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A review by remlezar
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens
3.0
A solid 3+ out of 5. I appreciate what this book does, which is to paint a picture of the incredibly unglamorous side of professional baseball. Nemens does this by giving you brief glimpses into a large number of characters who occasionally bump into each other: the star player, the groupie, the washed up batting coach, the struggling rookie, the big money agent. Through these glimpses you end up with both the big and small picture of what life is like as someone whose life revolves, in one way or another, around America's Pastime. Think less "Field of Dreams" and more "The Florida Project," generally speaking.
My main issue is that I felt like a lot of the characters, who I mostly found interesting, ended up underserved by the book as a whole. I guess what I really wanted was to live with some of them much more, as opposed to just popping in here and there for a day-in-the-life and then only seeing them in passing for the rest of the book. I could have lived here for twice the number of pages, and I think I would have walked away with something more emotionally rewarding.
My main issue is that I felt like a lot of the characters, who I mostly found interesting, ended up underserved by the book as a whole. I guess what I really wanted was to live with some of them much more, as opposed to just popping in here and there for a day-in-the-life and then only seeing them in passing for the rest of the book. I could have lived here for twice the number of pages, and I think I would have walked away with something more emotionally rewarding.