Lake Michigan days

It is probably hard to enjoy this new big novel from America without some understanding of the shortstop’s position on the baseball field. But that is easily remedied, thanks to YouTube, where searching for ‘shortstop, fielding’ arouses multiple videos that compete for attention, with stars of the game in their infield position between second and third base, taking ground balls hit at, near, or even away from them, scooping them up, throwing to first base for the out: something the shortstop does six or more times in a game. Besides the catcher, who largely stays put, it is the most demanding field position in baseball, and if you’re going to write a novel about a peerless fielder (the commonplace, in baseball fiction, is to write about a hitter who crushes home runs), then this is the position you’d choose; where when one excels, nothing in baseball is more glamorous, but failure is glaring and ugly.