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There’s a lot of discussion about how roughly a third of all men don’t read, below the averages for women. I read more than a dozen articles on the subject.
Then I did something radical: I consulted an English teacher for advice.
“What do boys and teenagers ask for when they want to read something?” I asked.
“They go for sports books,” she replied, a topic hardly covered at all in any article I read on the subject. These all insisted that men read fantasy, science-fiction and military books. Writers of these articles state that men should read J. D. Salinger, Philip Roth, Franz Kafka, etc. Without reading, people won’t have the ability to empathize, a subject of interest for the National Institute for Health.
But if it’s empathy you seek in males who don’t read, why wouldn’t sports provide that?
Of course, the sports books you manage to find focus on the same heroes and mighty teams, untouchable legends. But what about a book covering lesser-known athletes: colorful characters and talented teams with a lesson about the shortcomings of short-sighted management.
Samuel Barrett’s Orange Crush: The Neglected 1971 Houston Astros seems perfect for the sports fan excited by Major League Baseball’s exciting playoffs and World Series.
Barrett, a former baseball umpire who wrote Umpire Diary before this story, cites the movie 61* as an inspiration (which covered the lesser-known record-breaker Roger Maris), though this Houston team is more a case of “what could have been,” as he told me in an online interview.
“Writing about this particular team may not instantly garner attention because most fans would think there isn’t anything interesting about a sub .500 ball club. However…this team easily could have been a championship team, so evaluating what kept the Astros of 1971 and other surrounding seasons from doing so.” He adds, “[The book] allows baseball fans to take in an interesting story, elder readers to reminisce about days from their childhoods or early-adult years, baseball executives and general managers to learn from others mistakes, and even young readers to realize that they still can make an impact even if you are not at the forefront.”
Fans may know classic teams like “The Amazin’ A’s” and “The Big Red Machine,” out of Cincinnati, or the “Lumber Company” Pirates playing in Pittsburgh during that time. Yet this book about the likes of Cesar Cedeno, Joe Morgan, Jack Billingham, Larry Dierker, J. R. Richard, Don Wilson Bob Watson, Jimmy Wynn, Doug Rader, and Cesar Geronimo sounds like the locker room of the legends, all under the glare of the eighth wonder of the world: The Houston Astrodome. The team played in 75 one-run games, an MLB record. Several won rings or played in the playoffs….for other baseball clubs, thanks to team mismanagement.
“The Astros of the late 60’s and early 70’s, though they did not play postseason baseball in October, they still had a lively clubhouse with lots of entertaining characters that were still capable of an effective game face that allowed them to win, doing their best to put aside the reasons out of their control why their success was being jeopardized,” Barrett adds.
It’s books like Barrett’s, going beyond the trite topics, into a genre that may well attract male readers, offering hope to win back such readers through the overlooked subject of sports.