Book Review: Batter Up!
Jul. 23rd, 2023 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’ve returned to read more epically earnest fiction by my good buddy William Heyliger! Early in his career, Heyliger also wrote under the name Hawley Williams, and I tracked down his 1912 book Batter Up!, in which baseball player Ches Hall freezes up during the first game of the season when he is sent to bat against a pitcher whose bean ball knocked him out for ten minutes last year. (A bean ball is a ball that is thrown at the batter’s head. Heyliger calls it unsporting, but apparently it wasn’t against the rules yet.)
Unfortunately, this bean ball incident occurred when Ches was at a different school, so no one in his current boarding school knows about it. The head coach decides that Hall’s simply an irremediable coward, although his assistant coach urges him to consider the possibility that there’s something psychological at work:
“Do you mean to tell me that you’re going to advance the theory that psychology is responsible for what happened to Hall in the Arlington game?...It’s getting so now,” the coach complained, “that as soon as somebody does something he shouldn’t do, somebody else jumps up and says it happened because his grandfather wore false teeth or had a cast in one eye.”
Plus ça change…
In his later books, Heyliger generally introduces more twists and turns, but here, the plot relies on the coach’s extraordinarily pigheaded refusal to entertain the idea that maybe Ches is not an arrant coward. He finally lets go of the idea, but not until Ches heroically rescues another boy from drowning… and even then, although the coach lets Ches back on the team, he still won’t let him bat! Not until he learns that Ches was knocked unconscious by the very pitcher who frightened him at the Arlington game does the coach relent: even major leaguers, he admits, are usually afraid of a pitcher who has knocked them out.
However, this book does have one golden glowing asset that makes up for everything else: finally, a slashy moment in a Heyliger book! After much travail, our hero has been accepted back into the bosom of the school. Overcome, he casts himself facedown on his bed, where his roommate finds him. “ ‘Chum!’ was all the first-baseman said, and fell to stroking his room-mate’s hair.”
“Is that slashy, or is that just 1912 friendship?” you ask suspiciously. Okay FINE, it’s 1912 friendship, but I’ve been looking for slashy William Heyliger for so long, I’ll take what I can get!
Unfortunately, this bean ball incident occurred when Ches was at a different school, so no one in his current boarding school knows about it. The head coach decides that Hall’s simply an irremediable coward, although his assistant coach urges him to consider the possibility that there’s something psychological at work:
“Do you mean to tell me that you’re going to advance the theory that psychology is responsible for what happened to Hall in the Arlington game?...It’s getting so now,” the coach complained, “that as soon as somebody does something he shouldn’t do, somebody else jumps up and says it happened because his grandfather wore false teeth or had a cast in one eye.”
Plus ça change…
In his later books, Heyliger generally introduces more twists and turns, but here, the plot relies on the coach’s extraordinarily pigheaded refusal to entertain the idea that maybe Ches is not an arrant coward. He finally lets go of the idea, but not until Ches heroically rescues another boy from drowning… and even then, although the coach lets Ches back on the team, he still won’t let him bat! Not until he learns that Ches was knocked unconscious by the very pitcher who frightened him at the Arlington game does the coach relent: even major leaguers, he admits, are usually afraid of a pitcher who has knocked them out.
However, this book does have one golden glowing asset that makes up for everything else: finally, a slashy moment in a Heyliger book! After much travail, our hero has been accepted back into the bosom of the school. Overcome, he casts himself facedown on his bed, where his roommate finds him. “ ‘Chum!’ was all the first-baseman said, and fell to stroking his room-mate’s hair.”
“Is that slashy, or is that just 1912 friendship?” you ask suspiciously. Okay FINE, it’s 1912 friendship, but I’ve been looking for slashy William Heyliger for so long, I’ll take what I can get!
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Date: 2023-07-23 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-23 07:35 pm (UTC)They complained about it even more once WWI started!
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Date: 2023-07-24 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-07-23 07:35 pm (UTC)My first reaction is that pitcher is lucky he just gave Ches trauma, not traumatic brain injury.
[edit] Tangentially through early twentieth century idfic, did I ever bounce Rosamund Nesbit Bland's "The Dark" (1909) in your direction?
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Date: 2023-07-23 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-24 05:21 pm (UTC)No, I don't think you have. What's it about?