Benchwarmer
A Sports-Obsessed Memoir of Fatherhood
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
A moving, funny, inventive parenting memoir, written in a surprising form: an encyclopedia of failure in sports
What can a new father learn about parenthood from reading sports almanacs? For most dads, the answer to this question is: nothing. But to Josh Wilker, whose life and writing have been defined by sports fandom, all of the joy, helplessness, and absurdity of parenthood are present between the lines.
After all, what better way to think about losing control than Eugenio Velez's forty-five consecutive at-bats without a hit? How better to understand ridiculous joy than the NFL career of Walter Achiu, whose nickname was "Sneeze"? In the stories of sports figures large and small, Wilker finds the pathos in success and the humor in losing.
As the terrified father of a one-day-old, Wilker recalls the 1986 World Series, when the moment was too big for the Red Sox. When he finds himself stealing away for an hour of alone time, Wilker thinks of boxer Roberto Duran, so beaten by Sugar Ray Leonard that he finally gave up. And yet, even as the frustrations and anxieties build, Wilker remembers Mets pitcher Anthony Young, who broke the baseball record for most consecutive losses -- and never stopped showing up.
Finding the richness of life in obscure wrestling maneuvers and pop-ups lost in the sun, Benchwarmer is a book of unique humanity and surprising wisdom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"I've never been able to cry about life but only over aging sports heroes getting their numbers retired," muses Wilker, a sports writer, after he learns that his wife is pregnant, her "belly growing into a wrecking ball." He feels adrift as the birth of the child approaches, and his sense of detachment from the sure bets in his life the rise and fall of careers, batting averages, and victory formations likewise offers the reader very little mooring in a sea of self-absorption. Rather than proceeding chronologically, he cannily relates the events of his first year of fatherhood in the style of an A-Z sports almanac with entries for figures ranging from Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher David Aardsma to New York Giants quarterback Joe Pisarcik, and for terms like benchwarmer, quitter, and zero in an effort to examine whether his failures at sports have any bearing on his skills as a father. Wilker's account is poignant at times: after asking, "So what is a father?" he notes, "All inherited definitions are reeling, rigid hoaxers flailing at untouchable baseline truths." Elsewhere, the author comes across as achingly na ve: "Becoming a father had forced me into a position, an uncomfortable one for a benchwarmer, of making conscious choices."
