Baseball and Men's Lives: The True Confessions of a Skinny-Marink

This wonderful, nostalgic memoir traces the events of Mayer's ( The Dreams of Ada ) life and how baseball has been such an intrinsic part of it. Readers re-discover life in a more innocent era, when as a boy he passed time with the wonderful games of a New York summer--stickball, box baseball, stoop ball and punchball--games suited to a kid with major league dreams and an undersized body. His childhood wasn't entirely unblemished: McCarthyism intruded when his mother was investigated by the FBI; and in 1951, he lived through the nightmare of Bobby Thompson's home run to beat the Dodgers. Six years later, when a student at CCNY, Walter O'Malley robbed Mayer of his Dodgers--and dealt a blow to his love of baseball. Working as a journalist, Mayer saw the assassinations, the war and the urban rioting of the '60s; later, he saw the 1969 Mets salvage a decade that was beginning to look grim for New York baseball. Now living in Santa Fe, N.M., Mayer flirts with the Colorado Rockies, but it's clear that he will not really abandon the faraway Mets--``baseball fandom,'' after all, ``is indeed like religious faith. It is not something you choose, it is something that chooses you.'' (Mar.)