Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere
Mann, writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa, spent the 2010 baseball season covering the Clinton (Iowa) LumberKings, a lower-level farm team of the Seattle Mariners. Mann could have fallen for the easy, Bull Durham–style clichés of the minor-league game—hard-bitten catcher teaching the ropes to brilliant but raw rookie pitcher; the baseball Annie with a heart of gold—but instead offers an affecting and authentic portrait of the hard times of most minor leaguers set in a shrinking town with hard times of its own. Mann focuses on two LumberKing players, infielder Nick Franklin and pitcher Erasmo Ramirez, with the most potential for catching on with the Big Club (Ramirez, in fact, appeared in 16 games last year with Seattle) and also on those bubble players whose latest bad swing or errant pitch could be their last and the fans who work even harder than the players to preserve the legacy of their beloved LumberKings. Then there’s struggling Clinton itself, rendered in sympathetic but unsparing detail. A surprising book, in the best sense. --Alan Moores