{"id":14159,"date":"2011-05-23T23:06:51","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T06:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seamheads.com\/?p=14159"},"modified":"2011-05-24T10:50:08","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T17:50:08","slug":"a-good-pitcher-even-better-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/23\/a-good-pitcher-even-better-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Pitcher, Even Better Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pitching in the Promised Land<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Where would you go to follow your dream?\u00c2\u00a0 Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be nice if the journey took you far away and, at the same time, back home?<\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happened to Aaron Pribble, a lifelong baseball habitu\u00c3\u00a9 whom, by the summer of 2007, realized that having reached the age of 27 and never having played in an upper-echelon minor league, much less the major leagues, that his quest to be the next Sandy Koufax was nearing a disappointing conclusion.\u00c2\u00a0 But then along came the Israel Baseball League and with it a last chance to play baseball at a very competitive level and possibly attract the attention of big league scouts while also opening a door to a cultural journey and spiritual enlightenment.<\/p>\n

It was quite a summer.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pitching in the Promised Land\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is Pribble\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s delightful and instructive memoir of playing in the first and, so far at least, only season of the IBL and it brings us into a universe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rarely explored: the life of professional athletes who live on the fringe of greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 They are the guys who were probably the best player in high school but then were thrust into the dangerous traffic of the big boys and for whatever reason \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not quite enough bat speed, a good but not great arm, warning track power \u00e2\u20ac\u201c keep getting run over.\u00c2\u00a0 They are the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good soldiers; the guys who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make millions and are not idolized yet refuse to deny their love of the game and won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t abandon their pursuit.\u00c2\u00a0 What would baseball be if there weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t thousands of guys toiling in the minors providing competition for the dozens of players who will eventually hit the big time?<\/p>\n

For Pribble, the opportunity to play in the IBL wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just another chance to put real life \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in his case a teaching job \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on hold but was also a path for him to explore his identity and the ageless question of how to bring peace, prosperity, freedom and dignity to all people of the Middle East.\u00c2\u00a0 Pribble brings a unique perspective to this because, foremost, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good writer.\u00c2\u00a0 But Pribble is also half-Jewish or half not-Jewish, depending on your view and, at times, his own.\u00c2\u00a0 When a pitcher is on the mound do we care what his religion or ethnicity is?\u00c2\u00a0 No.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the most admirable qualities of sports is that they suppress, if not outright destroy, preconceptions and prejudices and make performance paramount.\u00c2\u00a0 At least they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to.\u00c2\u00a0 Pribble knows he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just a pitcher, though.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a man trying to rediscover his heritage and determine what his past means for his future.\u00c2\u00a0 In America he is Jewish.\u00c2\u00a0 In Israel he is American.\u00c2\u00a0 On the mound, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a flamethrower.\u00c2\u00a0 But what Pribble never is, is boring.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor is he a victim or a complainer.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a man who realizes the gifts he has and the responsibility they bear and his contemplative journey through the Holy Land and through a challenging season never comes across as being self-serving or over-analyzing.<\/p>\n

Pribble wants our attention but not our sympathy as he searches for identity, love and, sometimes, the strike zone.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, he sits the reader beside him on the mound, in the dugout, and in his mind as he ponders the fascinating history and problematic present of a land that is supposed to be special to God yet is eternally torn apart by men.\u00c2\u00a0 One of his more heart-rending missives comes on page 105 when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s riding the team bus after a defeat \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I noticed the setting sun.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a large bloodred orb, casting a rosy glow on the hills of the West Bank behind us in the distance.\u00c2\u00a0 Rays of light shone through filmy bus windows as the sun neared impact with a looming horizon.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought of the largely impoverished Arabs in the West Bank, of King Solomon and his Israelite progeny.\u00c2\u00a0 Who cared about baseball when this centuries-old conflict was still raging?\u00c2\u00a0 If baseball couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help unite these two lands, what good was it?<\/em><\/p>\n

As introspective and provocative as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pitching in the Promised Land\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is at times it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never preachy and, a great deal of the time, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s damn funny.\u00c2\u00a0 The IBL rosters are full of picaresque baseball lifers from all over the globe.\u00c2\u00a0 They love baseball but also, like all boys, love women, live to razz each other and are quite aware that they are big boys playing a silly game.\u00c2\u00a0 They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re fun.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pitching in the Promised Land\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is, in finality, very much the child of its author because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just one thing.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very much about baseball and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very much about spirituality and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very much about comedy and humility and politics.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the union of all the thoughts that dance through a pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on the mound, of all the fears that hover over people trying to live peacefully with their own identity and of a group of funny guys who never want summer to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pitching in the Promised Land Where would you go to follow your dream?\u00c2\u00a0 Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be nice if the journey took you far away and, at the same time, back home? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happened to Aaron Pribble, a lifelong baseball habitu\u00c3\u00a9 whom, by the summer of 2007, realized that having reached the age of 27 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":768,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,9,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-general","category-minors"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}