Books in Brief: It Looked like for Ever

It Looked like for Ever, by Mark Harris (McGraw-Hill, 276 pp., $9.95). Mark Harris’s considerable achievement is that he has improved upon Ring Lardner’s Jack Keefe, hero of the baseball classic You Know Me Al. His creation is Henry Wiggen, who has endured and prospered over four books: The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly, A Ticket for a Seam-stitch, and the present volume. Like Keefe, Wiggen is a pitcher. Like Keefe, Wiggen writes in a kind of illiterate dialect, one of his rules of writing being, “If you do not know how to spell a word make your very best guess at it.” Unlike Keefe, Wiggen has a great deal of native intelligence, and is genuinely likable. Henry Wiggen’s considerable achievement is a 19-year career as the ace pitcher of the New York Mammoths, ranking as the 27th winningest pitcher in baseball. He is, thus, a legend. The last Wiggen book appeared over twenty years ago, so he fills us in on the past two decades and recounts his comeback bid after his release at age 39. He is doing it all for love of the game; and despite doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, politicians, recalcitrant managers, friends, a troublesome prostate, and no fastball, Wiggen prevails—at least for a little while. The Wiggen books are to baseball what The Front Page is to journalism: a definition, and a glorification. Henry Wiggen is always welcome. Next stop, Cooperstown.

JM

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Joe Mysak

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It Looked like for Ever, by Mark Harris (McGraw-Hill, 276 pp., $9.95). Mark Harris’s considerable achievement is that he has improved upon Ring Lardner’s Jack Keefe, hero of the baseball classic You Know Me Al. His creation is Henry Wiggen, who has endured and prospered over four books: The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly, A Ticket for a Seam-stitch, and the present volume. Like Keefe, Wiggen is a pitcher. Like Keefe, Wiggen writes in a kind of illiterate dialect, one of his rules of writing being, “If you do not know how to spell a word make your very best guess at it.” Unlike Keefe, Wiggen has a great deal of native intelligence, and is genuinely likable. Henry Wiggen’s considerable achievement is a 19-year career as the ace pitcher of the New York Mammoths, ranking as the 27th winningest pitcher in baseball. He is, thus, a legend. The last Wiggen book appeared over twenty years ago, so he fills us in on the past two decades and recounts his comeback bid after his release at age 39. He is doing it all for love of the game; and despite doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, politicians, recalcitrant managers, friends, a troublesome prostate, and no fastball, Wiggen prevails—at least for a little while. The Wiggen books are to baseball what The Front Page is to journalism: a definition, and a glorification. Henry Wiggen is always welcome. Next stop, Cooperstown.