switch-pitchers

Reviewed by Don Johnson, East Tennessee State University

18 February 2011 archive

Switch-Pitchers

In the first article I published on sport in literature, I made the assertion that most sport literature succeeded in direct proportion to the amount of attention it gave to characters and situations outside the field, the court, or ring. I have since written about a good deal of sport fiction and poetry that violates my dictum, and Norman German in his novel, Switch Pitchers, demonstrates that it is utterly without value.

Switch Pitchers takes place mostly on the field and in the dugout of the Lake Charles Lunkers of the Class Double A Gulf Coast League in 1952. Its protagonist is Bobby German, the Lunkers ace southpaw fastballer, who is slowing down as the result of normal aging and the effects of a shoulder injury suffered in a bar fight. But the '52 season finds Bobby showing flashes of his old brilliance, generating some expectation that his rediscovered "Little Rock fastball" might elevate him to Triple A ball for one more season.

Bobby's desire for one more good season drives Switch Pitchers, and makes the day-to-day outcomes of the Lunkers games worth following. Norman German (the author) knows baseball, and, as the back cover blurb by Mike Fontenot asserts, "the texture of the game feels real" in the novel. The reader comes to understand the close relationship between Bobby and his catcher, also the manager of the Lunkers, Harry Chozen. He feels the heat and humidity, the dust, and rain showers that are so much a part of the Gulf Coast League experience. He participates in the dugout high jinks and pranks perpetrated by the Lunkers players. So much of the novel is devoted to these at-the-park experiences!

But Bobby is more than just a mirror for the author's reflections about minor league ball in the early fifties. He's no philosopher, but he is a thinker, and a good deal of the "off-the-field" portion of the novel is taken up with Bobby's ruminations about life, love, baseball, and his place in the scheme of things. In fact, Bobby's two visits to the unfinished Calcasieu River Bridge near Lake Charles punctuate the story. The first shows him pitching three baseballs off the uncompleted span just to see how far they will travel, but in the process, he demonstrates that he still can throw that "hornet hum" fastball that earned him a spot in Triple A ball. During the second visit, he speculates on the smallness of his world and his place in it. He wonders if one could survive a 200 foot fall from the uncompleted structure, then steps up and leans out into space, holding tightly onto the supporting struts. The stance is informed by neither adolescent bravado nor self-pitying Weltschmerz. Instead, it reflects Bobby's mature recognition that his vantage point on the bridge will likely be the highest mark he will achieve in life. As a gesture of finality he places his lucky rabbit's foot on the railing of the bridge, flicks it off, and watches it disappear "into the void below."

Despite baseball's domination of the novel, for me, its most compelling action takes place, not on the baseball diamond, but in the waters below the Calcasieu River Bridge. As he is about to set out for a day of fishing, Bobby befriends a young black boy at the boat launch and offers to take him out. The young man is quick on the uptake and soon begins to adopt the sophisticated language of the white ruling class. Taking his cue from the boy, Darnell, Bobby, who has introduced himself as "Mr. Troutman," affects the local black dialect. They continue with this charade throughout the day, during which Bobby teaches Darnell to cast, and eventually how to operate the outboard motor. Only after they have returned to the boat launch and trailered the boat, does Darnell admit that he had recognized the pitcher when they first met: "You didn't fool me with the Mr. Troutman stuff," the young man says. He also reveals that he knows about Bobby's shoulder problem and advises the pitcher not to "hold back." As Bobby pulls away from river, he flicks his Lucky Strike out the window and watches as Darnell picks it up and takes a drag, after having refused one earlier in the boat, saying he was a "Pall Mall man." When Bobby comments about this earlier claim, Darnell not only slips back into his own dialect, he lays it on thick, drawling, "Well, you knows us black folkses, Mista Bobby. We jes takes what we's can get."

The comment one-ups anything that Bobby dealt out during the entire fishing trip and puts a cap on Darnell's deft handling of the situation. In another writer's hands, it might have come across as condescending, but German (Norman) handles it with sensitivity and understanding. (The novel is dedicated to "Darnell.") He knows fifties racial relations as well as he knows baseball.

The two areas of expertise blend, in fact, in German's treatment of the club's reception of two black Cuban players, assigned to the Lunkers roster by the parent club, the Boston Braves. The Cubans are twins, both pitchers, who provide much of the comedy as well as its mystery. They also are responsible for its title, since both can pitch with either hand. German introduced the novel at an SLA meeting at Iowa State several years ago by commenting that either of them could pitch seven innings with one hand, "then relieve himself with the other."

Switch Pitchers is not the stock sports novel in which the rag-tag bunch of has-beens and aspiring youngsters, after overcoming all the usual obstacles, become a cohesive unit and win the league championship. The Lunkers win some and lose some. Bobby and the other major characters win some and lose some. But the novel itself is a sure-fire winner.

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