Happy Days
The book takes in the midst of the American cultural standards going topsy-turvy in a town where, according to the author, men wore their hair short and women wore their skirts long. Into this town entered a rebellious man about to transform everything; or, at the very least, transform the school baseball. That may not sound like much of a rebellion, but one must put the act into the context of the setting. Try
“Though only two hundred miles from Chicago, Macon was, in 1965, still stuck in the Eisenhower era.”
Or Cleaned-Up Beatle in Two Years
On his first day of class, Steve Shartzer saw something he never thought possible: an English teacher with a Fu Manchu mustache, big bushy sideburns and long hair. Or, put away another away:
“He looked like an unkempt Beatle”
Of course, it is worth mentioning that this metaphor only makes sense when one visualizes the Beatles of Ed Sullivan rather than the Beatles of Sgt. Pepper.
Baseball is a Game of Metaphors
What would a book about baseball be without some metaphorical imagery related to the game itself? Anyone who has listened to a broadcast of a baseball game for more than two minutes can attest to the fact that it is a game tailor-made for figurative imagery. Such as, for example:
“In the bottom of the inning, after a rough stretch, Heneberry closed it out with one final curveball that dropped like an elevator that’s had its cable cut.”
“David meets Goliath”
For that matter, what is a book about baseball without a showdown between the behemoth nobody expects to lose and the Cinderella underdogs nobody gives a chance of winning? In this particular instance, it’s the long-haired hippie kids from the sticks of against Bloomington High School where the student body exceeded the entire population of Macon. The metaphor is tired and worn and losing its edge, but still stays in three words everything one needs to know.
“Mod Squad Bids for State”
Leaping from the Old Testament to Tuesday nights at 7:30 on ABC. The metaphorical imagery of the headline quoted above may make little sense or at the very least make very imprecise sense to those not familiar with pop culture. A very popular expression of the change American had undergone since the Eisenhower was President was a TV show about cops that included countercultural representatives rarely or never seen as cops on TV before: a pretty young woman, a black man with a big afro and a standard hippie-looking young white male. To the characters on this show was the baseball being compared.
