The Opposite Field

by Jesse Katz

Book Overview

Here is one of the most remarkable, ambitious, and utterly original memoirs of this generation, a story of the losing and finding of self, of sex and love and fatherhood and the joy of language, of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030740711X
• ISBN13: 9780307407115
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 337 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

What a Wonderful Experience it has been to read this BOOK and share in this LIFE!

Friends: When I selected this book I did not understand that it had a lot to do with baseball and I thought I would hate it. GUESS WHAT? The book is not really about baseball but about THE LOVE BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS SON; and THAT my friends, overwhelmed me and stole my heart! THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL BOOK!!! I repeat THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL BOOK!!! First of all, the author Jesse Katz, IS ONE OF THE MOST TALENTED AUTHORS I HAVE EVER READ!!! WOW!!! And then, his personal story is so honest and open, and sincere and moving, that you have to care about him and his son! IT IS A GREAT READ until the last few chapters and then it starts to fall a part a bit but I understand why. It is because the lives of Jessie the author and Max his son are not over yet, and so the book can not really end, it can only stop or pause. I hope Jesse allows me and all of you to know how the stories end. BUY THIS BOOK and DO SHARE IT WITH SENSITIVE FRIENDS. Jesse Katz: This book is wonderful and I love you and Max very much. I wish you both every blessings.

A Love Story Between Father and Son

Having been involved with youth baseball for over 40 years (no kids of my own) I was instantly drawn to this book by the title and the photo of a boy on the cover. Author Jesse Katz recounts his years of playing the role of Commissioner and coach of his son's baseball team through his elementary and middle school years in school. He took a dying program in Monterey Park, California, and volunteered his services for La Loma Park while dealing with disgruntled parents ("I thought this was for the kids."), budgets, other coaches, and hundreds of kids involved in the program. This is not your stereotypical story of a parent reliving his baseball life through his son. I see this as a love story between father and coach Jesse and his son Max. Author and father Jesse is an understanding coach who would put the interests of his players ahead of any of his own ego satisfaction. We get to see how their player draft is carried out and manipulated each year to keep desired players on their team from one year to the next. The author served as Commissioner for four years which meant dealing with parents of all types, some who want to be in charge without having the responsibility of being in charge. We see how Max changes as he grows older. He has his screw-ups as all kids do, but manages to redirect his goals in a more satisfactory direction. We also see a high school basketball coach who demands commitment for his sport, but fails to see that Max also has a commitment to his baseball team for one final game. This sounds all too familiar. Author Katz also recounts his relationship with his divorced parents, his divorced wife, and some unsuccessful relationships with other women he met through his life's experiences. Photographs would have been a nice addition to the book. In regard to a coach's experiences with youth baseball I have found that the real trophies are not the dust collectors that sit on a shelf. The real trophies are the memories you have of the players you coached.

the playing fields of Monterey Park

Although this memoir centers on a father's relationship with his son, through baseball, it's far more than that. To save the Little League he winds up managing one of the teams, and the league, and the park. It becomes a number of narrative threads: his son, his Nicaraguan wife, a troubled stepson as well, his feisty and vivid mother, who is mayor of Portland. The story needs the reader's full attention, since Katz leaps back and forth in time and location, in mood and in characters. The push-pull relationships, and rivalries, are just as personal in his dealings with other coaches, with league players' parents, as they are with his extended family. The personal troubles he observes, or confronts, get to be far darker than what you'd expect from a book ostensibly about Little League. It's fortunate that the author's prose is direct and terse, because the story is really something of a saga, a wide-screen story of all the people and worlds he encounters as a young and middle-aged man. It's a much larger story than its cover would suggest, and all of it in 300 pages or so. It's remarkable and forthright, and well worth the reader's time.

Difficult Journeys Make the Best Stories

The great strength of this memoir is that it doesn't gin up larger-than-life characters and then give them tidy arcs that end in redemption. The protagonist makes plenty of mistakes along the way. His strengths and weaknesses are always on display, but not in the sense of false self-deprecation. He has a sense of humor about the ups and downs of being a single father, he is by turns patient and impatient with circumstances. He works his ass off to rebuild a Little League in Monterey Park on the fringes of L.A., but you're not always sure why he would go to the trouble. Surely altruism can't be the only reason for spending so many hours, for neglecting the unwashed dishes and a journalism job. The best answer for why he would do this, and the heart of the book, is his love for his son. And if love is the glue that keeps us all from sinking into despair, then that is the best thing about the story: It is honest about love, about its blind spots. Katz doesn't have to paint sappy scenes of father and son hugging on a pitcher's mound for us to see that Max is the center of his existence. But there also is a cruel truth of life: You can love one person so much that you neglect others. You can believe so much in a cause, a baseball league, for instance, that you lose sight of everything else. This is an adventure story: a family escaping the Nazis over the Pyrenees, a young girl listening to baseball on the radio in a Harlem apartment, that same girl growing up to become the mayor of Portland, Oregon. Her son moving to L.A. and becoming a gang reporter, marrying a Nicaraguan immigrant and having a son. If you're a baseball fan, especially if you grew up playing the sport, then this book will probably be a nostalgic one. But it's also a lot more than that.

A Father, a Son, Baseball, and Much More

Jesse Katz's memoir is not about baseball, though baseball is central to the story. "The Opposite Field" is really about his relationships with the people closest to him in his life: his parents, his (ex) wife, his lovers, and the most important person in his world: his son Max. This is the story of Jesse's years as a baseball coach and commissioner for the La Loma Sports Club, the youth sports association in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park he and Max call home. Interwoven in the narrative of these years are the stories of his tumultuous marriage, his often-troubled relationship with his stepson, and his complicated search for love. Also prominent are memories of his youth in Portland, Oregon and his remarkable parents, his father Mel, an artist; and his mother Vera, who served three terms as Portland's mayor after distinguished service in the Oregon legislature. At the center of the narrative, and of Jesse's heart, is Max, the only child of his marriage. Although the grander themes of baseball as a shared ritual passed from father to son are explored, this is not an urban field of dreams (though there is a season finale worthy of the film version of "The Natural".) It's a difficult and messy place, populated by people with broken families struggling to maintain stability in the face of economic issues, substance abuse and a myriad of other problems. If things weren't complicated enough, hostile neighbors, corrupt vendors and cultural barriers are also part of the mix. Through it all, Jesse struggles manfully to keep the baseball program afloat while constantly wondering if he's doing right by his son. He stepped up to save the baseball program when it was teetering on the brink of oblivion; yet it extracts a steep price in time and energy. Katz is a senior writer at Los Angeles Magazine and has shared two Pulitzer Prizes. Readers of "The Opposite Field" will understand why. He has a gift for painting compelling word portraits of the people and places that have shaped his life. This is a story that's at turns funny, moving, sad and heartwarming. A first-rate memoir from start to finish.--William C. Hall