This book wasn’t what I expected and that probably helped and hampered it, both. More than anything else, I think it’s helpful to think of it as an ensemble drama, and the sports angle as a way of interrogating masculinity. And, by proxy, queerness and homophobia in a particular time and place.

The messier this gets, and does it get messy quick, the more enticing I found it. It begins playing into the expectations of the reader: A phenom, young natural ball player intuitively good at basically everything, starts at a new school and a new team, and has a gay roommate that he strikes a fast friendship with. His parents are casually homophobic and so the first drama is introduced. When a freak pitch strikes said roommate it rattles our perfect pitchers confidence.

At the same time, the head of the school has a daughter come visit and become enmeshed in school life, tangling up with the captain of the team, who is directly, as you can imagine, involved with the shaken pitcher and what that’ll mean for the season. But also what the event does to confront the masculinity of all involved—some more directly than others. And what follows is, essentially, the fallout from that fateful event for all.

There are some waxing poetic around the game and around a presumably titular book, which is an esoteric philosophical breakdown of a player of baseball. The game is plenty important, but the book isn’t really too much about the game nor predominately a breakdown of each game. There are scenes where the game is being played, but far more is the drama that continues to spiral.

Actually, it’s a pretty fantastic way to examine masculinity in a way that isn’t expected at all, at least by me. There’s some interesting psychology that gets thrown in. Good ending. Solid, overall. It didn’t bowl me over though, as I think the pacing is somewhat off. But when the ensemble character study is hyper fixated on something, and the effects of that character are felt, it is positively entrancing.