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The Cactus League

Emily Nemens (Goodreads Author)

3.48 · Rating details · 2,808 ratings · 467 reviews

An explosive, character-driven odyssey through the world of baseball
Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, petty ...more

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Hardcover, 275 pages

Published February 4th 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Jan 13, 2020 Fran rated it it was amazing

Nothing is static. "...not a man's career, especially not a ballplayer the first weeks of spring. His batting average, his ambition, his hopes: all is in flux." Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, Arizona was a 12,000 seat stadium, the new spring training home of the Los Angeles Lions, a Cactus League team. In February/March 2011, within the span of six weeks, a player could make a team, get sent down or get sent home. An unnamed sportswriter, without press credentials, jobless since his newspaper' Nothing is static. "...not a man's career, especially not a ballplayer the first weeks of spring. His batting average, his ambition, his hopes: all is in flux." Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, Arizona was a 12,000 seat stadium, the new spring training home of the Los Angeles Lions, a Cactus League team. In February/March 2011, within the span of six weeks, a player could make a team, get sent down or get sent home. An unnamed sportswriter, without press credentials, jobless since his newspaper's demise, was determined to follow Jason Goodyear, the league's best outfielder. "...as much will happen in parking lots as on the field, as much in backyards as in deep left."

Jason Goodyear, left-fielder, "...has an arm like a rocket launcher." He had won Golden Glove Awards and had lucrative product endorsements. He was very competitive. "I just can't turn it off...I always want to win..." Why does "Goody" drive a battered old Jeep? Interesting...his California house was on the market.

Michael Taylor was the batting coach for the Los Angeles Lions. Early spring was sixty-nine year old Michael's busiest time of year. The players "...have to get recalibrated to major league pitching... he understands the mechanics of a swing better than any...slo-mo camera or instant replay." Why retire?

Tamara Rowland, married and divorced from two baseball players, was in her mid 40's. During a ballplayer's time of uncertainty, she was ready to offer "reassurances". Upon meeting her, "Like flipping a switch [the ballplayer's] vocabulary nose dives into baseball jargon." He might, arguably be "putty" in her hands.

William Goslin, a rookie first baseman was in awe of Jason Goodyear, so much so, that he blindly offered support to a sports "hero".

In nine chapters, "The Cactus League" by Emily Nemens is a character study of not only Jason Goodyear, but an aging batting coach, a rookie, a divorced groupie, baseball wives, baseball agents and life in Scottsdale, Arizona during spring training.

Author Nemens shares her knowledge of The Cactus League having attended spring training with her dad. "We didn't go every year, but we returned to The Cactus League often enough that as I grew up I got a sense of the desert and the weird and wonderful culture that had developed around spring training baseball." An excellent debut novel.

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Cactus League".

...more

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Jan 09, 2020 Drew rated it it was amazing

5+ out of 5.
I don't like baseball. Never found it terribly interesting to watch. So why, then, do I find it so compelling to read? Perhaps it is the structure, a hypothesis about which Robert Coover and now Emily Nemens might agree. More so than football or basketball or soccer or really any other sport, the structure and simplicity of baseball lends itself well to narrative storytelling. 3 outs, 4 bases, 9 innings: there is a structure here.

Nemens uses the 9-inning structure to tell a novel-in- ...more

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Feb 09, 2020 Dax rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, 3-stars

Most people are probably going to focus on Nemens’ use of the multiple POV, a structure she utilizes with much success (except for the chapter centering around the team owner with a bruised ego, as well the chapter focusing on the players’ wives). Nemens appears to have logged some time at spring training herself, and she paints the whole mess with clear lines for us readers.

What really stood out to me, however, was the tone Nemens sets throughout the story. This is not a story of redemption, no ...more

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Jul 18, 2020 Lorna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-southwest, favorite-book-covers, baseball, essays-short-stories, native-americans, architecture, history

The Cactus League was a delightful debut novel by Emily Nemens. It actually was a series of short stories, all loosely woven together by our narrator, a former sports journalist from a now defunct newspaper as he encourages us to settle in for the long game. The structure of this book was in nine chapters (or short stories) and reflective of the nine innings a baseball game. It is set in Scottsdale, Arizona where the fictional Los Angeles Lions have come for their spring training as part of the The Cactus League was a delightful debut novel by Emily Nemens. It actually was a series of short stories, all loosely woven together by our narrator, a former sports journalist from a now defunct newspaper as he encourages us to settle in for the long game. The structure of this book was in nine chapters (or short stories) and reflective of the nine innings a baseball game. It is set in Scottsdale, Arizona where the fictional Los Angeles Lions have come for their spring training as part of the Cactus League at the Salt River Fields training facility.

Most likely a lot of the draw for me to this book is that I have been a lifelong fan of baseball from Saturday afternoons with my father in front of the television to being a Colorado Rockies season ticket-holder for many years. Salt River Fields, adjacent to the Talking Stick Resort, has been the spring training home for the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks. For many years, it has been our hope to go down for a week during spring training in March.

What I found fascinating with our narrator, as he set up each chapter in the series, he would go into the archaeology and science of how that part of the Southwestern desert came to be going back millions of years ago to show the origins of the topography and the prehistoric animals that roamed the earth. He also spoke of the lost tribes of Native Americans such as the Hohokam to the current Pima and Maricopa. Each of the stories focused on those involved in the baseball scene in Scottsdale from the coaches, baseball players, baseball player's wives, baseball talent agents, and baseball groupies to the essential workers helping the ballpark to function. The common thread uniting all of the various chapters was Jason Goodyear, a two-time Golden Glove winner and the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions. It was an exciting book that only made me yearn more for an afternoon at the ballpark.

"No, a Hohokam field was a dug-out oval coated in caliche, stretching anywhere from eight to two hundred feet. That's like the stretch from the plate to shallow center, nothing small about it. They even constructed sloped, rising sides around the field, so a crowd could gather, sit down and watch. Not a lot different from Salt River's own outfield lawn, the patchwork of beach blankets and picnic baskets that fans spread out today." ...more

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Mar 10, 2020 Matthew rated it liked it

3.5 stars.

I love baseball. A lot.

Just how much do I love baseball? So much so I included it as one of my interests on my Goodreads profile! In all seriousness, it’s been a love affair of mine since I was a wee lad of seven, when a perfect storm of my beloved Detroit Tigers winning the World Series and the release of The Natural in movie theaters sparked a fascination that’s just as fervent today.

And yet it’s this fervency that fuels my rather stringent opinion on any baseball-related pop cultur 3.5 stars.

I love baseball. A lot.

Just how much do I love baseball? So much so I included it as one of my interests on my Goodreads profile! In all seriousness, it’s been a love affair of mine since I was a wee lad of seven, when a perfect storm of my beloved Detroit Tigers winning the World Series and the release of The Natural in movie theaters sparked a fascination that’s just as fervent today.

And yet it’s this fervency that fuels my rather stringent opinion on any baseball-related pop culture offerings, whether it be film (The Natural, Bull Durham and Eight Men Out = great! For the Love of the Game and Mr. 3000 = not so much), song (“Centerfield” is the worst song of the 20th century), or most especially, literature.

So where does The Cactus League fall? Certainly above the Mendoza line, but hardly worthy of a trip to Cooperstown. That’s not to say Emily Nemens’ debut novel does not have its moments; it just lacks the consistency synonymous with the sport’s most celebrated players. It’s not unlike a streaky hitter: nearly unstoppable when in the zone, desperate for even the slightest bit of contact when swinging and missing.

Part of this is because The Cactus League suffers a bit of an identity crisis of its own. Pardon yet another baseball cliché but Nemens’ work reads more like a utility player than a prized shortstop in that it has a lot to offer in a lot of different ways, none of which will make any all-star teams. Sometimes that’s more than enough to spell success; this case is no different.

It begs to be said, though, that The Cactus League isn’t so much a baseball book as it is a book about life, with baseball at its center. Rarely does Nemens wax poetically about the minutia of America’s pastime (though when she does so it’s deftly); this is a work entirely about the players of the game rather than the game itself. Chapters intersect, with each devoted to a different character – a cleat-chasing cougar; an aging hitting coach who arrives to spring training to find his second home destroyed by squatters; the squatters themselves; a teenage first-round draft pick known just as much for his last name (his great grandfather was a star many decades before) as he is his draft status; a pitcher who’s developed an opioid addiction post-Tommy John surgery; a partial team owner suffering from several identity crisis’s; an agent whose sketchiness makes Scott Boras (google him) look like Mother Theresa, to name a few of the many – several of whom make cameos throughout. As is the case with most novels of a similar structure, some story arcs work (aforementioned cougar; pill-addicted pitcher), some fall flat (the family of squatters; part-owner), or are simply forgettable (hitting coach with a squatter problem).

At the novel’s core, though, is Jason Goodyear, star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions. Despite being fresh off a gold glove- and MVP-winning season, not to mention the signing of a $150 million contract, Goodyear is having anything but: he’s in the throes of an increasingly public divorce and a mounting gambling addiction. Nemens positions Goodyear as a man at life’s crossroads, one whose unquestionable focus and determination on the field is all but negated by his antics off of it. It’s much like the game of baseball itself, where more often than not narratives within the bookends of a nine-inning contest create sub-stories just as compelling as the overall game.

This is what makes Nemens choice to set The Cactus League during spring training all the more poignant. Preseason is like purgatory for ballplayers; those on the fringe of making the show are terrified about what’s to come, whereas others clearly making the team give zero fucks and treat their time there like a vacation. This provided The Cactus League with an air of levity to help balance some rather unexpected, serious themes. The author’s interpretations on wealth disparity were apt, but it was how she touched upon gender roles I found most interesting (in both good and bad ways): women are positioned as desperate, money-hungry and submissive, while men come across as egocentric and unreliable. It feels like an antiquated observation and perhaps this was the author’s intention, offering her own opinion on a sport often criticized for its slow-as-molasses, antediluvian foundation.

I’d also be remiss not to mention I had some stylistic issues with The Cactus League (most specifically Nemens’ usage of the cringe-worthy phrase “like so many”, a personal pet peeve), yet was left impressed with the author’s acumen for the game of baseball itself. The Cactus League never felt forced or cliché like most sports books often do; even the innings-esque vignettes between chapters felt organic to the story.

But The Cactus League isn’t a perfect game, though ultimately it’s a winning one. I liken it to a gritty, grind-it-out, back-and-forth contest whose conclusion is seemingly always up in the air but eventually finds its course. Which is to say Emily Nemens finishes her game strong, making all of its previous flaws feel far less impactful. In baseball, she’d be a lockdown closer. With The Cactus League, she’s an author on the rise. ...more

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Feb 15, 2020 Allison rated it liked it

As a fan of both baseball and literary fiction I thought I’d love this book. Unfortunately, it was not sufficiently about baseball nor “literary” enough and I did not love it. That’s harsh: I just had too high expectations. The structure is: vignettes about various characters/topics on and circling around a baseball team, all weaving together, and colliding in a final event. Kind of like Tommy Orange’s “There There.” But there were too many dead weight subjects - you could sniff a hint of comple ...more

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Mar 13, 2020 Christine rated it it was ok

I *really* wanted to enjoy this. Love baseball. Thought it was right up my alley. It was so SLOW, I couldn’t slog my way through it. Too much detail, didn’t care about the characters, parts of it reminded me of Bull Durham (but that story’s already been done). Made it about halfway and bailed.

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Jun 01, 2020 Scottsdale Public Library added it

Shelves: fiction, adult, contemporary, sports

If you know the Valley of the Sun, Cactus League baseball or are a fan of sports fiction, this is the book for you! Being a resident of Scottsdale, AZ, I was especially intrigued by the many local references to iconic restaurants (The Pink Pony and Don and Charlie's), Salt River Fields and Talking Stick Casino, as well as the history and archaeological information about the area that Nemens cleverly includes. The author's love of baseball is also evident in her strong characters, from an aging b ...more

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Feb 25, 2020 Abraham Allende rated it did not like it

Shelves: sports, novel-fiction

Each year during Spring Training I pick up a baseball book to ease me into the mood for the season. Normally, it's non-fiction; a biography of a former player, or a historical account of a significant season. Therefore, reading a novel about baseball was a radical change of pace for me. I eagerly anticipated reading this book after hearing an interview with the author and reading all the other reviews.
I can't express my disappointment strongly enough.
I'm an avid baseball fan, and, I must add, ...more

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Mar 30, 2020 Gail rated it really liked it

I love a good book about baseball, and since the coronavirus has wrecked havoc on this year’s MLB season, this novel (made up of linked stories about a cast of characters whose lives revolve around the Los Angeles Lions, the pro team that plays their spring training games in Arizona) is about as close to the real thing I’m going to get this season.

(Confession: I am still not over the fact that FOX cancelled “Pitch,” so I might have envisioned some amalgamation of Mark-Paul Gosselear and a Hems ...more

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Apr 06, 2020 Erin rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2020

This book crawls along like a too-hot afternoon game.
The story focuses on the pre-season decline of an aging star outfielder, told through everyone else's eyes. Yes, it's the popular structure of separate stories held together by one character or event, and here, that's Jason Goodyear, a character whom I wish had gotten more page time and been given a deeper emotional backstory in each one of the vignettes he popped through. The idea of weaving together the many people who are effected by one m ...more

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Apr 14, 2020 Brad Fox rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Not sure what to say but in the end I was disappointed.

I got this book as a birthday present. My mom knows I love baseball. I just don’t get it. As some of the other reviewers have said, the character development starts well but is incomplete. The “chapters” seem to be more like separate stories that interconnect, sort of but in such an awkward way it is difficult to understand why and how. There are some good ideas that aren’t developed and story lines with potential that just stop. Oh, and th ...more

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Feb 23, 2020 Erica Bauermeister rated it it was amazing

I'm not a big baseball fan, but I picked up this book on a recommendation of a friend, and after reading a few pages I was hooked by the author's use of language and her ability to capture characters within a paragraph. This is a series of interconnected stories, set in Phoenix during spring training. There is a narrative arc that runs through the whole book, but what really matters is the insights into each of the characters who are all remotely or intimately connected (more of the former than ...more

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Aug 29, 2020 Mimi rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-2020, 2-and-a-half-stars

I am a big fan of character novels as well as baseball. However, one of the things that I have learned is not only do I like character driven novels, but they must be likable - or at least redemptive - characters. This book is a series of interconnected short stories about awful people doing awful things. The baseball element does not outweigh this muck.

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May 01, 2020 James Murphy rated it it was amazing

The Cactus League is a novel made up of linked stories. I think it quite accomplished, perhaps the best new fiction I've read in a while. I have to say I'm aware aware that such rhapsodic praise might be colored by the fact that I love baseball novels, which this is. The Cactus League, though, is a different kind of baseball novel. It's not so much about the drama of the game, of any one particular game, let alone one that casts life-defining moments and lessons on unguarded characters ready to The Cactus League is a novel made up of linked stories. I think it quite accomplished, perhaps the best new fiction I've read in a while. I have to say I'm aware aware that such rhapsodic praise might be colored by the fact that I love baseball novels, which this is. The Cactus League, though, is a different kind of baseball novel. It's not so much about the drama of the game, of any one particular game, let alone one that casts life-defining moments and lessons on unguarded characters ready to absorb them. Some of the characters are indeed players. In fact, every field position is represented at some point. But most are people only around baseball in some way. Nemens peoples her stories with players' wives, agents, an organist, concession workers, groupies, and many more. Their lives center around a game they don't play as they run the bases of life's circumstances.

The stories (yes, there are 9 of them) of The Cactus League follow the spring training practices and exhibition games of the Los Angeles Lions (yes, it's a fictitious team) in 2011 around Scottsdale, Arizona. The roster of the Lions is filled with players at every stage of their careers. As you'd expect, there are crusty veterans who make up the foundation of the club. There are youngsters with raw talent trying to make the regular squad. As one established star says, every player there has spent a life being the best everywhere they've played, and now they find themselves in a place where they're not. The players are surrounded by coaches and equipment men, women who love them and women who want to love them, and the men who make money off their careers. The most prominent player is the all-star leftfielder Jason Goodyear. I believe he's penciled into every story in one way or another, though only a couple are actually about him. Just as Goodyear is the star and key to the L. A. Lions success as a baseball team, he's also the vein of mineral, sometimes bright as gold, sometimes coal black, running through the stories.

An element of the novel I like is that each chapter has a prologue which acts as both foreshadowing and as a glimpse back into Arizona's geologic and evolutionary past. Written in the point of view of an unnamed character I take to be a sportswriter, they treat us to views of this ancient seabed now scattered with shark teeth, or the 2011 landscape sprinkled with verdant baseball diamonds which was once stalked by dinosaurs before the mountains around Scottsdale were lifted. If the sportswriter views the modern inhabitants with a disillusioned eye, he sees their forerunners--Pime, Maricopa, Hohokam--as authentic and resilient. Primitive life on the edge has morphed into the game the novel's concerned with, but it's still a life on the edge.

The stories are gritty. The characters don't belong on a box of Wheaties. But the novel does. As a baseball novel it's a champion. ...more

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Mar 04, 2020 Cherise Wolas rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020-reading-challenge, contemporary-fiction, america, baseball

Set in the baseball and baseball-tangential microcosm of Scottsdale, Arizona, this novel is about various characters connected directly or indirectly to the Lions baseball team -- from Michael, the baseball player who never made it to the big leagues and is now some kind of team coach and perhaps soon to be out of a job; to Tami, the aging baseball-bunny, a la the Susan Sarandon character in Bull Durham; to Stephen Smith, the married, black, part-owner of the team perhaps hiding a secret about h Set in the baseball and baseball-tangential microcosm of Scottsdale, Arizona, this novel is about various characters connected directly or indirectly to the Lions baseball team -- from Michael, the baseball player who never made it to the big leagues and is now some kind of team coach and perhaps soon to be out of a job; to Tami, the aging baseball-bunny, a la the Susan Sarandon character in Bull Durham; to Stephen Smith, the married, black, part-owner of the team perhaps hiding a secret about his sexuality; to Jason Goodyear, the star outfielder with a broken marriage and gambling issues; to Herb, the ailing big sports agent who represents Goodyear, though we never find out what his medical problems are; to Goslin, the rookie; to young Alex S, who, with his mother and sister, are squatting in empty houses, owners away, or foreclosed upon, or only partially built before developer money ran out, and whose mother works concessions at the Lions' new stadium. The author knows baseball, and all the baseball lingo (of which I don't know a ton) and it wasn't dumbed down, which I appreciated, but there was a lot of it. The book seems to want to show both the microcosm of baseball within a particular team, and the changes that have come to Arizona, from its prehistoric time when it was an ocean, perhaps (and this is a guess because it's not clear) intended to demonstrate how baseball affects or is affected by the world at large. Through the book are interstitials - what seems to be sections of an article by a one-time sports writer now out of a job because of what's happened to newspapers in general - which did not work for me - the idea of connecting prehistoric Arizona with the vagaries of baseball felt way too attenuated; I kept trying to figure out if the book was supposedly the reporter's telling of the story; indeed we learn that the reporter is paying sources, including Sarah, the sports agent's assistant, and Alex S, the homeless boy. Billed as a novel, this reads more like loosely connected short stories, and I think would have worked better if each of the chapters, set off as "innings" (which felt trite and childish) had actually been short stories. We are introduced in each inning to a new character, learn their backstory and what's happening in their lives, baseball-related and otherwise, and once the next inning begins, that character about whom we've learned a lot (and are supposedly invested) simply disappears, aside from perhaps a line that tells us they are still around, seen or heard by the character whose turn it is to be featured. What is odd, too, is that the love of baseball that the author clearly possesses, doesn't really shine through the characters. Perhaps that's supposed to be one of the points, that loving baseball renders everyone miserable. What I appreciate is that one doesn't expect a baseball novel to be written by a woman, so brava for that. ...more

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Feb 23, 2020 Curtis Edmonds rated it it was amazing

"What Nemens does in THE CACTUS LEAGUE --- and brilliantly so --- is to describe the quietly desperate lives of the various characters and invite the reader to find not only empathy with them, but communion as well." Read the rest at Bookreporter.com. ...more

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Feb 25, 2020 Mary rated it really liked it

Emily Nemens’ “The Cactus League,” a novel in interrelated stories, looks at the behind-the-scenes lives of players, coaches and fans at the beginning of one spring season in Arizona for the fictional Los Angeles Lions baseball team. Linked by the musings of a recently unemployed sportswriter, the stories explore the marital issues, financial woes, health problems and romantic yearnings of a cast of characters who then briefly appear in other stories (similar to the structure of Elizabeth Strout ...more

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Aug 11, 2020 Joe rated it it was amazing

Wonderful book. Anyone who can tie in jazz legends Bill Evans, and Scott LaFaro to the drama of spring training in Arizona is a great story teller. Well developed characters. Stadium organ player Lester Morrow a favorite. Don’t we all wonder how they get the gig? I recommend this one even if you are not a baseball fan but all the more if you are.

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Jan 30, 2020 Gayle rated it it was amazing

Full review at: http://www.everydayiwritethebookblog....

Emily Nemens’ debut novel, The Cactus League, is a book about baseball told through interconnected chapters set in Scottsdale at the beginning of spring training in 2013. Jason Goodyear, a two-time MVP outfielder for the fictional L.A. Lions who is going through a tough stretch, is a recurring character threaded through the chapters (of which there are nine, of course), but the book is told through the point of view of other characters livi Full review at: http://www.everydayiwritethebookblog....

Emily Nemens’ debut novel, The Cactus League, is a book about baseball told through interconnected chapters set in Scottsdale at the beginning of spring training in 2013. Jason Goodyear, a two-time MVP outfielder for the fictional L.A. Lions who is going through a tough stretch, is a recurring character threaded through the chapters (of which there are nine, of course), but the book is told through the point of view of other characters living in varying distances from the sport.

Warning for baseball fans: The Cactus League may take a bit of the sheen off the sport. These characters are down on their luck, for the most part, dealing with personal demons. The book opens when a late-career minor league hitting coach arrives in town for spring training to the grim discovery that his Arizona house has been looted and trashed by squatters. A hotshot sports agent is, we learn later, sick with what appears to be cancer. One of the team’s owners makes an impulsive but career-changing decision about a star outfielder after his ego is bruised. These people, some in town only during spring training and some of whom live in Scottsdale year-round, struggle with their self-worth and the prospects for their future. There is a lot of detail and atmosphere in The Cactus League, all of which add up to a richly textured depiction of this strange but revered desert ecosystem.

But spring is a period of renewal and hope. Nemens describes beautifully how the pre-season awakens in players the drive to start over with a clean slate, to erase past failures and claim their rightful lineup spot or win the title that’s escaped them through their years in the majors. For the industry hangers-on – the stadium organist, the wives, the woman selling hot dogs in the new stadium – they too express their hopes and resolutions amidst the warming sun and green grass of the newly mowed field. Will they find redemption?

The Cactus League is a rarity – a beautifully written, character-driven novel about sports. As for whether you need to be a baseball fan to enjoy it? I can’t answer that. I will say that as a baseball fan, I absolutely loved it. ...more

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Feb 12, 2020 Anne Marie rated it really liked it

Shelves: baseball, 2020

In excitement for a Spring Training-related trip to Arizona, I read The Cactus League, my first fictional book about baseball. Admittedly, I knew nothing of the author nor did I know anything about the plot, but I needed a baseball book to soothe a lack of baseball in the dreadfully long off-season.

The Cactus League is a series of short, slice of life stories connected by one team and its MVP, Jason Goodyear. Baseball is always about humanity, but this book is less about the game and more about ...more

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Feb 10, 2020 Nick Moran rated it it was amazing

Found its stride in the second half, and the final third was an absolute delight.

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Sep 28, 2019 Geonn Cannon rated it it was amazing

I'm not huge into baseball, but I'm a big fan of this book (and the Lions, if they exist). The author does an excellent job of showing you characters from the inside out (and occasionally from the outside in) so you feel like you know them in the space of a few paragraphs. I was instantly absorbed by the characters and their world. I felt like I'd been to the games they were talking about, like I knew this team. I recommend this book not only to baseball fans, but also to anyone who likes a good ...more

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Apr 02, 2020 Joe rated it it was ok

I read the very favorable reviews for this debut novel and was intrigued. I started reading it this morning and was caught only after about 10 pages. As I read past 100 pages, I wondered if someone else took over the writing. The narrative no longer flowed; the characters and situations were muddled and totally uninteresting.
I’m surprised and saddened by this author’s inability to continue the narrative as she had begun. Then maybe again, perhaps it’s me. Either way, I struck out.

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Mar 09, 2020 Jimmy Mustion rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2020

This was awful. I just got done reading it and I still have no clue what it was about.

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Jan 28, 2020 Greg Zimmerman rated it really liked it

First appeared https://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.c...

If you're like me, and you believe baseball to be a near-perfect metaphor for life, then you'll love Emily Nemens' new novel, The Cactus League. Baseball, as does life, has its own rhythm and flow: time moves at its own pace. That's why a workday seems interminable, but your week of vacation seems to fly by in a blink. Similarly, when a setup man can't find the strike zone in the bottom of the 8th inning, you feel like time is crawling. But First appeared https://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.c...

If you're like me, and you believe baseball to be a near-perfect metaphor for life, then you'll love Emily Nemens' new novel, The Cactus League. Baseball, as does life, has its own rhythm and flow: time moves at its own pace. That's why a workday seems interminable, but your week of vacation seems to fly by in a blink. Similarly, when a setup man can't find the strike zone in the bottom of the 8th inning, you feel like time is crawling. But a a three-run, bottom-of the ninth rally zooms by like lightning. Time flies when you're having fun, they say. And time certainly flew as I read this terrific novel.

Nemens's novel is a series of character-driven vignettes, all intersecting and centering on a star left-fielder named Jason Goodyear who is careening towards rock bottom. The structure makes then novel feel like a mashup of Winesburg, Ohio and Philip Roth's goofy baseball book, The Great American Novel. I mean that as a high compliment.

Goodyear is personable and focused, but has developed a nasty gambling addiction. His wife has left him and he's living in a shed at the new spring training home of his team, the Los Angeles Lions. Each chapter gives us a new character who has some sort of relationship with Jason — a minor league hitting coach, his shady agent (who is right out of central casting for "shady agent," and was one of my favorite characters), a pitcher coming off Tommy John surgery, the African American (possibly gay) part owner of the team, the players' wives, and a "cleat chaser" named Tami who enjoys a memorable evening with Jason at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin School (which I learned about for the first time, but then learned is closing almost simultaneously).

Portraying such a large swath of humanity gives Nemens the opportunity to illustrate another way baseball is a metaphor for life: The eternal struggle between the haves and the have-nots. It's heartbreaking to see the kid with the bum elbow do whatever he can for one more summer of glory in the sun. It's awful to see a drug-addicted mother, who works at the baseball stadium surrounded by millions of dollars, mistreat her young son. And it's wistful to watch the aging organist for whom technology has all but rendered obsolete cross paths with the up-and-coming bonus baby (even as he's struggling, too).

My favorite part of this novel, however, is just the baseball. Nemens REALLY knows baseball. She gets this right. It's almost entirely real, accurate, and authentic — which is almost never the case in baseball novels. As well, while the Lions are of course fictional, Nemens name drops plenty of real major leaguers, past and present. Pete Rose is referenced several times (a must for a novel in which the main character has a gambling addiction, because "Charlie Hustle knows plenty about Rule 21."). The agent has a dog named Kirby Puckett, which is both hilarious, and maybe slightly disrespectful (Kirby Puckett was the agent's first client, and so that's his way of honoring him.) And Jason Goodyear is the first player to have a shoe named after him since Ken Griffey, Jr.

I blew through this book in just a couple sittings. A few minor complaints aside, it's a terrific read — the best baseball novel I've read since The Art of Fielding. It was a perfect way to tide myself over until the actual Cactus League kicks off in a few weeks.
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Jan 16, 2021 Mike rated it it was ok

The Cactus League
by
Emily Nemens

2 Stars

I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn’t work for me. The book is a series of related stories centered around a troubled baseball star during spring training in Arizona. The book is billed as a novel, but each chapter is essentially a separate story centered around one character or group of characters that come together during spring training. As a result, there’s very limited character development and little or no flow to the story. The ending ...more

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Feb 19, 2020 Chris rated it really liked it

I couldn’t resist trying this new baseball novel at the start of a new season, so, much to my surprise, there was almost no actual baseball in this book. What is here are some interesting stories and character studies about people who are mostly on the periphery of the baseball world (an agent, an organist, baseball wives and “cleat-chasers”, etc.) and the mostly sketchy off-field activities of players who are in various stages of their careers. This was not what I expected, but that isn’t a bad ...more

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Mar 06, 2020 Barbara rated it liked it

A small book with a big message about life in the minor and major leagues of baseball. It takes a whole community to run a baseball team, including the star baseball player, the team slut, and the older batting coach featured in the story. The setting of this fictitious story is in the Phoenix area. It is not an exciting novel, but baseball is not usually an exciting sport. My favorite character was Michael, the batting coach, who has made an entire career out of baseball.

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Aug 06, 2020 Jennifer rated it really liked it

I struggled to get into this novel about baseball and chance, but I was captivated by the end. There are a lot of characters (too many?) and a lot of baseball (too much?), but the overall theme about taking chances on the good life and often losing is really compelling. Every move the characters make -- there are baseball players and agents and groupies and people just looking for redemption -- is aspirational and foolhardy and hopeful and tragic all at once.

The Arizona setting plays a prominen ...more

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