Why Are Great Sports Novels Like 'The Art of Fielding' So Rare?
For many boys born in the latter half of the 20th century, the greatest writer who ever lived was a man named Matt Christopher. Raised in Bath, Pennsylvania, Christopher was the oldest of nine children and a minor league baseball player and the author of more than 130 books with titles like The Catcher with the Glass Arm, The Great Quarterback Switch, and The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. These were books about sports, written for boys who weren't particularly good at sports but were open to dreaming that, one day, they might be.
Of course, those boys have grown up to be men, most of whom are employed in careers other than Professional Athlete, and many of whom no longer read books at all. A 2007 poll found that a third of all men had read no books in the previous year. For the two-thirds who did, chances are not good that they read a novel about sports, as they once spent summer afternoons
