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A review by morgob
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
5.0
I loved this book. It was recommended to me by a dear friend of mine named Zach, who said I would get a lot out of it right now, and I did. This book is about baseball, which is not really something I enjoy, but it is about so much more than that. The premise is this star athlete named Henry is an outstanding shortstop and is expected to become a professional athlete, and then he makes a huge mistake that totally throws him off (no pun intended). His confidence is completely shattered and he starts playing horribly, and basically his entire life spirals out of control.
One of the things I liked best about this book is I could relate to two of the characters a bit, Henry and Schwartz. College athletics is something else. Especially if you run or play D3. You're not being paid to be there, there are no scholarships for that, you're doing it because you are committed to the sport. And, if you are like me, you end up being committed to the team and to making yourself an overall better person. That is collegiate athletics. It is also the intense grind, the getting up before the sun rises to do a workout or a double, to spend extra time in the weight room to get stronger. In college athletics, you have at least 3 hours set out for you to just focus on your sport every day. My favorite times used to be preseason and the very end of the year, after classes ended and track was still going for another week. I absolutely loved that time because there was nothing but running. I could do two or three runs or workouts a day and just feel like a total badass. There was nothing in my life that mattered except running and putting the work in.
Anyway, a lot of the reason I liked this book so much is because it reminded me of Cornell and being on the team. It made me miss it so much. I miss the team, the intensity, hurting every step across campus, putting miles upon miles under my belt each week. I miss all of that. This book spurned me on to set up a new plan for my running that I will stick to. It's like how I read one book every summer about running at a specific point when motivation is low, just to get myself moving and inspired again. This was that book for me.
It was a sad book, don't get me wrong. It was horribly sad. There's death and failure and mental health problems. I didn't actually dislike any of the characters, though. They were people and they were flawed, but I loved all of them. I wanted so badly for things to go well for them, even President Affenlight, though I really didn't like him for most of the book. Overall, this book is about life and failure. It took me a long time to have confidence in myself. I still don't have it mastered completely. But that is one of my greatest achievements of college. It's about failure and having the courage to try again. Overcoming mental barriers to achieve personal excellence.
I think this was exactly the right time for me to read this. I have said goodbye to college and am moving on. I've gone through struggles similar to Henry's. Instead of an error in a game, it was a bad race. Instead of not eating because he just wants to let go, I wasn't eating because I thought it made me faster. I just loved this book because of how much I could relate to it, and how it talks about college and collegiate athletics, and a little bit of what happens after. That was always such a big question on my mind the past few years: what happens when it's over? How do you move on from college athletics, when you're no longer on a team? I'm working through those things, becoming my own coach.
Anyway, the last thing I want to say is that I loved the ending. I saw some people asking questions about it and getting angry because of it, and I wanted to offer my own opinion. This was a lot longer than I wanted it to be, but those are my thoughts.
One of the things I liked best about this book is I could relate to two of the characters a bit, Henry and Schwartz. College athletics is something else. Especially if you run or play D3. You're not being paid to be there, there are no scholarships for that, you're doing it because you are committed to the sport. And, if you are like me, you end up being committed to the team and to making yourself an overall better person. That is collegiate athletics. It is also the intense grind, the getting up before the sun rises to do a workout or a double, to spend extra time in the weight room to get stronger. In college athletics, you have at least 3 hours set out for you to just focus on your sport every day. My favorite times used to be preseason and the very end of the year, after classes ended and track was still going for another week. I absolutely loved that time because there was nothing but running. I could do two or three runs or workouts a day and just feel like a total badass. There was nothing in my life that mattered except running and putting the work in.
Anyway, a lot of the reason I liked this book so much is because it reminded me of Cornell and being on the team. It made me miss it so much. I miss the team, the intensity, hurting every step across campus, putting miles upon miles under my belt each week. I miss all of that. This book spurned me on to set up a new plan for my running that I will stick to. It's like how I read one book every summer about running at a specific point when motivation is low, just to get myself moving and inspired again. This was that book for me.
It was a sad book, don't get me wrong. It was horribly sad. There's death and failure and mental health problems. I didn't actually dislike any of the characters, though. They were people and they were flawed, but I loved all of them. I wanted so badly for things to go well for them, even President Affenlight, though I really didn't like him for most of the book. Overall, this book is about life and failure. It took me a long time to have confidence in myself. I still don't have it mastered completely. But that is one of my greatest achievements of college. It's about failure and having the courage to try again. Overcoming mental barriers to achieve personal excellence.
I think this was exactly the right time for me to read this. I have said goodbye to college and am moving on. I've gone through struggles similar to Henry's. Instead of an error in a game, it was a bad race. Instead of not eating because he just wants to let go, I wasn't eating because I thought it made me faster. I just loved this book because of how much I could relate to it, and how it talks about college and collegiate athletics, and a little bit of what happens after. That was always such a big question on my mind the past few years: what happens when it's over? How do you move on from college athletics, when you're no longer on a team? I'm working through those things, becoming my own coach.
Anyway, the last thing I want to say is that I loved the ending. I saw some people asking questions about it and getting angry because of it, and I wanted to offer my own opinion.