Under the March Sun

With the new Major League Baseball season officially starting early this morning in Japan, I knew it was time to finish this book- Charles Fountain's Under the March Sun: The History of Spring Training. Backing up to about a month ago, I stumbled upon an old Visa gift card, prompting me to go on a quick Amazon shopping spree. Along with a few other items, I reloaded my backlog with a stack of new games, ending up with about $6.50 left over. Apparently I was wrong but I was under the impression that this couldn't be combined with my regular credit card and would thus have to find stuff to buy for under $6.50, so I naturally checked out the "100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or less" and bought three that seemed potentially interesting. I'm not going to hold any of these books to particularly high standards- they are likely very cheap for a reason. Anyway Under the March Sun is first in a three part series of cheap non-fiction, although it will probably be a while until I get to the others. March Sun tells exactly what its subtitle claims- the history of spring training. The problem with this is that spring training isn't really all that interesting. I found that at the start of the book, when Fountain covered the old-timey history up through the twenties or so, most of the information was based on anecdotes, which actually made it a pretty interesting read- the players and management were forced to play in the cheapest fields and sleep in old army barracks, and the tension between the professional ball players and the citizens of small towns in Florida led to some pretty funny episodes. Another decent chapter told of the shockwaves Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier sent throughout spring training- it was hard enough to play on a big league team relatively progressive cities, but the towns in the deep south were far behind in their views and it made for a thought-provoking read to see how different a world spring training could be for a black athlete. Slightly less interesting were a few chapters based around the history of specific teams' spring training facilities over the last few decades- the lightning in a bottle of Dodgertown, the insanity of Red Sox in Fort Myers, and the way the Astros of all teams managed to ring in a new era of professionalism in spring training. Unfortunately between these chapters of slight intrigue there were plenty of chapters that delt with the nitty-gritty of the finance and dealings that got different teams to different spring training facilities. This wasn't really something I cared about, so it made the book drag pretty badly. In a moment of hilariously terrible quality control, the entire last chapter is written twice somehow. Finally, the last third of the book or so contains an informative appendix of straight information for anyone looking for some facts. I can't imagine there's a better place to look if you're interested in the history of spring training, I just also can't imagine there are many people that interested in the history of spring training.