http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml
How does Updike manage to impart significance to something as trivial as a baseball game? That is, does he use a particular motif of images? Does he resort to the old reliable of sportswriters: statistics? Is it through exposition? Or some other device or devices?
Your response is due by 4 p.m. Tues., Oct. 8.
11 comments:
Updike manages to impart significance to something as trivial as a baseball game through the comparisons he makes. “He struck the pose of Donatello’s David, the third-base bag being Goliath’s head” Here, Updike is comparing Ted Williams to be god-like through a motif of images. Updike does resort to using statistics like many sports writers do. He introduces statistics into this piece through the use of exposition. This was important for Updike to do because it provides background information of how good a player Ted Williams was.
Updike humanizes a celebrity, which is incredibly significant. Instead of relaying detail after detail about Williams' background and statistical record - which, as any sport writer, he does briefly share - Updike prefers to use the scene to expand upon the baseball player's career. He begins his story emphasizing Williams' mediocrity, hinting that he will be an underdog rising to triumph, to get the audience subconsciously rooting for Williams.
Updike mentions age a lot throughout the piece. Whether it be the crowd describing Williams as "an old hawk" or the "young-old man" sitting near him in the bleachers. It is as though Williams defied the rules of age when he played, as his game bettered with age.
Updike uses the "warrior" motif when depicting Williams. The first mention of it is in the fourth graf when he says "[Williams] slumped to .356 in 1942 and went off to war", already setting a mediocre player up for significance at the end. Everything Williams does on the field, such as when "he lost two wars", is subtly heroic. Updike ends the piece by describing his feelings as "wanting to get out before the castle collpases". Again, he has an allusion to war as Williams' last moment on the battlefield brought the event to an end.
A baseball player, and one who began exceptionally insignificantly, rises to triumph like a war hero.
The middle to end of the article is where the significance of the game comes out. The beginning stats I suppose serve the purpose of illustrating where the end of the article will take us.
The build up of Williams' last time at bat carries the most significance. It built up the tension that is so crucial in a good sporting event. The stats in the beginning served to show why this game is important. Then the description of the spectators convey the mood of the day. But the paragraphs where you anxiously read on to see if this sports legend will go out with a bang are the most powerful. Then the way he reacts to his home run and to his last time on the field really capture his character as described in the beginning in a nutshell.
Updike uses the raw reactions of Sox fans to Ted Williams' final day at Fenway to make baseball more than just a game. The significance Updike creates comes from memories. The big motifs in this story are memories, "shared memories." From the Jason - Achilles - Nestor images to the images of a sloppy, old, ugly Williams. These all have a subtle yearning for the past, just like the headline that asked "WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT TED?"
Supporting the underlying nostalgia, Updike uses a blend of statistics and imagery to retell William's career, his highs and his lows, and when things were looking terrible. He talks like a Sox fan, about how most of the team at the time was "a jangling medley of incompetent youth and aging competence." Just like Williams, it looked like the Sox were retiring too.
Within the statistics are many references to battle and war. Updike gives baseball the face of war when he calls the Yankees the Trojans, or how he says "Cobb , for average, and Ruth, for power, remain supreme." Williams is called gallant for choosing Boston over New York or another city. This gives the game of baseball a gun-ho aspect, a tragic undertone to national past-time.
And to further the tragedy of it, the doom and gloom setting of the game, with the grayness of the Orioles and Williams himself, points to where conflict and war can lead. The game itself is the result of all that bravado. The Red Sox represent life, bright and red, blood flowing. The Orioles represent where life will end, grey and gloomy, having the Sox "festering like maggots."
This story is about more than baseball, and it's about more than just Williams. This story uses the game to talk of fate, of grace under pressure. This is about accepting reality. And eventually, we will all have to do the hardest thing that Williams did: "Quit."
Updike manages to impart significance to baseball and his relationship with it by not referring to baseball as simply a sport, but using organization and language throughout the piece to illustrate that baseball in this city is a living, breathing being that affects its inhabitants.
Updike’s use of short stories separates the different ideas and points he wishes to make in a way that expresses the longevity of the relationship he has with baseball. He takes these snapshots of experiences or occurrences in history and retells them in a way that creates long, complex sentences with flowery and heavily descriptive words. In doing so, he is describing these athletes and the sport they play in a way that many people do not experience it – in a way that creates the players into characters in a bigger story, the story of baseball as it is seen in Updike’s mind. This allows the reader, who may not understand or care about baseball, to be engulfed into this world.
“The crowd looked less like a weekday ballpark crowd than like the folks you might find in Yellowstone National Park, or emerging from automobiles at the top of scenic Mount Mansfield. There were a lot of competitively well-dressed couples of tourist age, and not a few babes in arms.” Updike says a lot about the significance baseball holds to the characters in the piece who are a part of this baseball culture not through directly saying it, but through description and their comparisons to other known images the reader may already hold.
Updike is able to impart significance to the baseball game by using simile and metaphors to associate the field and players with something of greater importance. "A uniformed groundkeeper was treading the top of this wall, picking batting-practice home runs out of the screen, like a mushroom gatherer seen in Wordsworthian perspective on the verge of a cliff," he writes. Updike takes a routine part of maintaining a baseball field and gives the reader an image of a poetically beautiful cliff edge.
This style of writing is similar to that of "Rodriguez," where Davis imparts benevolence to the character of Rodriguez comparing him to Jesus.
Updike imparts significance to baseball by expressing his own perception of the sport through literary metaphors. Using words like "warrior" when describing Ted Williams shows how Updike perceives one of the great players of baseball -not simply a talented athlete but rather a hero from legend. Even someone not enthusiastic about baseball could read Updike's piece and still feel connected/inspired by Williams' depiction, drawing comparisons to other literary figures of significance. In fact, those not familiar with Williams as the man would be more inclined to extrapolate this symbolism as a means of empathizing with the piece.
Updike adds significance and relevance to something as trivial as professional sports through his amazing use of simile and metaphor. I am not much of a baseball fan, nor am I particularly knowledgeable on the terminology associated with the sport. But I thought this article was extremely well-done and captivating because Updike’s creativity made it so. “Two girls…the other with white skin and flesh-colored hair, like an underdeveloped photograph of a redhead,” and “William’s conversational stance is that of a six-foot-three-inch man under a six-foot ceiling,” were two of the strongest examples of Updike’s masterful used of similies. By far, the most beautiful description for me was of applause: “Just applause – no calling, no whistling, just an ocean of handclaps, minute after minute, burst after burst, crowding and running together in continuous succession like the pushes of surf at the edge of the sand.” The image created by this sentence is clear and immediately understandable, yet the writing itself isn’t complex or to wordy.
Updike also used comparisons to popular references from history and culture today, like in the quotes, “Throughout the late forties, the Red Sox were the best paper team in baseball, yet they had little three-dimensional to show for it, and if this was a tragedy, Williams was Hamlet,” and “Ty Cobb, the Einstein of average…” Because the reader had an immediate reference point and a face or concept to relate to, Updike’s use of well-known people and characters was a successful way of imparting significance to the game of baseball and to Ted William’s story.
John Updike makes sports writing interesting due to the tone he uses. He writes as if he was doing a features story versus hard news. Updike speaks about marriage, and exactly what went into that marriage instead of just mentioning the name of the wife, or ex wife. The woman is not an ex wife only,but a significant part of the players life which is now gone. Updike gives the players voices and shows how they personal the games became to them. Thus, he makes a game or series more then numbers he makes it personal which is why someone like myself would enjoy reading it,who is not into sports, and it becomes literature versus coverage.
The way that Updike worships Williams and celebrates the game of baseball, only to later depict Williams as a very human man and the game as only a game, created a sort of contrast between them that made you realize two extreme perspectives on baseball.
His comparison of the players to celebrated figures like Achilles, Hamlet, and Indian royalty shows the former depiction of the game as something played by Gods.
Then, he introduces the contrast between the players that "sportswriters feed upon" and those who "always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art," effectively switching the readers' perception of them in a single sentence.
From there, he focuses on Ted Williams, portraying him as a God and then as a man, continuing the thematic contrast.
The language, atmosphere, and passion involved in baseball is recognized and embraced by Updike but not necessarily employed. When the crowd stands and applauds Williams, precisely the way ball crowds don't do, he shows a personal intimacy with baseball but instead of focusing on the sport, he focuses on the player, something sportswriters tend to do only using statistics: batting averages, pitches, and scores. He combines both statistics and personality to make the characters seem more real and relatable.
The language he uses to describe Williams, like when his missing swing was "naked in its failure" completed the transition from deity to human.
After that, though, Williams hits the hit of all hits - which Updike compares to the Eiffel Tower and the Tappan Zee - making Williams something superhuman but not quite divine, something manmade but something awe-inspiring: "It was in the books while it was still in the sky."
Following the crowd's hysterical reaction, Williams is again shrunk down to a mere mortal: "our praise was a storm of rain to get out of." His refusal to acknowledge the crowd could've been either heartbreaking or admirable.
When the scholastic sitting behind Updike announces that he wants to leave so he doesn't "spoil it," Updike reflects on the impact Williams' final game had - he could accept it as something blown out of proportion, a mere game not worthy of worship, or he could nurse his childhood adoration of Williams. He ends up doing the latter, deciding his ability to quit only further solidified his reputation as a God walking among men.
I know this is irrelevant, but the one line, "spanked them to the tune of .406 in 1941," was probably one of the cleverest things I've ever read.
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