Michael Steinberg’s love affair with baseball began at Ebbets Field, cheering on the Brooklyn Dodgers. The heartbreak — often a side effect of great loves — arrived in his teenage years as he battled sadistic and anti-Semitic coaches to find his place on the pitcher’s mound. By sheer coincidence, he followed the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958, where fastpitch softball (of all things) helped salvage an otherwise miserable freshman year at UCLA.
In Elegy for Ebbets, Steinberg explores the ups and downs of a life that’s at least run parallel to baseball for some 70 years. His player-manager days on Michigan-based fastpitch teams provided an outlet from the stuffy halls of academia while nearly making a softball widow of his wife. Confronting middle-age health problems, Steinberg looked back to his baseball youth in writing to become an award-winning memoirist. Three of those essays, including the title one, were recognized in Best American Essays. Four new essays round out the collection.