Donald (Skip) Hays Hits for the Cycle in the Dixie Association
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Donald (Skip) Hays Hits for the Cycle In The Dixie Association Charles Chappell i n a recent issue of Aethlon Robert Hamblin ingeniously employs a pitching metaphor as a means of precisely interpreting the dazzling array of experi ments in narration characteristic of the baseball fiction ofW. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and sundry hardball short stories. Hamblin clearly admires Kinsella's array of literary pitches, such as the author's "curve ball, that spin of distortion that fiction puts upon straight fact" (4). But Hamblin reserves his most lavish critical praise for Kinsella's adroit use of a figurative forkball (also called a split-fingered fastball), citing an episode from the story "How I got My Nickname" in which "a detail that appears on the surface to be a fact (fastball) turns out on closer inspection to be a fiction (curve)—in other words, a split-fingered fastball" (9). Hamblin's trenchant analysis of Kinsella's primary talents as a writer—the achievements of "indirection, subtlety, deception, and suspense" (1)—links these talents with analagous skills displayed in ballparks around the U. S. A. by baseball's most accomplished pitchers. By the end of his article, Rapid Robert Hamblin has presented a cogent argument for naming Kinsella the Cy Young Award winner of literary mound aces. Hamblin's concept of an author as a pitcher also triggers a question in the cluttered brain cells of a devoted fan of baseball narratives. If Kinsella is the dominating authorial hurler of his genre and era, what writer is worthy of grabbing a bat and facing this forkball artist? Could Bernard (Buntin' Bemie) Malamud borrow Roy Hobbs's magic bat"Wonderboy" and stand a chance at the plate against wily W. P.? How about Fast Philip Roth, suiting up with some of his mistreated and scatter-hitting Ruppert Mundys from The Great American 50 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994 Novel? Must we journey all the way back to "Earnest" Ernie L. Thayer in the preceding century and allow him to atone for Casey's historic failure by his bravely stepping in to face Kinsella's assorted arm speeds and junk balls? A scouting expedition through recent baseball literature eventually leads to the discovery of one Donald (Skip) Hays, novelist, editor, and professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, as the literary batter most capable of hypothetically getting his share of hits against the superior pitching of Kinsella.1 In his one rowdy and invigorating baseball novel, The Dixie Association, Hays manages to pull off a daring feat highly unusual in any literary genre: he includes within one set of book covers four interrelated but distinct narratives, or separate dimensions of meaning. Read ers of the novel can comprehend the initial level of meaning and be rewarded with intellectually and emotionally satisfying reading experiences. But if such readers become aware that a second level of significance exists, then a third, and then a fourth, they will be more bountifully rewarded and perhaps will more fully appreciate Hays's signal achievement in this his first published book. Slugging Skip Hays, then, pulls off in The Dixie Association that feat rare both in the art of playing actual baseball and in the act of creating a work of baseball literature: he hits for the cycle, with his symbolic single, double, triple, and home run representing the four separate but interrelated narrative levels found in the novel. Because of Hays's demonstrated prowess at the authorial home plate, the prospect of his batting against Kinsella looms as the literary hitting-pitching duel of the decade.2 SINGLE In the inaugural issue of Aethlon (then entitled Arete), critic Michael Oriard defines a "good sports novel" as one which fulfills three criteria: the book is "deeply about the sport itself"; the players of the sport "are particular kinds of people whose necessary concerns and activities touch their culture in impor tant ways"; and the book "exploits the potential inherent" in its specific sport (14). On its primary level, as a ringing line-drive two-hop single to the outfield, The Dixie Association is to its essential core a novel about baseball, a book that irrefutably fulfills the first and third of Oriard's criteria. The Dixie Association recounts the adventures during one full season of the Arkansas Reds, a Class AA team playing out of Little Rock. A pulsating pennant race that is decided in the final inning of the concluding game of the year provides momentum for the novel's plot and furnishes hours of pleasurable suspense for readers. Donald Hays has written about the game played between the foul lines as only a veteran hardball player credibly could. A native of the western Arkansas border country near Van Buren, Hays played baseball during the summer months as he grew up and was a member of his college's varsity squad.3 After he had decided to try tobecome a novelist, Hays lived near the Ozark Mountains town of Mountainburg and played on a local amateur team made Chappell / Donald (Skip) Hayes 51 up of "truck drivers, insurance salesmen, old hippies, and just about every kind of character you can imagine," including "a shortstop who had served two terms in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary— The only thing that all of us had in common was that we liked to play baseball and were willing to go almost anywhere to do that" (Chappell and Crowder 60). This colorful group of proletarians and misfits eventually provided Hays with the inspiration and the core material for his first novel: "I looked around for a while for material for another novel, and suddenly realized, 'Why, you dummy! You've been playing on a baseball team full of wonderful characters, and somehow or the other this is the material for your novel. You got to just find a way to use that'" (59-60). Hays soon decided that "the strongest and best voice I could use" (60) as narrator for the novel would be one of the ballplayers who becomes intimately involved in the on-field strategy and tension of each game and in the drama of the pennant race, so the author invented Hog Durham, modeling him in part on the ex-convict teammate from Oklahoma.I * 4 Durham is released early from a sentence for armed robbery so that he can join the Arkansas Reds, play first base, and bat in the clean-up slot. As chief storyteller, Hog Durham fills this colorful novel with bawdy witticisms, irreverent invective, and probing self analysis. But author Hays manages to hit the single of his cycle with Hog by using this narrator as the repository and chief communicator of an insider's wealth of baseball knowledge. Hog Durham describes several episodes in which his keen powers of observation allow him to outsmart a pitcher. For example, during a pivoted game with the league opponent Selma Americans, Durham spots a revealing tendency telegraphed by the opposing pitcher, and he reaps the benefits: I kept studying Shelton and I saw that whenever he needed an out pitch, he'd either cut the ball or scuff it. That was the pitch he used on both Cantwell and me. It's easy enough to throw. You just hold the ball in your hand with the cut or scuffed side opposite to the way you want it to break. Then you throw it like a half-assed fastball and it'll break anywhere from four to eight inches. It's hard as hell to hit because you can't pick up the spin on it the way you can with a curve or slider. I figured the smart thing for me to do would be to lay off that pitch until I had two strikes on me. That worked when I led off the fifth. Shelton threw me one that jumped in at me and I took it for a strike, but then he fed me a regular curve, just off the outside comer but up a little, and I stuck it in the gap in right-center. The ball took a righteous hop off the fence and I rolled into third, winded and proud. (178-179) 52 Aethlon XI:2 / Spring 1994 Later in the same game Hog lures Shelton and Talmadge, the opposing battery, into a costly miscalculation: When I got back into the box, I crowded the plate more than I usually do and leaned forward just enough to make Talmadge think I was concentrating on the outside comer. They fell for it. Shelton threw me a pitch almost identical to the one he'd started me off with. I stepped in the bucket, saw the pitch start to break, felt my power travel from legs to hips to shoulders to hands, and head down, eyes wide, saw the perfect instant, hickory on horsehide, and heard the sharp, clear crack It was out of the park, about thirty feet or so to the fair side of the left-field pole, before I left the box. (182) Veteran ballplayer Skip Hays provides veteran ballplayer Hog Durham with insights about fielding to complement the first baseman's wisdom about hitting. Noting that a "medium hop" is the "toughest kind" of ball to field consistently, Hog points out that "the medium hops will handcuff you if you don't keep your head down, make a quick adjustment with your hands, and keep your body from flinching" (159). Hog's analysis of the difficulties of hitting an expertly pitched knuckleball (334, 383,384) or a classic spitter (63, 180, 363) demonstrates a baseball afficionado's insight into the mentally gruelling core of the game itself: the battle of minds between the pitcher and the batter.