RaveSan Francisco ChronicleSome might consider this a risk in a book ostensibly about baseball, but it’s one I applaud, and not just because in a three-page stretch Nemens successfully references Snuffleupagus, Dostoevsky, Charlie Hustle and the long-ago migration of people across the Bering Strait ... It tempers the grandiosity inherent in baseball and implies that games have always been an important part of being human ... The story arc that follows Goodyear and his troubles is engaging in its own right, but The Cactus League wasn’t intended to be a heavily plotted book, or one in which the heroics of a star cause outfield lights to explode ... Its many pleasures come from spending time with Goodyear and the others whose lives connect to the game, and from pondering how the dramas of everyday life and the imperatives of professional sports influence each other.
