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A Drive Into The Gap (2012)

by Kevin Guilfoile(Favorite Author)

4.23 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Field Notes Brand Books

review 1: This book, a short one about the duration of long-term memory, centers on the relationship between the author and his father, a one-time executive at the Baseball Hall of Fame museum, also a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient.There's a memorable story in chapter 5. It's a throw-away account of a practical joke that Jerry Ruess, who worked for the L.A. Dodgers, once played on Tommy Lasorda, the team’s general manager. Here’s what Ruess did. He took a game ball and wrote a message to Frank Pulli, the home plate umpire. The message said, “Frank -- Hope you’re enjoying the game, Tommy Lasorda.” Jerry gave the ball to the pitcher. The pitcher noticed the message on the ball and thought to himself, Strange that the team’s manager is sending messages to umpires on game ... moreballs. And then he threw the pitch anyway, which fouled into the stands.After the game, the pitcher told Tommy Lasorda that he thought the message he’d sent Frank Pulli was pretty funny. Lasorda scratched his head. Later that night, Lasorda’s wife, Jo, asked him about the autographed ball. Now Lasorda was really confused. Jo said that the fan who caught the foul ball was amazed to find that the ball had already been signed by the general manager.Even more amazing, the fan, whose name was Frank, was impressed that Lasorda had somehow singled him out of the crowd and inscribed the ball just for him.We don’t know what happened to foul-ball-catching Frank of the ballpark stands, but I imagine that Moses himself can’t have felt much different on the day that a decorative shrubbery on Sinai burst into flame and called him by name, twice: Moses, Moses.Wouldn’t it be funny if the real story about the bush on Sinai was that some desert denizen had meant to play a trick on one of his friends, some guy named Moses Abobay or something, but the wrong Moses had come along? And then that wrong Moses had gone and freed the Israelites from slavery, parted the Red Sea, and led them to the promised land. All because of a practical joke.Blasphemy, you may say, but then I’ll tell you that the difference between the cosmic and comic is only a single sibilant -- the soft hiss of air leaking from a bicycle tire, molecules of air streaming single-file out of our skull’s inner-tube.And then the tire goes flat and playtime is over.
review 2: A quick read and I liked the way the author explained Alzheimer's - Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening at once..To my dad, I am five years old and also a novelist. I am forty-three years old and also an undergrad at the University of Notre Dame...I am a Little League coach in La Grange, Ill, and a Little League player in Bethel Park, PA...To him I am all of these things at once."A bittersweet story of a father who loved stories but can no longer unravel the story of his own life. So the author solves a mystery of the bat that was used for Roberto Clemente's 3,000th hit. Along the way he tries to determine whether the Hall of Fame (who stewarded the bat to them) was wrong, whether the bat he has on his wall since childhood is the real bat, or whether the answer is something else. In the end things are resolved, yet unresolved. There is a feeling that the fun is in the open ended question. That a good story/mystery unsolved is more fun than knowing the answer. Along the way we are enamored by the lore that always seem to surround these events and objects. There is always seems to be a good story, and travelling with the author and playing detective is good fun. A good summer read, light, slightly thought provoking, and nostalgic. less

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