the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt ten)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Nuts call up on the sports radio channel and they say, “Chris, I’ve had it. But I’m in the Rotisserie League, and I’ve made a trade—Strawberry, McReynolds, and Darling for Tim Raines.” Then the announcer says, dead serious, “Really? How’s it working out for you?” etc. etc. and they get in long conversations about it.

So what is going on in my Rotisserie League? Well, I’ll tell you. My team is the New York team, with the listless manager. In my team, he was not fired. Listless, but stalwart, elegant, not a coward, can do the job. Then, a player from last year who agonized over his retirement because he was aging, thirty-six, and then was traded away, who had been known as the heart of the team, who was dashing and glamorous and dark, with a mustache, came back as the first-base coach—we are grooming him to be the manager. The players are elated about it. Strawberry talked to him for hours. As they chain-smoked in the dugout. My dugout is vice-ridden but I like it that way. And I’m the owner, see? Everyone chain-smokes, they play cards, they drink bourbon, they’re allowed to, it’s fun, my manager doesn’t enforce discipline, he doesn't have to, because the players respect him, like a father, and he may be listless, but he is stalwart, and gets the job done.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt nine)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Actually they did have baseball in New Orleans once. It was about fifty years ago. They were the Pelicans, a minor-league team. Hobby’s father used to go to the games as a boy. His uncle would take him. Hobby’s father was shocked because in the box next to theirs was a priest who smoked cigars, drank beer, and cursed. Mostly, he cursed.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt eight)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Some people say it is a more antiquated, droll or quaint sport than football, say, being more representative of a sort of bygone era. Football for its violence is more beloved in the South, where they don’t have baseball. Whereas I would think that baseball would suit the South, being rather courtly. But it is more mental or cerebral, than football, say, and that does not suit the South. But even if baseball is more cerebral, everyone is certainly an emotional wreck by the end of the season, agonizing over it all.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt seven)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

New Orleans is very beautiful and very painful. New York is not that beautiful and not that painful. It is just a normal American town. Whereas New Orleans has a caliber of beauty among the massive oaks, at times a vision of paradise, but there is an unvarnished truth about it, and there are your memories and those held dear. I miss the society of my beloved father. I am pursued by my memories. I might be on the midnight train from Penn Station populated by wino lunatics on my way to Orient through the summer crowds, but in my mind’s eye I must set my sights on that white white house beside the palm tree in New Orleans, with its sweet gaiety. I must find my way back.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt six)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Hobby and I had left the office late, to go out that night to the ball park, which had been named, oddly enough, for a pitcher from Louisiana, Sportsman’s Paradise. It was a glamorous night in New York. The temperature was ninety degrees. I take a perverse satisfaction in the heat because the Northerners can’t stand it, they’re not used to it, whereas the Southerners are. Also it was humid and the sky was a thick cobalt blue as night fell.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt five)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

He was telling me about a pitcher who thought it was his day off and took LSD. He happened to hear on the radio that his team was playing that night in Chicago—which he had forgotten. So he hopped on a plane to Chicago tripping on LSD and pitched a no-hitter.

Later he was on trial and told the judge that when you’re on LSD in a ball game, it makes the ball look like a grapefruit when it’s coming at you so it’s easier to hit.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt four)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Friday evening after work, the young men go to the baseball games, in their suits and ties and sunglasses, having plain American fun. It touches my heart, because they don’t have plain American fun where I come from, it is too exotic and remote for that, it is the dark side. They don’t have baseball in New Orleans. It’s not normal enough to have baseball.

In New York I learned quite a bit about baseball as to many a Northerner it is his great love. But what interested me about it was not perhaps the same thing that interested them. I like how all the ball players have marital problems and personality problems and need sports psychiatrists, and especially in baseball where you don’t have to be that athletic or it’s not as strenuous in a way the players are all dissipated wrecks with drug problems, chain-smoking. That would maybe work in New Orleans. Baseball would maybe work in New Orleans because all the players are dissipated wrecks with troubled relationships with their fathers, chain-smoking. But they are tough guys. Except for when they retire, then they cry. The whole thing is an emotional roller coaster, at least for me, trying to keep up with their problems. That’s what I like about it.