“Three Nights” in one
Bissinger to visit island
BY CHRIS EDMONDS INDEPENDENT WRITER

Thomas Hobbes never played baseball, if only because his death pre-dated the sport bynearly two centuries. Had he, he mighthave found an affinity between the lifeof man and the sport's staple, the three game series. Both, it seems, are inequal measures nasty, brutish and -most especially - short.

Hobbes absented, author Buzz Bissinger undertook a Leviathanin his own right in December 2002: to capture anddistill the quintessence of a 162-game schedule intoa three-game affair. The resulting effort - "ThreeNights in August" - encapsulates this baseballwatershed and its demand for a clear delineationbetween winner and loser, between victor and vanquished.

"[The three-game series] is timeless, it's finiteand it gives the story an internal, dramatic narrative,"said Bissinger from his home in Pennsylvanialast week.

Bissinger, who spent his childhood summers onNantucket, will be on island on July 18 for a readingand discussion of his works, with a focus on"Three Nights in August." Bissinger has also written"Friday Night Lights," about high school footballin Texas, and "A Prayer for the City," anintensive study of former Philadelphia mayor EdRendell.

His latest work deals with a three-game seriesthat took place between the St. Louis Cardinalsand the Chicago Cubs in August 2003. While heentertains peripheral interjections to supplementthe narrative, he tells the tale mainly through thevantage of Cardinal's manager Tony La Russa. LaRussa, a major league manager since his mid-30s,is at once the archetypical baseball man and hisown antithesis.

"He really is a renaissance man in the gameof baseball," said Bissinger of the man mostknown for popularizing a bullpen populated bysituational specialists. "He has a law degree;he's a vegetarian; he's an animal rights activist;he's a reader."

While so much of the book explores La Russaand his curious, yet ineluctable, affinity to achild's game, "Three Nights in August" is notabout the manager, per se, according to Bissinger.

"It's not a book about Tony La Russa; it's abook about baseball," said Bissinger. "The intentis to take the reader deeper inside the dugout thanany other book has done."

Literary precedent aside, the reader does gaininsights into the mechanisms that propelAmerica's love affair with baseball. The readerencounters a cast of heroes and villains - the greatAlbert Pujols and the much-maligned, thoughever-persistent Cal Eldred among the former, andthe mercurial J.D. Drew and the reviling JoseCanseco among the latter.

The reader typically comes to identify theseand other players by facial characteristics andexpressions, whether in the ways in which particularpitchers style their facial hair or the way LaRussa's lips tighten during games. Bissinger'sattention to physiognomy creates, in the author'swords, "a verbal picture" of what the players,coaches and managers look like.

"The goal of the writer, at least for me, is tosoak up the atmosphere as much as possible so thereader can taste, feel, hear, smell the particularworld you're writing about," he said.

In search of that effect, Bissinger opts for calculatedbrevity, taking the three-game seriesrather than an extended, season-long opus of theCardinals, La Russa and the constituent pieces thatcomprise the baseball season. While the extendedplay format worked in "Friday Night Lights,"Bissinger said that in dealing with professionalsports, his approach needed to be altered.

"Season-in-the-life books at the professionallevel just don't work," he said. "Once a season isover, it's over. Fans of major league teams moveon."

Fans, however, are less inclined to move onduring the throes of the season itself, specificallythe throes of a meeting between two rivals like theCardinals and the Cubs, both of whom were vyingfor play-off position at the time of Bissinger'smost concentrated observations.

The work's cynosure is, in great respect, theseries itself and the ways in which it antagonizes,upsets and confounds. Bissinger refers to thethree-game set as "the perfect drug" because itexits the system as quickly as it enters. Of course,in a season defined incrementally, the next series -the next perfect drug - replaces the one justexpelled.

"That's how Tony views the season: he movesfrom three-game series to three-game series. Youwin as many as you can or you'll go nuts," saidBissinger of the manager's take on baseball's perpetualmotion.

And it is in bearing witness to that moment, ofteetering precariously on the edge of rousing successand crushing failure, that Bissinger finds hislife as a reporter and a writer most rewarding.

"I've been lucky to silently observe the pursuitof perfection," said Bissinger in summation of hiscareer.

Rather than its employ solely in the realm ofsports, that pursuit is universally apparent and itsmetaphor universally applicable, according to theauthor. Such will serve as the primary topic of discussionon Monday.

Although not currently engaged in anotherbook project, Bissinger would not preclude the possibilityof another sports book in the future.

"If I feel in my heart that there's a great story outthere, I don't care what it's about."

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