Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball), Vol. 1 Book

The title of this collection of essays so appealed to me in the late 80s (I'd just become a father) that I bought the book and let it languish suggestively on my shelf for 25 years, the length of time it's taken for me to learn what it really means to toss a ball (and Frisbee) with my own son.

While I enjoyed most of the essays, they never came up to the potent evocative level of the book's title. Apparently Hall never had a son, only a daughter, with whom he apparently never played catch. The father-son configuration was in my case more positive when I was a boy, and in the few (3?) outings with my father, I recall a satisfying volley of steady back and forth, with only occasional wayward throws and scampering retrievals from our neighbor's adjoining yards. There was a thrill of mastery and surging strength in my play with my dad as a boy; even at age 10 or 11 I felt I could power the ball through him and that I had to take a little bit off my throws to ensure he'd continue to throw with me. I was certain that I'd been impressive. Throwing with my own son was all prodding and pushing on my part, as he had no interest and little desire to please me with any sort of effort. What he got from these sessions I do not even want to contemplate, and we never threw together more than three times. (Later, we threw with a bit more focus when he was twenty, and it made a difference, but he was still not interested in the art of it, only in the being together, the talking between throws.) Sum total for all these outings with father and son, maybe just shy of ten. A whole novel could be written around these faint etchings in the insubstantial wax of memory.

…Which I suppose I wanted Hall to do more of. His essays are all appropriately appreciative of the art of the game, the athleticism, the skills involved, etc. etc., but it's from the perspective of the boy who was himself never quite good enough to make the team. (One essay does cover a period of time when he became expert at ping pong, beating all and sundry until he advanced to the next competitive level of tournament play and found he could barely score. There is in that essay something of the cockiness and sureness that comes of playing with confidence, a sense of mastery and youthful invincibility.)

There is in another essay a roll call of authors and works about baseball that cites the Ring Lardner, Mark Harris, Robert Coover (author of the incomparable metafictional The Universal Baseball Association: Henry J. Waugh, Proprietor), and even Philip Roth (and of course there are the appreciators: Grantland Rice, Tom Boswell, Roger Kahn, Roger Angell, et al.).

So, while Hall didn't quite write the book I wanted him to, but it's still entertaining (and nostalgic), if you like baseball and basketball, vintage 70s and early 80s, when he was doing most of his work.