The words “Paris” and “baseball” rarely belong in the same sentence. Emily Nemens, current editor of The Paris Review, has disregarded this in her new book about the goings-on of Arizona’s Major League Baseball spring training, “The Cactus League.”
“The Cactus League” has been branded as a novel, but is really “a series of very cleverly interlinked short stories,” as the New York Times wrote. The book comprises nine parts —”innings” — stories of people whose lives revolve around baseball. Each chapter shows a different perspective into the life of Los Angeles Lions star outfielder Jason Goodyear. Though Goodyear is a seemingly clean-cut star-player, and twice former MVP winner, his extracurricular habits have led him to divorce and psychological peril. For those who are uninitiated to the ways of the MLB off-season, the Cactus League is half of spring training — what pro baseball players begin to do around mid-Feb to prepare for the upcoming spring season. The Cactus League takes place in Arizona, and its sister league, the Grapefruit League, takes place in Florida.
These locations were arguably chosen for their lack of distractions. Unlike the bustling metropolises of San Francisco or New York, Arizona and Florida provide substantially less room for these professional athletes to spend their time doing things other than baseball. But Nemens instead dives into the beauty of the backdrop of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Nemens sets the Southwestern scene as neither idyllic nor lackluster. The characters include a physical therapist, an agent, various players, coaches and locals. Through this variety, the focus shifts away from just the ballplayers, and situates the Cactus League as just one part of a multifaceted society. At some points, it even feels as though baseball and its variously intertwined participants exist in the blurry background, while the landscape of the Scottsdale area exists in focus. One disjointed element of the book is the series of interludes that exist between each one of the book’s innings. These brief interjections, written from the perspective of a washed up sportswriter who has followed baseball for decades, often contain long-winded and less than tactful metaphors about how “everything changes,” or how every pitcher should “imagine an ancient hammerhead” as their manager. This narrator begins as charming, but gets old by about the fourth inning. Also, the book would almost entirely make sense without the interludes; Nemens could very possibly have benefited from exploring that format instead.
Though Nemens has trouble with transitions, the book is smooth and engulfing. It provides enough baseball for fans of the sport to appreciate and enough of the world beyond baseball for everyone else to still feel included. Most strikingly, “The Cactus League” induces a shift in perspective. After reading it, you will likely find new beauty in Scottsdale, Arizona. You might think twice about being rude on the phone in front of your physical therapist. You will realize that professional athletes are much more complex than the spot they fill on the roster.
