The Celebrant

by Eric Rolfe Greenberg

Book Overview

The first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of promise and innocence in America. Hardworking immigrants could achieve the American dream; heroes were truly heroic. Eric Rolfe Greenberg brilliantly and authentically chronicles the real-life saga of the first national baseball hero, Christy Mathewson, and the fictional story of a Jewish immigrant family of jewelers. In these pages Mathewson and other great players like John McGraw, Honus...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803270372
• ISBN13: 9780803270374
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Baseball When the Only Juice was Alcoholic

If there were a Hall of Fame for baseball books, Mr. Greenberg's book would surely be inducted. Perhaps not on the first ballot, but definitely within the first few years of eligibility. This book made me feel as though I'd stepped through a time-warp and into the stands of the Polo Grounds 100 years ago. The baseball scenes are told with an obvious fondness through the eyes of the narrator, whose life we learn about through his musings on his beloved Giants and the magnificent Christie Matthewson. Spanning almost twenty years of baseball action, from Matty's rookie season no-hitter through his death in the mid 1920's, we are given a glimpse of how life used to be for an avid baseball fan. We are treated to encounters with John McGraw, Hal Chase, Smokey Joe Wood, Amos Rusie, and Christie Matthewson himself. Near the end of the book there is an impressive amount of time given to the 1919 Black Sox, and the tainted World Series against the Reds.

A time machine

This book not only takes you back in time to see the early baseball legends so clearly you think you actually watched them play, but it also creates a picture of the era they lived in: life-style, business experience, ethnic experience. It would make a great choice for a high school student doing a book report or history report on the early 20th century.The Celebrant shows us the origins of hero worship at the birth of the pop culture era - both good and bad. Jackie's love of Matty is embodied in the beauty of the rings he gave the pitcher and at the same time it is obsession that leads (at least in part) to the destruction of someone Jackie has a "real-life" relationship with (as opposed to one based on fantasy). Some reviewers here are not satisfied with the ending, but I kind of enjoyed the ambiguity of it. This man will never be able to remember the joy of watching Matty pitch without also thinking of the personal tragedy it will forever be linked with. The great and the terrible are forever woven together in a past we see clearly through Jackie's memories.This observation won't make sense unless you've seen the film, but there's an epilogue at the end of Barry Lyndon (and I'm butchering it) - "all these souls, whether good or evil, great or small, are all long dead and forgotten save to memory." Something like that. That's how this book plays out. It's very much in the past. Very much a part of distant memory and yet Grenberg gives us access to those memories as if they are our own. When I see picture of Matty now I smile as if I watched him play myself. And there's saddness in the memory. I remember Matty's life cut short and I remember Eli. And they both are equally real to me.Anyway, it's a wonderful time machine and you need to have that baseball fan in your life read it - especially if it's a young person who never heard of the "immortals."

Best Baseball Novel

I thought "The Natural" and the Kinsella books, "Shoeless Joe" and "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" were just too dark and odd. Coover's "Universal Baseball Association" was so obsessive-compusive... Until now, my favorite baseball novel was "If I Never Get Back", by Darryl Brock. This is a wonderful novel with a strong historical link to the 1869 Red Stockings, as the main character joins the Cincy team and travels with them throughout the East Coast and even off to San Fransisco. Add time travel, Mark Twain, buried treasure and a love interest, and this novel is a blast.But I now have a new favorite."The Celebrant" by Erick GreenbergI read about this book on various lists of great baseball books, but the plot always seemed to sound a bit weak. Well, it is a masterpiece. The research done by Greenberg to get the Mathewson baseball correct is sooo cool. From the details of the Merkle Boner to the Snograss Muff and the subsequent call-off of Merkle in favor of Chief Meyers by Matty... From Matty quitting in shame as manager of Cincinnatti after the Hal Chase debacle and enlisting for WWI to the Black Sox World Series of 1919. Game after game sounds like a current event. Very cool, very accurate stuff. This is early 20th century baseball as if you were there. Combine that with the insight into the title character's immigrant family and their establishment of their jewelry business and its intertwining with baseball. Add some wonderful prose. A true masterpiece.Here's a favorite passage, describing Honus Wagner:=-=-=-="Honus Wagner matched Mathewson for size, and in the infield he stood like a gnarled oak with bowed roots, his large arms branching nearly to the ground; with his oversized hands, he'd scoop up anything hit to his enormous range, gathering with the ball a large measure of infield dirt, and he would fling the whole package toward first base, debris trailing off like a comet's tail, the toss ever straight and true."=-=-=-=Another longer passage, on the difficulty of being Mathewson the hero. This was on the eve of Matty pitching the delayed game 7 of the 1912 World Seies at Fenway. All of the pressure of the failure of 1908 and the expectations of being Mathewson weigh on the great pitcher. Hugh Fullerton, the baseball writer, is talking to Kapp, the book's main character, who has just learned that Matty refers to him as the 'celebrant of his works' through his jewelry designs and gifts to the pitcher:=-=-=-="Have you ever considered what he is to himself? What it's like to be Christy Mathewson? Imagine it. You know perhaps five hundred people by name, but fifty million know you. You make no more than ordinary demands upon people; you don't insist that the sandwich you order for lunch be the most marvelous sandwich ever made, or that the bootblack's shine dazzle the blind, yet the sandwich-maker and the bootblack and millions like them expect the superhuman from you, and finally they'll accept nothing less. Expectation

Engrossing, richly detailed, and terribly haunting

Why are so many great baseball stories essentially tragic ones? This novel is the best baseball novel I've yet read, and I can understand how fans of the novel can consider it a religious experience. It's a story of worship, that most essential of human activities, a baseball fan's worship of the first true immortal of the game. Its details are rich without being overwhelming, its characterization classic and familiar but not trite. The dynamic between the celebrant--the jewel designer Jackie Kapinski--and the celebrated, Christy Mathewson, plays out like Greek myth or biblical narrative, and exposes the need for, and dangers of, someone to believe in.

Great mix of baseball, history, and character development

One of the best baseball novels I have ever read! The author, Eric Rolfe Greenberg, wonderfully interweaves the era in American history before World War II, both baseball and non-baseball, as seen through the eyes of a fictitious immigrant Jewish family with the character development of that family. Every character, including the minor ones, is fully and realistically developed. My only minor criticism is that the denouement following the decision that climaxes the novel was handled somewhat clumsily, but that doesn't detract from this novel's 10 rating. The discerning reader will continue to ask himself two questions long after he has finished the novel: 1) Would I have made the same decision and 2) Who is the Celebrant? From a 1998 perspective, he will also have discovered some ticklish historical irony. My favorite dramatic moment is Giant manager John McGraw's dramatic confrontation with umpire Hunkerin' Hank O'Day after the famous Merkle incident.