‘The Grind: Inside Baseball’s Endless Season’
by Barry Svrluga
Blue Rider, 176 pp., $23.95
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” intoned the venerable Wizard of Oz. Those who love baseball may want to heed the Wizard’s warning before opening this book.
It may tell them things about the American pastime they would rather not know. In “The Grind,” Barry Svrluga, a sports writer for The Washington Post, had access to Washington National players and staff, including wives of players, and has compiled an enlightening inside look at the world of professional baseball.
Watching the Nats play on a sunny afternoon, one may envy those frisky fellows who seem to be having fun while making big money. In fact, they are having fun, and most of them are making good money, but they are acutely aware of being at the top of a slippery pyramid. There is a steady drumbeat of personnel turnover due to injuries, poor performance, trades and a host of other factors.
The prospect of sudden removal is a source of constant anxiety to the players, especially those with families who must either uproot themselves from their homes or wave goodbye to daddy for a prolonged period of time.
“Baseball wives are expected to wed at a certain time of year,” Svrluga writes, “to give birth at a certain time of year, to pick up the toys and the car and the dogs and the kids when Dad is sent to the minors or traded midseason.”
The wives are not among the 1,100 people on the Nats’ payroll in addition to the 200 or so players, most of whom toil in the minor leagues. The other employees are kept busy attending to myriad details.
Officially, the baseball season begins with spring training in mid-February and runs through October, but it never really stops. It truly is a relentless grind, but what shines through Svrluga’s story is an abiding love of the game that binds all these disparate characters together over a long season — and connects them with the fans.
