The Sporting Life: Horses, Boxers, Rivers, and a Russian Ballclub - Hardcover

Barich, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1558219358 ISBN 13: 9781558219359

Publisher: Lyons Pr, 1999

Synopsis

Presents a collection of the New Yorker essayist's profiles of figures and phenomena from the sporting world.

About this title

Review:

One of sports' more elegant chroniclers, Bill Barich admits from the start of this superb collection of journalism--most appeared first in The New Yorker--that "I still look to the sporting life for escape and maybe even transcendence, if that isn't too grand an idea." In less skillfully versatile hands, it might be. In Barich's, it feels just right. The eight individual pieces Barich builds this Life upon swing in mood from deeply meditative to wryly comic. They traverse diverse terrain, inhaling nuance and detail: from the haughtiness of Ascot's steeplechase races to the whiff of liniment that permeates Santa Anita's backstretch, and from musty gyms filled with struggling fighters to secret trout streams. Even better, they shine a light into some unexplored corners of sporting and glow with the remarkable specifics they find.

The light burns particularly bright in "Going to the Moon," a remarkable piece about the Red Devils, a team of Russian baseball players barnstorming across America. To supplement their very un-American salaries, their equipment manager hawks souvenirs like Russian army hats, lacquered boxes, nesting dolls, and Red Devils baseball cards in the stands, then splits the proceeds. New converts to the game, they're not very good; indeed, they get blown out, game after game, by American junior college squads. But athletes are still athletes and pride is still pride, and Barich captures that truism stunningly as he describes 22-year-old Andrei Tzelikovsky, who spits like a ballplayer and wishes "he had the uncanny grace of his batting hero, Ted Williams, whose book The Science of Hitting he'd read more than 20 times." Twenty times. It's the kind of lush--even transcendent--reportage readers expect from Barich. In The Sporting Life, he displays his ability to deliver it on several different playing fields. --Jeff Silverman

From the Back Cover:

Bill Barich's widely praised work doesn't get any better than these intimate glimpses into the stories behind the stories, the real lives behind the public facade of the sporting world. Barich delves into both participatory and spectator sports, examining three different types of horse racing: down-and-dirty bush racing in Cajun country; an elegant steeplechase at Ascot, England, and a big-time Santa Anita thoroughbred heading for the Kentucky Derby; two boxers from radically opposite ends of the spectrum: Pat Lawlor struggling to make it in San Francisco, and Mike Tyson battling his emotions; two fly-fishing adventures on legendary California rivers; and the world's strangest baseball club, the Moscow Red Devils, barnstorming the United States with Soviet trinkets for sale and skills on par with a good American high school team. Every piece shines with Barich's distinctive voice, and approach that splendidly balances both enthusiasm and intelligence with healthy doses of humor. The result is the very best kind of sports writing - from one of the master prose stylists of our time. (61/4 X 91/4, 164 pages)

About this edition

• Publisher: Lyons Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1558219358
• ISBN 13: 9781558219359
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 154