The memoir of an ESPN reporter who, in the summer of 1994, was a fresh-out-of-college intern for a minor league baseball team. Madness ensues as Ryan McGee spends the season in North Carolina with the Asheville Tourists.
Because Mr. McGee’s focus is the back-office grunt work and not the players’ experience, his narrative has a special allure. What is more, it illuminates the humble realities of an entire subculture of amateur sports, including youth leagues ... The contrast between big and small is the quiet subtheme of Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: the difference between the charm of the ball yard in Asheville... and the impersonal, massive scale of, say, New York’s Citi Field ... Mr. McGee’s chronicle is a celebration of baseball when it isn’t only the greenbacks that matter.
Readers will be charmed by the gallery of owners, players, coaches, groundskeepers, concessionaires, (fighting!) mascots, fellow interns, and fans McGee paints with such vivid colors.
Throughout, the author delivers entertaining set pieces ... A picaresque, funny account of a side of lesser-rung baseball too little represented in the literature.
