Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball) (Fathers Playing Catch with Sons PR)

Hall's lyrical voice, graceful craft, and spiritual bravado are evident throughout from the opening title essay--a first-person reminiscence of a spring-training sojourn with the Pirates--to a meditation on football that serves as the volume's final gun. In between, he offers lovely, finely tuned odes to Fenway Park, Old Timers' games, Ping-Pong, and former Celtic forward Kevin McHale. From a reader's perspective, "Proseball," a grand tour of baseball literature, is particularly poignant; as Hall goes down his line-up, your heart should break when you realize just how much good writing--from Roger Angell, Thomas Boswell, and Red Smith, for starters--is currently, and tragically, out of print. --Jeff Silverman