Title/Author:
“The Call: A Baseball Novel” by Laurie Boris
Tags:
Baseball, fiction, drama, umpires, women
Publish date:
August 21,
2017
Length:
300 pages
Rating:
4 of 5 stars (very good)
Review:
Margie Oblonsky has
dreams of following her father and twin brother into a baseball career. However, she is going in a different
direction and goes to umpire school. She
graduates second in her class and works in the minor leagues. What she encounters in these games and the
situations she faces are told in this entertaining novel by Laurie Boris.Margie and her twin brother Tim, a pitcher in the Cincinnati Reds organization, both begin their trek toward the majors around the same time, but Tim, as a third round draft choice, gets called to the show much quicker than Margie. She had encountered hostile umpiring partners; including one who helped instigate a brawl in a game that they worked. The brawl was part of a cover-up for something even darker, in which Margie and a reporter who was writing about her had to look out for their safety.
Set in the early 1980’s,
the novel read a bit choppy for me, but the stories of Margie, Tim and his best
friend Dan are easy to follow and engrossing.
There is a love interest in the book as after Margie ejects Dan from a
game, he asks her to dinner afterward and from there they start a slow but
steady romance. Unlike some romances in
otherwise “straight” sports fiction, this one becomes a key part of the story
instead of a distraction.
The baseball scenes
are well-written and realistic – everything from Margie’s experience in school
to Tim’s pitching in the major leagues. The
reader will feel like he or she is either behind the plate or working with
Margie on the bases with the details.
The less glamorous parts of the job, such as the long travel, “crappy
motels”, and monotonous paperwork when players are ejected, are covered as
well. In the acknowledgments, Boris
thanks Perry Barber, one of the first female umpires in professional baseball,
for her assistance. That kind of information proved to be very valuable for
this book as it made the story much more realistic.
Many topics about the
sport of baseball are covered – the drug abuse that was prevalent in that time
period, the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the atmosphere in the locker
rooms of both players and umpires and bureaucracy that both players and umpires
face in order to advance are all illustrated throughout the story. The evaluations that umpires must have in
order to move up to higher leagues is very well covered and makes the reader
relate to Margie’s struggles to advance.
Even scenes with fans are written well, such as the cute scene when two
little girls ask Margie for her autograph because they recognize her as an
umpire. It is made even better when she
tells the girls to keep the thumb inside the fist when making an “out” call,
one of Margie’s early lessons. This is
an entertaining novel in which all of the main characters are realistic and
easy to cheer for and is recommended reading for all baseball fans.
I wish to thank the
Ms. Boris for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format Read:
E-book (EPUB)
Buying Links:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074KS2BZ8/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B074KS2BZ8&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
