Elements of Hitting: A Baseball Novel

Walter Innis, the son of a violent ex-baseball star and an unhappy, unfaithful woman, finds an escape from and a new understanding of his dysfunctional past when he takes over as a Little League baseball coach. By the author of The Cooter Farm.

The protagonist of this ultimately disappointing novel is Walter Innis, pushing 40, the son of Victor, a former pitching phenom who blew out his arm just before being called up to the majors. Chapters alternating between Walter's adult and childhood lives in a small upstate New York town, reveal that he has been permanently scarred by his father's abuse and his mother's suicide, which followed her son's discovery of her infidelity. By 1984, when the book's present-day action occurs, Walter's wife is suing him for divorce; his father is dying in a convalescent home; and he's just lost his job at a used-car dealership. Then, as he hits bottom, he reunites with his high school sweetheart, Jeannie. She's gained quite a few pounds, to be sure, and her young son Billy is a little sullen, but that's okay by Walter. He signs on to coach Billy's Little League team and soon is sufficiently recovered to hatch a plot to blackmail the rich local politician he's always blamed for his mother's death. Though this is only his second novel, Jones ( The Cooter Farm ) has already achieved a mature style, entertaining and full of nuance. Unfortunately, his themes aren't always as well developed as his prose; the title's implied connection between physical abuse and batting is particularly trite.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Baseball provides a metaphor for playing--and winning--the game of life in a new novel by the author of The Cooter Farm (1992). Jones packs plenty of humor, pathos and plot into a story that literally ends with a bang. Back in 1962, Susan Innis was found drowned near the home of her employer, Henry Truxton III. Twenty-two years later, Truxton is still around: a millionaire playboy, candidate for the state senate, pornographer, and, Susan's son Walter believes, possibly a murderer. In a narrative that alternates between Walter's first- person recollections of his childhood and a third-person account of his present life, the soon-to-be-divorced, currently jobless used- car salesman plots a revenge that he can lay at the feet of his dying father Vic, a one-time minor league pitcher he doesn't even love. A breech-birth baby, Walter seems to have been going through life ``ass first'' ever since. But now, as he schemes to blackmail Truxton, he comes in contact with a group of people who might just improve the odds of his ever achieving happiness, including Jeannie Weatherrup, a widow who loves pancakes smothered with butter and maple syrup and has the abundant flesh to prove it, and Maurie Winthrop, boyhood friend and sleazy lawyer, who helps Walter forgo extortion and find his moral being. Jones has a wonderful way with words; his prose is ironic, funny and at the same time moving as he explores the pain of existence and the sheer necessity of getting on with life. The Truxton plot line fades away rather than coming to an emotionally satisfying conclusion, but Walter gains a few insights in a final ballpark apotheosis before being cracked over the head by an angry Little Leaguer. Flawed, but personable and engaging--not bad for the second time at bat. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Not another baseball novel in which fathers and sons play catch! We know the drill by heart: Pop and Junior can't communicate until one day Pop suggests having a catch; before you can say field of dreams, they're pals. Jones' second novel, following the well-received Cooter Farm (1992), comes perilously close to regurgitating this weary formula, but finally, there is just too much bitterness here for even bats and balls to surmount. Narrator Walter Innis is a fortysomething underachiever still struggling to come to terms with a classic bad childhood: Dad was a phenom fastballer who threw out his arm and then spent the next few decades beating his wife, who, in turn, took out her frustrations in a tawdry affair. Yes, father and son played a little catch but not enough. Now Walter has another chance: he's met a widow whose son needs help getting around on the fastball. But Jones won't let Walter or the reader off quite so easily; just when we expect Bad News Bears, we get blindsided. The undercutting of formula is effective, but Jones never really goes much beyond that. Still, it's good to be reminded that meaning rarely comes easily, no matter how much catch you play. Bill Ott

When Walter Innes's wife leaves him, he impulsively quits his despised job as a used car salesman. Walter needs to reevaluate his life. In alternate chapters, he reviews his childhood and the relationship as he then understood it between his loutish father and his beautiful, unfaithful mother. The interposed chapters, written in the third person, describe Walter's current life, which involves courting a new lady friend and coaching Little League. These shifting viewpoints, plus a slow start, mar Jones's ( The Cooter Farm , LJ 1/92) attempt to capture our attention; the use of baseball as a metaphor for Life is certainly a well-used device, no more than averagely successful here. An interesting but not vital purchase.
- Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.