The Final Season is one not to miss…

Being that English was my chosen course of study at MSU, I have done multitudes of required reading in my life.  From high school thru college, teachers and professors have found it entertaining to assign me “required reading” then regurgitate back to them the simple answers they were looking for. I have been assigned Gulliver’s Travels 4 times – I refused to read it, still haven’t read it and will never read it just out of spite.  With that being said, there wasn’t much time in my life for recreational reading.  Like most people, I fit into the mindset of when the book is selected by the reader instead of being forced on them, they are more likely to read and absorb it.  I couldn’t wait till the day school was over and I got to pick what I wanted to read versus the syllabus that sat on my desk telling me what I had to read. 

This was the case with me and the book The Final Season by Tom Stanton.  Stanton’s book follows his experiences and feelings during the Tigers final year at Michigan and Trumbull.  I had heard about this book thru multiple websites and reviews, so I purchased the book then it sat on my shelf for over a year before I finally started in on reading it. Now it sits as a #1 pick on not only my baseball book readers list but, but for anyone who wants to feel a little nostalgic and remember the good old days of their youth. 

Once I started reading The Final Season it was almost impossible to put down.  Stanton weaves a beautiful tale of how his two families collide in one very sad baseball season for the Detroit Tigers faithful.  His first family is his actual blood family.  Many snippets and stories and recollections of his childhood growing up Polish in Detroit are exposed to the reader.  He goes into detail about how his childhood was typical with one major exception, his families’ love of baseball, most notably his father’s.  A natural progression of handing down the torch is displayed as Stanton attempts to pass that love of baseball and family history down to his own sons. The other family followed in this memoir is his Tigers family.  Graphically, Stanton conjures up the love and loss of bleacher friends, vendors and other personnel that were working at Tiger Stadium in its final season.  Most of these people Stanton has known for years.  They weren’t just vendors and assistants they were part of his summer family.  As a reader, you don’t just hear or read that the hotdog vendor is sad about the closing of the stadium, you feel it.  You aren’t just told that the parking attendant is upset about the Tigers moving downtown, you feel like you are part of his fight to maintain his source of secondary income.   

Stanton’s writing style can be summed up in one word – imaginative.  The words aren’t just black and white on a page.  As a reader you start to smell the hotdogs and popcorn in the air as he spins his story.  You feel the hard plastic seat under your butt and you hear the vendors yelling out “hot dogs, cold beer, peanuts” as you continue to read.  In the background you hear the thwack of player’s bats and the thud as the balls hit the backstop behind home plate.  The format of the text is also unique and imperative to the telling of the story.  Each home game of the 1999 season is broken out into its own mini chapter.  Each game was important enough in the writers mind to do so.  Months and series couldn’t be lumped together for fear of missing details. Yet each game served as one event, one more brick in the cobblestone path to the end of history at The Corner.

Above all, Stanton does an excellent job of making the reader feel as if it is actually them sitting in the park.  By peppering the book with his own personal stories about finding long lost uncles, taking his dad to the park and bringing his own kids and wife down to the corner, the reader starts to reflect on their own past experiences.  Baseball is simply a catalyst for the reader to connect with their own past and their own experiences.  You start to think back about the times you and your dad, or uncle or mom or neighborhood friends went off and played ball for hours on end.  You start to relive the memories of your youth and the fun times that were had.  Above all, it’s a reminder to all that baseball, as in life, is a game of winning and losing.  Change is hard and sometimes not fun.  Change makes us laugh, change makes us cry and change makes us reflect on our past.  People, places and things change, but memories are permanent in the recipients mind and those are the things in life to hang on to – memories. 

I can honestly say I read the first 80 games in 24 hrs. The story wraps you up and makes it incredibly difficult to put down.  However, the last game, #81 took me almost 3 days to finish.  My feelings on the end of Tiger Stadium aside, the story comes to a head and the emotions and connections felt by the reader are at its strongest during that final game I’m not ashamed to admit the tears flowed freely, sometimes to the point of having to put the book down and walk away.  Once I made it thru the last game, I had to pick it up and read that chapter again just to make sure in my memory flooded, tear filled eyes that I didn’t miss something important.  Very rarely, if ever, has a book made me stop mid chapter for emotional reasons.  As a reader you don’t want the book to end because that is the beginning of change.  We don’t want the memories of the good times in our past to stop.  Above all, we don’t want to accept the fact that just as history at the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull had to end, so does our own story. 

You don’t have to be a baseball lover to appreciate the tale that Mike Stanton weaves in this book.  All you have to have is a few memories from your youth, a heart, an understanding that change is a part of time and life. ~Shelly