless you're a grandmaster. Kind of a dry subject, but written with a lot of humor to make it easier to read.

Complete Peanuts: 1989-90 Oh my, Schulz was getting soft in his own age. This volume has tons of sentimental strips with Charlie Brown sitting under a tree with Snoopy or just holding him in his lap, deciding at one point he wants to give up school so he can stay home and keep his dog company. Of course, this doesn't work out. Charlie Brown also finds a girlfriend in this volume! He meets her at summer camp. Unfortunately, he's so nervous when he first meets her he introduces himself as Brownie Charles. Later, at home, he's disappointed when she doesn't write him any letters. But actually, his sister Sally has been telling the postman to take the letters back because no one by the name "Brownie Charles" lives there.

Sally's not impressed

I liked the introduction of a new relative of Snoopy's, Olaf. (Not related to Count Olaf from The Reptile Room, presumably.) There's an ugly dog contest, and Lucy tries to get Snoopy or Spike to enter it, but they refuse. However, there's another brother who just may fit the bill:

Is this dog ugly enough to win?

There's another good sequence when Marcie is about to crack from the pressure her parents put her under to get good grades in school, and spends a few days at Charlie Brown's house. Still, it seemed like this edition didn't have as many longer story arcs as recent volumes. And, as ever, we're in the slow decline from the strip's heyday that's been going on for at least 15 years. Still, Peanuts on a bad day is better than most comic strips at their best.

What I'm Reading: White Trash

No, White Trash is not the latest southern Gothic pulp romance; rather, as its subtitle reads, it's The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, a 2016 book by Nancy Isenberg.

In America we have a tendency to think of ourselves as a classless society, or at least one where anybody can move from the bottom to the top with hard work and maybe a little luck. In fact, Isenberg demonstrates that class has been more pervasive throughout American history than is usually thought, and that the lower classes are often kept that way through broad societal structures and social attitudes.

I think her analysis is especially strong in the antebellum South, where she shows that slavery not only kept blacks down, by force of law, but also kept lower-class whites in their place, because the best land was taken by the large plantation owners, with only marginal land left over for the small farmers. Moreover, even the low-wage labor--as farmhands, say, or domestic servants--that provided so much employment in the North was not available to Southern whites, since slaves did nearly all menial tasks (it's hard to compete with a wage of zero). Even if you wanted to work your way up from the bottom in the antebellum South, there was really no path for you to take, so the poor "white trash" stayed that way.

I also enjoyed and found convincing her view that class lines had already hardened in the early colonial period, when the proprietors of the English colonies imported so-called "waste people" from rural areas of the British isles to settle the dangerous frontiers, only for upper-class landowners to come in later, after the frontier had been tamed, and take the best land for themselves from "squatters" who often had no titles to places they had been living for years.

Amusing (to me anyway) that my own home state of North Carolina was looked down in the colonial period on by the other colonies as a giant wasteland of poor, uneducated whites, more interested in drinking, screwing, and lazing about than working the land. In comparison to the tobacco plantations and more established society of Virginia, and the fertile lands of South Carolina that also quickly developed into plantation society, North Carolina was cursed with a lot of land too sandy, swampy, or hilly to be easy to farm. Such land attracted only economically marginal people from the fringes of Virginia, leading to a vicious circle of poverty, poor land, and lack of respect.

The book contains fascinating anecdotes and analysis throughout. One thing I found really interesting was the evolution of phraseology for the poor impoverished white lower classes--for example, the terms squatters and crackers prevailed in the early 1800s, while mudsills was a popular term in the mid-19th century, but the ever-popular white trash was first used in 1821 and had achieved widespread use by the 1850s. There are tons of little explanations of this sort, regarding all sorts of historical social phenomena, in every chapter.

If there is one disappointment, it's the final chapter, when Isenberg takes her class analysis of American history and applies it to the current landscape, finding the existence of a persistent underclass in the United States to be a great injustice, and recommending a rather standard slate of Great Society-style interventions to change things. But--we've already tried your way, Ms. Isenberg, and it's led to the widespread dissolution of traditional family structures among the poorer classes, leading to firmer entrenchment of those class divisions than ever before! If Ms. Isenberg had no especially creative new solutions to recommend, better to have left this chapter out entirely.

Despite that last chapter, I'm awarding this book my coveted "Shortcuts to Smartness" award, for providing informative reviews of nearly every important in American history from an unusual and profound perspective. It struck me as more convincing and better-researched than the superficially similar People's History of the United States, the rather blinkered left-wing American history book from 1980 (Isenberg has citations, for one thing!). Isenberg's book might not be as easy to read as the People's History, a perpetual favorite among disaffected high school students, but its focus and research hold up a lot better. I'd recommend this for any student of American history who wants to know more about the important and under-researched issue of class.

What I'm Reading: Wild Bird

Wild Bird, by Wendelin Van Draanen, tells the story of Wren, a 14-year old from a good family who is addicted to alcohol and marijuana and runs drugs for a 12th-grader she wants to be her boyfriend. Her parents, fed up and finding Wren to be intransigent, send her away to a wilderness survival camp in the desert of southern Utah.

The camp is eight weeks long, and she's determined not to let go of any bit of the anger she feels while she's there. But soon, despite herself, the new skills she's learning and the unforgiving natural landscape are working a change in her, along with a friend she makes--Hannah, a high school heroin addict who is grateful for the second chance at a sober life the camp is providing.

Eventually, Wren reaches a point where she can almost admit some of the things she did that were wrong--things she did to hurt her family, her community, her own future. But she doesn't feel like she can confront them without the numbing aid of alcohol or other drugs. It's then that the counselors decides she needs to go a quest in the wilderness, alone. And what she discovers on that quest will change who she is and how she understands and approaches the world.

Wild Bird is a great book, but it may be pretty intense for some readers. I think it'd be great for readers in their mid-teens, or for mature readers in their early teens. But for those who are ready for it, it's really beautifully written and perfectly paced. I suppose you could say it's a "message book" but it doesn't feel preachy--it's actually quite a page-turner, helped along by Wren's funny and decidedly irreverent narrative voice.

What I'm Reading: Death Comes for the Archbishop

Okay, I've fallen a little behind on my book logging, so let's get started. Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop has been calling to me from our shelves for years now, so I finally got around to reading it. What a beautifully written book!

The main characters are the French Bishop Jean Latour and his good friend Father Joseph Vaillant, who come as missionaries in 1848 to Santa Fe, New Mexico, following the Mexican-American War to lead a new Catholic diocese that's been split off from the old one in Durango, Mexico. (Apparently, they are loosely based on two actual missionaries, though the book is a work of fiction.) The area of the new diocese is in wild country, remote even from Durango, and local priests have run things more or less without guidance for centuries. At best, the priests have operated without resources or advice, doing what they can; at worst, they've operated their local communities like mini-despotisms, perhaps taking local Mexican women as wives or concubines or using local Indians as free labor.

Bishop Latour is determined to clean things out, but though he has the authority of the church behind him, he really doesn't have any more in resources than any of the local, entrenched priests. He is forced to rely on his will and sense of righteousness as well as his secret weapon: his vicar, Father Vaillant. Father Vaillant is physically small but possessed of an incredible force of personality, compassion for people, and purity of faith instantly recognizable to all who meet him. He is able to bring entire Indian villages over to Christianity after a few days' stay, and travels the country carrying out spiritual missions for Bishop Latour.

The center of the book is really the relationship between Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant, probably the greatest account of deep male friendship I've ever read. Superficially, the cool-headed, intellectual, and sometimes even sarcastic Bishop Latour seems to have little to in common with the fiery, energetic, and direct Father Vaillant. But in fact, they discovered when they met in seminary back in France that they complement each other almost perfectly, each providing what the other lacks.

For instance, in one scene, the canny Bishop Latour decides to keep on a corrupt local priest, Padre Martinez, who has married several women and owns numerous farms worked with the labor of his congregation. Father Vaillant urges him to dismiss the old goat immediately, but Vaillant sees that Martinez, despite his personal failings, has built up a strong and faithful congregation. He decides to wait a year or so, when he can get just the right man from his home seminary in France to take his place. Father Vaillant cannot stand the thought, but in the end he recognizes the Latour's wisdom.

The book is told mainly in little anecdotes, reminding me a lot of the other Willa Cather book I've read, My Antonia. Sometimes these anecdotes are humorous, other times moving. Sometimes they're not even about the current characters at all, but merely to give a bit of fascinating background illustration, such as the tale of Bishop Latour hears of an old Spanish priest who had served decades before in an Indian village built on top of a mesa. The priest had a quick temper and one evening beaned his serving boy with a pewter cup after the boy had spilled a well-prepared meal. The blow killed the boy, and afterwards the Indians, who had accepted Christianity but not yet lost touch with their old ways, gathered in the main square to decide the priest's fate. When they came for him, the priest did not resist or beg for his life, but accepted the judgment as the Indians carried him to the edge of the mesa and tossed him off.

I think what most impresses me about Death Comes for the Archbishop is its resistance to  facile comparisons and easy answers. Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant are complex, fully-rounded characters, good at heart but capable of weakness, and even the bad characters have some redeeming qualities. The Americans who gradually filter into the story have little understanding or patience for the old Mexican and Indian world they encounter and conquer, but even that is presented less as a wrong than a sad but probably inevitable passing of ways.

Willa Cather is by no means naive about this--the Catholic Church under Bishop Latour in some ways facilitates this takeover by the incoming Americans--but it also softens it, provides a channel of communication for local communities, even helps the Navajo win back their ancestral lands after the US Army drives them to a new area not suited for their way of life. Whatever their mistakes, in the end the tremendous compassion and faithfulness of Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant must be considered a force for good in the world.