Review: A Delightfully Vivid Baseball Tale
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 28, 2014
I really enjoyed this book. It reads as a Young Adult novel about high school baseball, but I think any baseball fan of any age would enjoy it.  Obviously written by someone who loves and pays super close attention to the game, The Quadruple Play combines a plot about a rag tag high school baseball team making good, intense, descriptive and really effective "you are right there on the field" baseball action, teenage romance, high school craziness, and some  meningitis induced mystical baseball powers, to produce a thoroughly gripping, very warm hearted book.Following the travails of "Lucky" Devon, the weakest member of the team as he is first bullied off the team (by the strongest member), falls in love with the bully's girlfriend, demonstrates major guts in the face of humiliation and physical violence and then is taken under the wing of a new coach, I really like that Tarnavsky is interested in the character it takes to be a great ball player. Lucky's nemesis, Cass, is naturally talented, competitive to the nth degree, and the kind of hostile jock high school kids live in fear of. Lucky, however, is recognized for his great attitude and heart, and when he gains sudden skills and abilities, it's impossible not to root for him, even as it exposes how asinine the talented Cass is - he has everything, except character, which couldn't be more prescient right now. I'm not sure Tarnavsky really has to give a scientific context for the new abilities - the novel would work just as well if treated as slipstream or magical realism, and I found the prologue and epilogue a little confusing - is the author also making a point about the press seeing and representing things one way, while on the inside things operate very differently?  It seemed a little disorienting in comparison to the close up, vividness of the rest of the novel.  Overall, however, a cracking little book, and well worth the read.