The Fifth Season

Starred review from February 15, 2009
A beloved baseball writer ("The Image of Their Greatness") and an accomplished novelist, Honig gives us a lyrical account of growing up in New York City besotted with baseball, his own abbreviated pitching career, and his passion for the greats and near-greats of the game. This nuanced, pitch-perfect memoir will make readers appreciate the nuances and permutations of the game itself. Stats, salary statistics, and free-agent greed are (thankfully) absent, replaced by warm recitations of bygone games and now-departed characters both on the field and off. A rich and engaging book; a keeper for all baseball or memoir collections.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2009
Growing up on Long Island in the late thirties and early forties, Honig had two interests: baseball and writing. In this anecdotal memoir, he describes his failed attempt to play the game professionally (like so many young men, he had the heart but not the arm or the bat). Honig cobbled together a living as a writer, supplemented by various jobs, until, in his forties, an editor suggested a baseball oral history. Its worked out well. Baseball When the Grass Was Real (1975) and The Image of Their Greatness (1984) remain classics of the genre, vivid recountings of the games history in the words and through the eyes of those who played it. In addition to the snippets of autobiography included here, he relates some of the best stories behind the interviews he conducted for the oral histories. Baseball, he notes, is a storytellers game, and he proves equally adept at telling his own tales as well as letting old ballplayers tell theirs. Baseball fansand aspiring writerswill find much of value here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)