This Book Will Give You A Stomach Ache (But In A Good Way)

Chad Harbach's novel The Art of Fielding begins as an inspirational under-dog baseball story-- I was especially entertained by the aphoristic writing of the fictitious (but suspiciously resembling Ozzie Smith) short-stop Luis Aparicio in his meditative and eponymous tome The Art of Fielding . . . Aparacio writes like a mix between Gabriella Garcia Marquez and Confucius, and though he is highly abstract, he has supreme influence over the books most enigmatic character-- literal, monosyllabic, and taciturn phenom short-stop Henry Skrimshander . . . but the book takes a dark turn, and I think it will seem even darker for sporting fanatics, as the super-talented, super-dedicated, super-underdog Henry develops a case of the baseball "yips," the strange tic that afflicted Mackey Sasser and Chuck Knoblauch . . . and so other characters in the book make terrible choices-- which I could deal with, we all do it-- but I had a very hard time reading about Henry's disintegration . . . it literally hurt to read about the errors he commits . . . we all dream to have the kind of talent Henry possesses and it's brutally hard to watch it implode: ten PowerBoost shakes out of ten.