The Cactus League: A Novel

Written by Emily Nemens

Narrated by Vivienne Leheny, Malcolm Hillgartner, Will Ropp and 6 more

One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 New Books You Should Be Picking Up First In 2020 and one of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2020

An explosive, character-driven odyssey through the world of baseball from Emily Nemens, the editor of The Paris Review

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 criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out why—as they hide secrets of their own.

Humming with the energy of a ballpark before the first pitch, Emily Nemens' The Cactus League unravels the tightly connected web of people behind a seemingly linear game. Narrated by a sportscaster, Goodyear’s story is interspersed with tales of Michael Taylor, a batting coach trying to stay relevant; Tamara Rowland, a resourceful spring-training paramour, looking for one last catch; Herb Allison, a legendary sports agent grappling with his decline; and a plethora of other richly drawn characters, all striving to be seen as the season approaches. It’s a journey that, like the Arizona desert, brims with both possibility and destruction.

Anchored by an expert knowledge of baseball’s inner workings, Emily Nemens's The Cactus League is a propulsive and deeply human debut that captures a strange desert world that is both exciting and unforgiving, where the most crucial games are the ones played off the field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Feb 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781799751571

Emily Nemens

Emily Nemens is the editor of The Paris Review. She was previously the coeditor of The Southern Review. Her work has been published in Esquire, n+1, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, and elsewhere.

Reviews for The Cactus League

[Jay Cottrell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Do I wish I had more closure on several of the other characters….. yes. But idc… 2 of my 3 favorite things are baseball and the people of North America…. And it’s not often I get crossover between the two even if the fact that the second even being part of this book was a bit odd, I personally loved it.

[castlelass · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Set in 2011 in Scottsdale, Arizona, the fictional Los Angeles Lions baseball team is about to embark on Spring Training at the (real) Cactus League baseball park, Salt River Fields. The book is a series of interrelated short stories about an owner, a manager, coaches, players, rookies, wives, agents, hangers on, wannabe girlfriends, and even the stadium’s organist. The primary focus is All-Star center fielder Jason Goodyear, a multimillionaire player who is now facing a divorce and gambling debts.

I recently went on a trip to the Phoenix area to attend Spring Training games, so it seemed like a good time to read this book. I cannot say it is particularly realistic since it assumes the players are in the lineup the entire game, playing as they do in the regular season, which does not generally happen, but it is an entertaining story. The author throws in local color, using real restaurants, museums, casinos, and Indian tribal history.

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Spring training is a time of hope and renewal in baseball, when fans of even the most inept teams allow themselves to dream that this might, at long last, be The Year. It’s no less so for the players themselves, and the other people whose lives revolve in and around the game.Emily Nemens’ The Cactus League (2020) plays upon some classic themes of a baseball novel—the ways off-field struggles translate into on-field performance, the repercussions of high expectations and celebrity, the inevitable physical decline and its accompanying mental rollercoaster. But she shines her spotlight into corners of the game rarely explored by writers in this genre, and that makes for compelling reading beyond the usual audience of sports fans.The Cactus League is structured like a baseball game, in nine “innings” that are not so much chapters in a seamless chronological narrative as they are interconnected stories, told from the viewpoint of different characters. Events are sometimes recounted more than once, from different points of view, and each re-telling adds depth to our understanding of what happened. Each chapter/inning opens with ruminations (seemingly excerpts from an unpublished memoir) by an old sportswriter who was involuntarily retired. Like a good leadoff hitter, the old sportswriter sets the table at the start of each inning. He blends the history of Arizona from before the Ice Age and human settlers with what’s happening on and off the field in today’s desert environment, where the Los Angeles Lions are working themselves into shape to make a run at the World Series. Each excerpt builds upon the previous to make it clear that Lions star outfielder Jason Goodyear is the sun around which the satellite characters in each subsequent narrative revolve. Other characters include a former big league hitting coach whose career trajectory is on the downhill side, former wife of a professional ballplayer and current groupie, who loves the game of baseball even more than the men she collects each spring, the personal assistant to Jason Goodyear’s agent, who tasks her with the job of keeping an eye on his prime client, the black partial owner of the Lions who sees himself as a mentor to up-and-coming black players, a pitcher trying to work his way back from arm surgery, a hotshot rookie from whom too much is expected in his first spring training, the wives and girlfriends of Lions players who are expected to put their own lives on hold so their men can focus all their attention on baseball, and the aging stadium organist whose own career never got out of the minor leagues. Can the agent save his most famous client from himself? Can the groupie find someone to save her from a lifestyle that she’s aging out of? Can the players on the edge of reaching the next level save their careers? Do some people have to be sacrificed so that others can realize their dreams? In baseball as in life there are only winners and losers. The trick is not to get caught on the wrong side of that line.