A Nice Tuesday Book

One the best writers on baseball in any lineup, Jordan arrived at his typewriter with first-hand experience: his Major League dreams were snuffed out in the low minors by an arm and an attitude that were less than dazzling. A False Spring, his classic account of his youthful experiences--and indiscretions--on the mound, remains a cornerstone of any good baseball library. A Nice Tuesday picks up the Jordan saga some three decades later. It is more than a complement to the earlier memoir, it's a perfect fit. Well past the prime he never had, Jordan, at 56, realizes he still can't shake the game or the way the failure of not making it continues to haunt him. Setting out to confront his past, he tries stepping back into it, detailing moment by moment the excruciating process of struggling into shape for his shot to pitch a minor league game with the Waterbury Saints. At the same time, he also describes with painful precision what it takes to repair old wounds within the family. That both processes lead to a sense of peace with who he is and the journey his life has taken is the kind of stat that stands up favorably to any win-loss record. Jordan is a powerful writer, his prose riding carefully controlled waves of muscularity, tenderness, understanding, and insight. Sports may be his arena here, but metaphysics is his game. "In our late fifties," he writes of himself and his wife, "we lived our lives in a Twilight Zone. We were both young and old. With one hand we held on to our fading youth, bikini thongs and pitching baseballs.... We both knew that the days of our youth were closing fast." What Jordan makes clear throughout A Nice Tuesday is that hearing the footsteps of time approaching isn't tantamount to being overtaken by them. --Jeff SilvermanRead More