The Grind

May 15, 2015
A season in the trenches-well, on the diamond, anyway-with the Washington Nationals. "There is no other sport with an everydayness, a drum-drum-drum beat like baseball," writes Washington Post baseball reporter Svrluga (National Pastime: Sports, Politics, and the Return of Baseball to Washington, D.C., 2006). That's not the only time in this slender volume where he makes the same observation, but the repetition fits nicely with his theme, borne out by a title that comes from a player's observation that the work lies in getting up every day of the season and grinding it out: "Head down. Eyes forward. Don't think about the games that have passed or how many are ahead. Don't think about the city you're in or the state of your swing. Keep grindin'." One of the many virtues of this book-born, as the author recounts, from a pitch to his Post editor to show the everydayness of the game-is its shifting focus from star players like Ryan Zimmerman to baseball wives and their legendary power to all the middlemen and go-betweens involved in the game to the fans who keep coming back game after game to see their heroes. Svrluga laces the narrative with bits of reportage and history, noting that in the early years of the pro game, the schedule was far less demanding, with players usually having more days off back to back than days on-much different from the way things are today. Above all, the author's peppy narrative is about numbers: the 1,198 games Zimmerman had played at the time of writing, the 9,397 women who showed up at the stadium on Ladies' Night, the 162 games of the regular season, half at home and half on the road, with "just one equivalent of a weekend, the all-star break." It's no grind whatsoever to read Svrluga's flowing prose. An illuminating and entertaining must-read for the baseball obsessed.

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June 15, 2015

The National Football League (NFL) has 16 regular-season games, while the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) have 82 each. Yet Major League Baseball (MLB) outstrips them all, with a whopping 162 dates on their schedule. Add to that a playoff season that has grown dramatically during the last two decades and the result is what Washington Post baseball writer Svrluga (National Pastime) accurately describes with the title of his latest book. Svrluga has covered the Washington Nationals since they moved to DC from Montreal in 2005. This book is assembled from a series of articles the author wrote throughout the 2014 season from the perspective of several members of the Nationals organization: players, a scout, behind-the-scenes staff, and the general manager. Each subject offers a view into little-seen aspects of the baseball life and provides curious fans with new insight into the elements required to make a MLB game happen. VERDICT A quick and enjoyable read for any baseball lover, not just Nationals fans.--Brett Rohlwing, Milwaukee P.L.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015
An expansion of the author's Washington Post series about the hometown Nationals, this fine little volume is a baseball book that is not so much about baseball as it is about the rhythms of a very long season and the daily routines endured during that grind by the ballplayers, their families, the team's executives, and others on the periphery, including scouts and traveling secretaries. Svrluga is a careful observer, has chosen his sources well, and writes felicitously. He has a talent for capturing the telling detail as well as the broader canvas of lives that may seem attractive to outsiders but that, even on a winning teamwhich the Nationals have recently becomecarry a significant toll and enormous uncertainty. One player's young children necessarily are given unusually late bedtimes and unchildlike schedules at variance with those of their peers so that the kids can spend more time with their caring dad (and very sympathetic mom). Touches like this make The Grind an appealing and revealing book that hopefully will find an audience beyond only devoted readers of sports pages.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)