Squeeze Play

Baseball is back in Washington--at least, it is fictionally--in Leavy's uproarious and surprisingly touching novel about the Senators' resurrection as a Major League--sort of--club. In their woeful inaugural season of 1989, they are covered by Ariandne Bloom (A.B.) Berkowitz, a young sportswriter who, in the course of a summer, tries to square her idyllic childhood illusions about baseball with the clownish, raunchy, unheroic version she confronts in real life. Anna Fields voices a sassy, plucky heroine full of moxie and good intentions. Fields is also mainly--though not universally--convincing with the cavalcade of oddballs, lowlifes, and boobs who occupy both locker room and the newsroom in Leavy's rollicking satire. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

March 1, 1990
Leavy's hilarious debut about a female sportswriter's tribulations covering an expansion baseball team's first year is a strong early candidate for MVP of the 1990 sports novel season. A. B. (Ariadne Bloom) Berkowitz's troubles begin with a fundamental crisis (``alone with a locker room full of naked men I did not know'') and get rapidly worse. The team, the Washington Senators, is horrible, and while its corrupt televangelist owner soon forbids the players to talk to A.B., they continue to attempt to gross her out at every opportunity. Her editor demands headlines, no matter at whose cost, her boyfriend finds solace in the arms of a young copy aide, and her best source on the team--an aging All-Star catcher--is becoming romantically interested. As raunchy as stories by Dan Jenkins and Peter Gent, as authentic as exposes by Jim Bouton and Jim Brosnin, this tale by a former sportswriter for the Washington Post will delight readers willing to accept a healthy dose of vulgarity with their humor, especially those who know and love the rhythms and complexities of the national pastime.