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Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport
In the pantheon of great sports literature, not a few poets have tried their hand at paying tribute to their love affair with the game -- Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams among them. This elegant volume collects Donald Hall's prose about sports, concentrating on baseball but extending to basketball, football and Ping-Pong. The essays are a wonderful mixture of reminiscence and observation, of baseball and of fathers and sons, of how a game binds people together and bridges generations.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Donald Hall
179 books199 followersDonald Hall was considered one of the major American poets of his generation.
His poetry explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained early success with his first collection, Exiles and Marriages (1955), his later poetry is generally regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall used simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall built a respected body of prose that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children’s books. Hall, who lived on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, was also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.
Born in 1928, Hall grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. The Hall household was marked by a volatile father and a mother who was “steadier, maybe with more access to depths because there was less continual surface,” as Hall explained in an essay for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS). “To her I owe my fires, to my father my tears. I owe them both for their reading.” By age twelve, Hall had discovered the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe: “I read Poe and my life changed,” he remarked in CAAS. Another strong influence in Hall’s early years was his maternal great-grandfather’s farm in New Hampshire, where he spent many summers. Decades later, he bought the same farm and settled there as a full-time writer and poet.
Hall attended Philips Exeter Academy and had his first poem published at age 16. He was a participant at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, where he met Robert Frost, that same year. From Exeter, Hall went to Harvard University, attending class alongside Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery; he also studied for a year with Archibald MacLeish. Hall earned a BLitt from Oxford University and won the Newdigate contest for his poem “Exile,” one of the few Americans ever to win the prize. Returning to the United States, Hall spent a year at Stanford, studying under the poet-critic Yvor Winters, before returning to Harvard to join the prestigious Society of Fellows. It was there that Hall assembled Exiles and Marriages, a tightly-structured collection crafted in rigid rhyme and meter. In 1953, Hall also became the poetry editor of the Paris Review, a position he held until 1961. In 1957 he took a position as assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975. While at Michigan, Hall met the young Jane Kenyon. They later married and, when Hall’s grandmother, who owned Eagle Pond Farm, passed away, bought the farm, left teaching, and moved there together. The collections Kicking the Leaves (1978) and The Happy Man (1986) reflect Hall’s happiness at his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories and links to his past. Many of the poems explore and celebrate the continuity between generations. The Happy Man won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize. Hall’s next book, The One Day (1988), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A long poem that meditates on the on-set of old age, The One Day, like much of Hall’s early work, takes shape under formal pressure: composed of 110 stanzas, split over three sections, its final sections are written in blank verse. The critic Frederick Pollack praised the book as possibly “the last masterpiece of American Modernism. Any poet who seeks to surpass this genre should study it; any reader who has lost interest in contemporary poetry should read it.” Old and New Poems (1990) contains several traditional poems from earlier collections, as well as more innovative verses not previously published. “Baseball,” included in The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993), is the poet’s ode to the great American pastime and is structured around t
His poetry explores the longing for a more bucolic past and reflects the poet’s abiding reverence for nature. Although Hall gained early success with his first collection, Exiles and Marriages (1955), his later poetry is generally regarded as the best of his career. Often compared favorably with such writers as James Dickey, Robert Bly, and James Wright, Hall used simple, direct language to evoke surrealistic imagery. In addition to his poetry, Hall built a respected body of prose that includes essays, short fiction, plays, and children’s books. Hall, who lived on the New Hampshire farm he visited in summers as a boy, was also noted for the anthologies he has edited and is a popular teacher, speaker, and reader of his own poems.
Born in 1928, Hall grew up in Hamden, Connecticut. The Hall household was marked by a volatile father and a mother who was “steadier, maybe with more access to depths because there was less continual surface,” as Hall explained in an essay for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS). “To her I owe my fires, to my father my tears. I owe them both for their reading.” By age twelve, Hall had discovered the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe: “I read Poe and my life changed,” he remarked in CAAS. Another strong influence in Hall’s early years was his maternal great-grandfather’s farm in New Hampshire, where he spent many summers. Decades later, he bought the same farm and settled there as a full-time writer and poet.
Hall attended Philips Exeter Academy and had his first poem published at age 16. He was a participant at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, where he met Robert Frost, that same year. From Exeter, Hall went to Harvard University, attending class alongside Adrienne Rich, Robert Bly, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery; he also studied for a year with Archibald MacLeish. Hall earned a BLitt from Oxford University and won the Newdigate contest for his poem “Exile,” one of the few Americans ever to win the prize. Returning to the United States, Hall spent a year at Stanford, studying under the poet-critic Yvor Winters, before returning to Harvard to join the prestigious Society of Fellows. It was there that Hall assembled Exiles and Marriages, a tightly-structured collection crafted in rigid rhyme and meter. In 1953, Hall also became the poetry editor of the Paris Review, a position he held until 1961. In 1957 he took a position as assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975. While at Michigan, Hall met the young Jane Kenyon. They later married and, when Hall’s grandmother, who owned Eagle Pond Farm, passed away, bought the farm, left teaching, and moved there together. The collections Kicking the Leaves (1978) and The Happy Man (1986) reflect Hall’s happiness at his return to the family farm, a place rich with memories and links to his past. Many of the poems explore and celebrate the continuity between generations. The Happy Man won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize. Hall’s next book, The One Day (1988), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. A long poem that meditates on the on-set of old age, The One Day, like much of Hall’s early work, takes shape under formal pressure: composed of 110 stanzas, split over three sections, its final sections are written in blank verse. The critic Frederick Pollack praised the book as possibly “the last masterpiece of American Modernism. Any poet who seeks to surpass this genre should study it; any reader who has lost interest in contemporary poetry should read it.” Old and New Poems (1990) contains several traditional poems from earlier collections, as well as more innovative verses not previously published. “Baseball,” included in The Museum of Clear Ideas (1993), is the poet’s ode to the great American pastime and is structured around t
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 18, 2022
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This was a bedside book that I wound up reading elsewhere. Donald Hall is a poet who also loves baseball. The book is a compendium of baseball and some other sports essays written between, I believe, 1974 and 1982. The major piece here, the title work, tells of Hall’s spring training with the Pittsburgh Pirates. It is quite nice, warm, the sort of writing that makes one feel comfortable with the writer. There are smaller pieces in here having to do with the meaning of life, old-timers games, writing in baseball. Poetry informs his style, enriching the work in places to the level of literature. Although not a great book—there is enough landscape bereft of visual satisfaction—it is a satisfying one.
Harvard and Oxford graduate Donald Hall was the Poet Laureate of the United States in 2006. He wrote more than fifty books, including fifteen books of poetry, several memoirs, and some childrens books. He won a Caldecott for one of those, Ox-Cart Man. Hall passed away in June 2018 at age 89.
January 6, 2016
The title of this collection of essays so appealed to me in the late 80s (I’d just become a father) that I bought the book and let it languish suggestively on my shelf for 25 years, the length of time it’s taken for me to learn what it really means to toss a ball (and Frisbee) with my own son.
While I enjoyed most of the essays, they never came up to the potent evocative level of the book’s title. Apparently Hall never had a son, only a daughter, with whom he apparently never played catch. The father-son configuration was in my case more positive when I was a boy, and in the few (3?) outings with my father, I recall a satisfying volley of steady back and forth, with only occasional wayward throws and scampering retrievals from our neighbor’s adjoining yards. There was a thrill of mastery and surging strength in my play with my dad as a boy; even at age 10 or 11 I felt I could power the ball through him and that I had to take a little bit off my throws to ensure he’d continue to throw with me. I was certain that I’d been impressive. Throwing with my own son was all prodding and pushing on my part, as he had no interest and little desire to please me with any sort of effort. What he got from these sessions I do not even want to contemplate, and we never threw together more than three times. (Later, we threw with a bit more focus when he was twenty, and it made a difference, but he was still not interested in the art of it, only in the being together, the talking between throws.) Sum total for all these outings with father and son, maybe just shy of ten. A whole novel could be written around these faint etchings in the insubstantial wax of memory.
…Which I suppose I wanted Hall to do more of. His essays are all appropriately appreciative of the art of the game, the athleticism, the skills involved, etc. etc., but it’s from the perspective of the boy who was himself never quite good enough to make the team. (One essay does cover a period of time when he became expert at ping pong, beating all and sundry until he advanced to the next competitive level of tournament play and found he could barely score. There is in that essay something of the cockiness and sureness that comes of playing with confidence, a sense of mastery and youthful invincibility.)
There is in another essay a roll call of authors and works about baseball that cites the Ring Lardner, Mark Harris, Robert Coover (author of the incomparable metafictional The Universal Baseball Association: Henry J. Waugh, Proprietor), and even Philip Roth (and of course there are the appreciators: Grantland Rice, Tom Boswell, Roger Kahn, Roger Angell, et al.).
So, while Hall didn’t quite write the book I wanted him to, but it’s still entertaining (and nostalgic), if you like baseball and basketball, vintage 70s and early 80s, when he was doing most of his work.
While I enjoyed most of the essays, they never came up to the potent evocative level of the book’s title. Apparently Hall never had a son, only a daughter, with whom he apparently never played catch. The father-son configuration was in my case more positive when I was a boy, and in the few (3?) outings with my father, I recall a satisfying volley of steady back and forth, with only occasional wayward throws and scampering retrievals from our neighbor’s adjoining yards. There was a thrill of mastery and surging strength in my play with my dad as a boy; even at age 10 or 11 I felt I could power the ball through him and that I had to take a little bit off my throws to ensure he’d continue to throw with me. I was certain that I’d been impressive. Throwing with my own son was all prodding and pushing on my part, as he had no interest and little desire to please me with any sort of effort. What he got from these sessions I do not even want to contemplate, and we never threw together more than three times. (Later, we threw with a bit more focus when he was twenty, and it made a difference, but he was still not interested in the art of it, only in the being together, the talking between throws.) Sum total for all these outings with father and son, maybe just shy of ten. A whole novel could be written around these faint etchings in the insubstantial wax of memory.
…Which I suppose I wanted Hall to do more of. His essays are all appropriately appreciative of the art of the game, the athleticism, the skills involved, etc. etc., but it’s from the perspective of the boy who was himself never quite good enough to make the team. (One essay does cover a period of time when he became expert at ping pong, beating all and sundry until he advanced to the next competitive level of tournament play and found he could barely score. There is in that essay something of the cockiness and sureness that comes of playing with confidence, a sense of mastery and youthful invincibility.)
There is in another essay a roll call of authors and works about baseball that cites the Ring Lardner, Mark Harris, Robert Coover (author of the incomparable metafictional The Universal Baseball Association: Henry J. Waugh, Proprietor), and even Philip Roth (and of course there are the appreciators: Grantland Rice, Tom Boswell, Roger Kahn, Roger Angell, et al.).
So, while Hall didn’t quite write the book I wanted him to, but it’s still entertaining (and nostalgic), if you like baseball and basketball, vintage 70s and early 80s, when he was doing most of his work.
September 14, 2018
Donald Hall is one of my all time favorite authors. He writes with an empathy for his subject, whatever that may be, that is often missed by others. I picked this book up at a local Goodwill upon seeing his authorship. While the book was typically excellent Hall writing, I feel the title is misleading. Being a father of three kids, two of them boys of which sport is already an early interest, this book had nothing to do with the relationship between fathers, sons, and sports. In this and other books by Hall, his relationship with his son seems like one of his greatest mistakes. I can't review the book poorly for not being what I wanted it to be instead of what it is. It is an excellent book on sports. I just wanted it to be more than it is. But that's my fault, not the authors.
March 18, 2018
I enjoyed this collection of essays or converted columns, mostly about baseball. It speaks to the appeal of baseball in a universal way, that was true 30-40 years ago and today as well. The people are a bit dated, and some of the criticism of other writers is quite harsh. Some of the pieces could have benefited from brevity.
November 12, 2017
This was great and even though I don't really read poetry I want to read more of Donald Hall's nonfiction.
August 31, 2021
4.5 stars
a wonderful collection of essays on baseball, would recommend several for a sense of good prose writing on sport
a wonderful collection of essays on baseball, would recommend several for a sense of good prose writing on sport
June 3, 2025
No one writes about sports (especially baseball) better than Donald Hall did. Most baseball writing is ruined by a lack of restraint; Hall’s writing is perfect in its zen-like simplicity.
June 22, 2025
Not sure I 100% finished it but most of it was like eh , whatever... the title caught my attention but overall it wasn't that interesting
Read
August 4, 2008I can't even give this book a rating, as I only lasted about 50 pages. I guess I expected more of a father-son, baseball-America-type tribute. The book is advertised as a series of short stories about fathers and sons and sports. The first passage disappoints, as it is almost a diary entry of his trip to the Pirates Spring Training back in the 70's. There are perhaps two pages in this first story where he talks about his late father's quest to play minor league ball (in particular one game where his father played well and was offered a pro contract), but finishes his thought by saying how he may or may not have imagined that that ever occurred. Somewhat strange.
I stuck it out through his first story, but when the second one began as dryly as the first ended, I put it down.
In fairness to Hall, he is no doubt a gifted poet and a master of the dictionary. He's also a fellow NH-erite, so I'd rather not give him a low rating just because our styles did not mesh. But do know that storytelling is very different than writing poetry, the latter at which Hall excels. But until my literary on-deck circle is empty, I probably won't pick this book up again.
I stuck it out through his first story, but when the second one began as dryly as the first ended, I put it down.
In fairness to Hall, he is no doubt a gifted poet and a master of the dictionary. He's also a fellow NH-erite, so I'd rather not give him a low rating just because our styles did not mesh. But do know that storytelling is very different than writing poetry, the latter at which Hall excels. But until my literary on-deck circle is empty, I probably won't pick this book up again.
October 2, 2015
I loved the recent Hall book Essays after Eighty. With this book touted to feature some of his writing on his beloved baseball, my beloved baseball, I held out great hope. This book, however, was a bit uneven with a couple of highlights and more mediocre writing than special. The long piece, which is the title piece, is interesting. Certainly his experiences as an out of shape writer participating in Spring Training with the Pittsburgh Pirates offered a chuckle here and there but the better parts were when he relayed his personal memories of his baseball experiences. A significant excerpt of his book written with Dock Ellis titled The Country of Baseball appears in the book and gives a good portrait of the controversial pitcher. Perhaps the strongest piece was his paean entitled O Fenway Park.
Not his best collection.
Not his best collection.
November 7, 2010
Lovely book. Great Fathers' Day gift for all you sons out there who have a Dad who plays/played catch with you.
And, play catch with him. He'd really enjoy it!
And, play catch with him. He'd really enjoy it!
March 27, 2011
A really, really good book, very enjoyable if you have or ever were a son!
May 24, 2015
Terrific. Although I only read the baseball portion of the book (which is most of it)...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews