The Art of Fielding
A great first novel. Towards the final
few pages: “You told me once that a soul isn't something a person
is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error,
study and love.” Beautiful.
The story is underpinned by a baseball
team's season, and three players. One is gifted enough to make the
team without really trying. One is gifted enough to be a star player,
as long as his dedication to the cause and killing training regime is
maintained at ridiculous levels. One is destined to play the game
professionally, because he's supremely, superhumanly gifted, and also
willing to work as hard as anyone else on the team to improve in all
areas.
Things go right and wrong for the team
and the individuals in and around it. Throughout the book the author
describes sport and training with realism and grit. In any given
changing room, for every nerveless, balls of steel ice in his veins
character, there's two running to and from the toilets before a game,
the guys all too aware that so often a single error decides the
outcome.
It's been one where the 510 pages were
not nearly enough. It goes back to the library tomorrow. Hopefully it
will continue to find fond temporary owners to enjoy it.
No quarter final surprises
Portugal were favourites and they
deserved to go through. I wasn't so sure about their supporter,
interviewed on the radio the next day, claiming that they had proved
that they're not a one man team. There wasn't much proof evident to
suggest that stopping Ronaldo would not thwart Portugal.
Germany powered their way past Greece.
They look energetic, physical and very technically good. They brushed
Greece aside and the 4 – 2 score was not a true reflection of their
superiority, and the second Greece goal was through a sympathy-vote
penalty awarded in the dying minutes.
No surprise in the result between Spain
and France, as Spain were slight favourites to go through. The
surprise was that France didn't bother turning up and were beaten two
– nil by a Spain side that hardly needed to change up from first
gear. They had their slippers on and their cigars lit up from twenty
minutes in when they went a goal ahead.
In the match that was generally
considered too close to call, no surprises either in the result, a
draw after normal time. The surprise was that it wasn't close at all.
England looked like a Sam Alardyce team. A well-drilled, highly
organised, highly competitive team, hardly likely to score from open
play and hoping to get something from set pieces. Add a long-throw
machine, some defenders more intent on committing brutal fouls,
remove nine tenths of Roy Hodgson's brain and give him a baseball
hat, and you have the current Stoke City team. Italy looked very much
the better team. 0-0 full time, 0-0 after extra time, penalties,
exactly according to the predictions. Italy being so much the better
team wasn't foreseen.
The penalties went (Italy first) 1-0,
1-1, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2 (cheeky chip down the middle, now there's nerves
of steel), 2-2 (Young thumps his against the bar), 3-2 (stuttering
run up, into the corner), 3-2 (tame from Ashley Cole, saved by
Buffon), 4-2, and that's that. England cannot feel hard done by,
because football justice has prevailed, albeit by the cruel and
unusual way of the penalty shoot-out.
There's now two days with no football,
which is unjust, unfair, ridiculous and will seem to drag on for ages
and be unbearable. Then it's Portugal Spain in the Iberian derby, and
Germany Italy in the second semi-final. A Germany v Spain final is
probably the most likely and mouthwatering outcome. Nice shot of
Balotelli and Hart at the end of the night. Maybe with the game
finishing after midnight (local time) some of our guys were mentally
already in the nightclub.
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