The Smile On Happy Chang’s Face by Tom Perrotta, 2005
The magic trick:
Using the structure of a baseball game to parse out the necessary backstory
Let’s celebrate the start of baseball season. It is maybe a dying sport. At the very least, it no longer maintains the national profile it held when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. It’s still very popular locally, though. At least that’s what I hear. As a Cincinnati Reds fan, there hasn’t been much to get excited about locally or otherwise since maybe 1995. But that’s OK. It’s still a rite of spring. Opening Day! Peanuts and cracker jacks and all that.
So here is a story about New Jersey Little League from Mr. Tom Perrotta.
The story – as I suppose all stories do – has to balance backstory with the live action of its plot. This story has a lot of backstory as we learn about the narrator’s family history and a lot of history about the key coaches and players in the Little League championship game he is umpiring.
And it’s that Little League championship game that provides the story with a neat structure. We’re able to track the action – and get all the necessary backstory – through the entire game. First inning to the very last (and a little bit strange) pitch.
And that’s quite a trick on Perrotta’s part.
The selection:
“Just settle down,” Santelli told her. “Strike this guy out and we can all go home.”
Lori nodded skeptically and got herself set on the mound. Mark Diedrich greeted me with a polite nod as he stepped into the batter’s box. He was a nice kid, a former preschool classmate of my youngest daughter.
“I wish I was home in bed,” he told me.
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