{"id":2909,"date":"2006-01-21T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-21T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2909"},"modified":"2017-12-22T07:06:04","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T13:06:04","slug":"book-report-wild-pitch-by-mike-lupica-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/21\/book-report-wild-pitch-by-mike-lupica-2002\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Wild Pitch by Mike Lupica (2002)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00008MNVK\/qid=1137865363\/sr=8-10\/ref=pd_bbs_10\/103-4419373-9297409?n=507846&#038;s=books&#038;v=glance\" target=\"_new\">This book<\/a> was on the deep discount rack at Barnes and Noble for only $1.00 when Heather and I made our way in to spend the season&#8217;s gift cards.  Only $1.00.  I read <i><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/04\/11\/809\/\" target=\"_new\">Full Court Press<\/a><\/i> in April 2004 (that long ago already?).  I enjoyed that book and thought I would buy another.  I did.<\/p>\n<p><i>Wild Pitch<\/i> tells the story of Charlie Stoddard, a pitching phenomenon with the 1980s Mets who blew his arm out and then served as a journeyman for a number of years.  Five years out of baseball, Stoddard spends his days chasing women and booze, earning a living making appearance at sports memorabilia shows.  A particularly vigorous sexual escapade throws his back out, and his partner puts Charlie in touch with a Chinese therapist who can not only fix Charlie&#8217;s back, but also his arm.<\/p>\n<p>At the age of 40, Charlie tries to put his life back on some sort of track, reconnecting with the ex-wife he wronged, the son who doesn&#8217;t acknowledge him, and perhaps just to feel the thrill of pitching&#8230;and maybe even winning&#8230;.again.<\/p>\n<p>Lupica&#8217;s deft characterizations of the lightly-comic people populating his books (damn, I tried to avoid characterizations of characters, and ended up with people populating&#8230;.) drive the story along.  I sympathized with the understated themes of redemption and growing older and maybe even up.  The focus of the winning isn&#8217;t winning it all, it&#8217;s playing to win.<\/p>\n<p>Man, this Lupica fellow is good.  I&#8217;m looking forward to reading more of his novels, and they&#8217;re sports novels, with nary a body to be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book was on the deep discount rack at Barnes and Noble for only $1.00 when Heather and I made our way in to spend the season&#8217;s gift cards. Only $1.00. I read Full Court Press in April 2004 (that long ago already?). I enjoyed that book and thought I would buy another. I did. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2909"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18957,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions\/18957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}