Perfect, Once Removed: When Baseball Was All the World to Me

I loved, loved, loved this book! I read it in one day, breaking only for dinner - which is a rare thing for me. Hoose's childhood baseball memories jibed with my own in so many ways - and as a reviewer noted above, without resorting to cliches. I may have been a girl born a decade later than the author, but I could relate completely in my own love for the game. (There was a bonus waiting for me in the appearance of his daughters later in the book, much to my delight. It has to do with my own favorite team, and a little bit of irony that followers of that team esp. can appreciate.) This true story could have written itself, it's got so many great elements, but thankfully for us, Hoose is a gifted writer with a unique and engaging voice that he employs to personalize one of the greatest baseball stories ever - Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Hoose interweaves his "Christmas Story"-like Indiana childhood with his discovery of and all-consuming passion for baseball - which reaches fever pitch when his parents drop a bombshell on him one day - that he's related to N.Y. Yankee Don Larsen - his cousin "once removed" - one year before Larsen's perfect game. How many people get to revel in the reflected glory of a cousin's immortal baseball achievement at the age when that matters so much? The answer is one, and luckily for us, he lets us in on the experience. Unlike one of the above reviewers who thought the book bogged down with the story as seen from his recent adult years, I have to say I loved that part, too - it's absolutely amazing in this day of endless replays that no full visual record of Larsen's game exists, and it's quite poignant when Hoose goes in search of one. His ultimate piecing together of the game itself, via the audiotapes left to history, is priceless, and his story of a recent visit to Larsen is, as with the rest of the book, so human. He also offers an inside take on Larsen the man that's unavailable to the average baseball fan - and the average writer, for that matter. Also, anyone who loves baseball and yet sometimes tires of the Bill Jamesian analyses of the game these days should be able to appreciate the magic of Larsen's feat, which nothing that came before could have predicted. (If James is your thing, go for it - but I suspect any statistician would cry, "The sampling's too small!") Actually, the sharpest, most wizened old scout couldn't possibly have fared any better - Larsen and that game simply came out of nowhere to stand alongside other larger-than-life baseball moments like Ruth's called shot, Gehrig's farewell speech, Willie Mays' "The Catch" and Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World." As Hoose's beloved Sporting News might have said, the book's a true four-bagger that rockets out of the park - and lands right in the reader's heart. The baseball gods are most surely applauding.

Phil Hoose has captured perfectly the memories of a awkward young boy in Indiana in the 1950s stuggling for acceptance in a new school. This small book skillfully weaves the story of baseball's grip on Hoose's young imagination together with the unique setting of Speedway, Indiana. It tells the story of how the game of baseball became his ticket to self-awareness, acceptance and personal identity. The major development is the discovery that he is directly related to the famous Yankee pitcher, Don Larsen. One can only imagine the impact this must have had on a young man already obsessed with the world of baseball. His description of how he learns of his relationship with Don Larsen and Larsen's subsequent interest in Hoose's budding baseball career is truly magical. Especially gripping is how he describes the building tension among the announcers and fans of the actual game, inning by inning, in which Don Larsen tossed his no-hitter in the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. I fully enjoyed this book from beginning to end and found it well-paced with a developing story line that made it impossible to put down.

Phillip Hoose has written a nicely crafted story of life in 1956 through his eyes as a nine year old boy. Anyone who ever felt like an awkward kid looking for peer acceptance will love this story of moving to a new town, finding out you are related to a famous baseball player, and basking in the glory of that relative's record setting performance in the 1956 World Series. Hoose's ability to paint a word picture ranks with Bill Bryson's colorful descriptions. Excellent reading guaranteed to provoke childhood memories.

Phillip Hoose remembers just about everything about growing up in Speedway, Indiana, during the height of the 1950s. In fact the clarity of his recollection is suspiciously clear, unless he remembers every schoolyard insult with Sony Trinitron transparency. But I think creative nonfiction has reached a point where we give our authors a lot of rope, and let them make up dozens of re-imagined conversations without doubting the substance overmuch. In young Hoose's case, he was a chubby little bespectacled kid with a passion for baseball that didn't cut him much ice when his father's job caused the family to movie to Speedway. But his stock rose dramatically when his dad revealed that Don Larsen, the Yankees pitcher, was a first cousin. Larsen was an unlikely hero in many ways, for his record was wildly erratic and he lost as many games than he won, but evidently he inspired a lot of affection among the Yankees of the day, a powerhouse club that employed Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, many other legends. And when little Phillip got to go to Chicago and meet the Yankees in person after a game, his stock at school rose even higher, especially when he showed off the autograph of Mickey Mantle himself. Mantle comes across as a morose, grumpy, almost malicious outlaw, whom his teammates treated with kid gloves. Very unpleasant! I guess this eventually led to the crisis in American masculinity as boys were trained to emulate Mantle's sporting prowess but there wasn't very much left over to admire: his sullen art--his undisclosed anger--his drinking to escape or whatever. In contrast, Don Larsen, still alive as he approaches 80, seems veery much a man of the people. Then as Phillip follows the 1956 world series, a subway series between Brooklyn and the Bronx, an astonishing thing happens and Don Larsen pitches his famous "perfect game." There had been "perfect games" before and since, but Hoose convincingly argues that, in terms of importance and in terms of the batters faced, the October 8, 1956 game was far and away the "most perfect." It's a book to bring tears to the eyes of anyone who loves baseball. And even if you don't love the game, you'll love Phillip, his family, his town and his cousin "once removed."

Perfect, Once Removed, by Phillip Hoose is a delightful book, both because of what it is, and what it's not, and because it far transcends being just another book about baseball. Given its premise, it could easily have been a self-indulgent descent into banal baby-boomer nostalgia. To his credit, Hoose steers well clear of that, and in doing so he tells the story - his story - in a manner that's far more meaningful than a trite trip down memory lane. The plot is simple and straightforward. Better still, it's entirely true. A very young boy (a geek for the most part, but interesting and likable nonetheless) moves to Speedway, Indiana - just outside of Indianapolis - in early 1956 and tries to fit in as best he can. He latches onto baseball as a "raison d'être," but (given his rather "bookish bent") he enjoys less than limited success on the playing field. Nevertheless, he doesn't give up, and although he's unable to manage even one base hit in his entire first season of organized baseball, he becomes a virtual encyclopedia of baseball knowledge by immersing himself in the baseball periodicals of the day. As the story unfolds, Hoose - with no apparent plan or design - uses baseball to connect with the immediate world around him. Then, like finding a $100 bill on the sidewalk, he discovers that he's connected (by blood, no less) to a starting pitcher for the legendary New York Yankees. Don Larsen (the Don Larsen) is his cousin, albeit once removed. That - in turn - connects him to a world far beyond grade school in mid 20th century middle-class middle America - a world of glory, glamour, fame and celebrity. And as if that weren't enough, cousin Don proceeds to pull off a feat that connects him, and everyone who feels a connection with baseball, with something singularly historic, epic, extraordinary and grand: He pitches the one and only "perfect game" in the history of the World Series against the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers. Thus, heaven becomes manifest for the young Mr. Hoose. Like they say, you can't make up stuff like this. It's hard not to love this unpretentious little book because it succeeds so well on so many different levels, but the best part is its spiritual underpinnings: Without being obvious or heavy-handed in doing so, it makes you think about and appreciate the connections that we all have to our childhood, our families and friends, and how we are all connected to where and when we grew up and all the countless things that have happened to us over the course of time, and all the people whose paths we have crossed. All told, this is a great book - pure and simple - because it's a terrific story, well told. At the same time, there is no way to read it without connecting to your personal sense of your own past, who you are and how you are connected to the world around you in countless ways, big and small, whether you're young with virtually all of your future before you, waiting to happen, like the book's young and innocent pr