Rabbit, remembered

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite writers, the late and great John Updike.

He was prolific in his day, writing 20 novels and a ton of pieces (short stories, criticism), mostly for The New Yorker. His best-known works were the "Rabbit" novels about, what else, a regular guy named Rabbit Angstrom.

Updike became and remained life-long friends with author John Cheever. Despite a rocky relationship at times, their fondness for one another was such that when Cheever was erroneously informed sometime in the mid-1970s by a reporter that Updike had died, he got out of bed, wept and wrote a moving tribute to his old friend.

Here is the complete episode of Updike and Cheever's joint appearance on Dick Cavett's PBS program in the early 1980s.

Updike by reputation remained a "regular guy" despite the fact he rose to the heights of American letters. He found early on he didn't like living in New York City and moved his family to Ipswich, Mass., near Boston.

Remembers Garrison Keillor in The Writer's Almanac:

"After his death of lung cancer in 2009, many of his neighbors remembered him as a down-to-earth fellow, a participant in several civic organizations, a guy in corduroy trousers who played regular poker with the boys."

Just before he died, I remarked to a friend after a Super Bowl party, "You know, I'd love to go to one of these things and, just once, hear someone discussing Updike short stories."

I'm still waiting.

A gift in the mail

My baseball season tickets arrived in the mail yesterday.

It is my one splurge; it is my passion. I love the game. I love sitting in Section C at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, in the springtime sun of a Sunday afternoon, watching the shadows stretch across the field.

I love keeping score. I love watching the girls retrieve the bats. I love the symmetry of it -- three strikes, three outs, three times three innings.

I have told you how much I need an escape to stay sane. Our national game is just that.

And it's funny. As my enthusiasm has waned for the major leagues, I have come to adore the minor leagues and college baseball. I cover high school baseball, too. I told somebody once that the only thing I want named after me when I am gone is the press box at the Halls High baseball field.

If I could wave a magic wand and do whatever I wanted, I would steal Roger Angell's life -- at least part of it. William Shawn sent him to spring training one season in the early 1960s and said, "Write about what you see." Thus Angell has done in the New Yorker, on and off, for the last 40-some years.

I often think that the modern day sportswriter, feeling the pressure of working a daily beat, misses the story. They have to cover the game unfolding on the field. How many times Chipper Jones hits a home run. How many strikeouts Tim Hudson racked up in his last outing. And so forth.

I once watched Herman the usher dance and yell in the section in which I was sitting, somewhere along the third base line, at Turner Field. I had the story written before I returned to the keyboard. The Braves lost. And yet Herman smiled.

One opening day, I watched the sky turn from peaceful azure to brilliant pink. Seventy-three degrees. "Sweet Caroline" on the loudspeaker and an empty seat next to mine. I thought of a girl, big brown eyes and dark hair, and wished she were sitting to my left. These are the moments I remember.

John Updike wrote the best piece ever composed on baseball, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." Guess how? The subject of an interview stood him up. So, he went to Fenway Park on an impulse, bought a ticket, sat in the stands, and wrote about Ted Williams' last at-bat. It was quite good.

Angell is a master, too. Oh, and W.P. Kinsella, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (I'm still thinking about submitting a piece -- just to see if I can get accepted), wrote a magical little novel, "Shoeless Joe," that became a magical little film, "Field of Dreams."

Yes, I am sitting here in my living room, watching snow melt from the patio table, dreaming of spring. I can smell the peanuts and Cracker Jack, I can see the shadows stretch across the field, I can see that fellow in Section C, Row 4, Seat 3, losing himself in the national game.

Six more weeks of winter? Maybe. For me, though, it will arrive on Feb. 20.

Good-bye to all that

And so John Updike is dead, and if you at first ask "Who?" or "Who cares?", pull up a chair and let me tell you about a literary hero.

I discovered Updike in college, in a freshman English course, when we were assigned to read a brilliant short story called "A&P." His writing was concise and sharp; his subject matter was something to which an 18-year-old male could relate -- watching girls in bathing suits.

A few years later, after I began taking the New Yorker, I gravitated toward his work. I would look forward to his stories like one looks forward to a winter snow. It wouldn't happen often, but when it did, one savored it.

I spent a memorable Memorial Day at the lake a few years ago, imbibing, talking about life with friends, and sitting on the deck as the sun set, enjoying his latest short story. I remember wondering whether I will churn out consistently well-written work when I'm his age.

He liked to write about sex in suburbia. And, if that seems dirty to you, it wasn't. Updike treated it with honesty, hunting Hemingway's one true sentence, which should be any writer's goal.

I bought his memoir, "Self-Consciousness," for a buck-fifty at McKay's last summer. Just the other night, I was skimming one of his poems in the New Yorker, and reading his article on Ted Williams' last game before bedtime. I won't say I have tried to copy his style in my own work, but through his example I have tried to write with more clarity and honesty.

Don't know why I feel as if I've lost an old friend. But I do.

It's the end of an era, a good-bye to all that tip of the cap to the time when literature seemed a central part of our consciousness.

And so John Updike is dead. I feel like a part of me is too.

The long winter

It's happening early this year.

Usually I'm good until at least mid-January. But it started last night, on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner, which had been peppered with talk about the Detroit Tigers and our national game.

I love football. I've learned to enjoy college basketball. The NBA? Is that thing still around?

But baseball is and will forever be my first love. I miss it when it's gone. I sit sometimes by the fire on a cold winter's night and dream of springtime, when the game will return to break my heart.

Last night I pulled out the famous John Updike essay on Ted Williams' final game. (I wish I had Updike's talent and vocabulary. But I digress.) I had printed it off the computer during the season, but hadn't gotten around to reading it.

I thought about that long-ago drizzly September afternoon in 1960, back when baseball really was the national pastime, and felt a tinge of nostalgia for something I've never known. I also felt the longing begin way down deep inside for sunny afternoons, green hues blurred with azure skies, the sublime beauty of the 6-4-3 double play.

It's going to be a long winter. That's OK. The forced hibernation makes the spring awakening that much sweeter.