Emma Span has barely had an at-bat as a big-time baseball writer, but her memoir, 90% of the Game is Half Mental (Villard), clears the bases as an insightful addition to anyone’s roster of sports books.
Span, who grew up in Montclair and now lives in Brooklyn (we forgive her), had a brief run covering the Yankees and Mets for the Village Voice starting in September 2006. Despite this entry on her résumé (she also blogs on baseball), she never fully crossed over from obsessed fan to jaded professional observer. Nor did this self-confessed geek ever feel comfortable elbowing her way through the testosterone-charged locker rooms where baseball writers earn their keep. (Span’s take on interviewing near-naked athletes like “a very timid bird of prey” is reason enough to plunge into this book.)
Yale graduate Span, 28, can turn a phrase with the ease of Jeter and Cano turning the double play. Any fan will recognize the breathlessness of Span’s first visit to Yankee Stadium (“so much bigger than I’d expected”) and her disquiet about the team’s new ball yard, where players’ faces loom on the giant scoreboard screen “like those Easter Island heads.” Then there was the moment she “froze like a fawn” coming face-to-face with her heartthrob, Paul O’Neill.
Span doesn’t stress much about steroids and video replays; she’d rather meditate on the emotional aspects of the sport. Despite Tom Hanks’s famous pronouncement about baseball and crying, she reminds us that baseball is “full to the gills of crying.” She romanticizes about riding the subway to the game, where “odd slices of community” develop among disparate folks who share only the love of a team. Not bad for a rookie.