05.27.2009 1:03 pm
Is it odd to read in the bleachers?
Post-Dispatch Book Editor
Is it odd, impolite or just sensible to bring a book to a sporting event? Longtime reviewer and retired Post-Dispatch senior writer Harry Levins noted a lot of readers at a recent girls softball game. Thanks for this guest blog:
By Harry Levins
The time: Mid-morning on a sultry Sunday.
The place: A softball field at the Ballwin Athletic Association’s complex off Manchester Road.
The occasion: A game between two teams of 7-year-old girls.
The oddity: Books in the bleachers.
A girl of perhaps 13 sits next to a woman who appears to be her grandmother. The grandmother is watching the game, or at least is watching the 13-year-old’s little sister. But the teenager is wrapped up in a hardback copy of Rick Riordan’s “The Last Olympian.” Not even the ping of an aluminum bat finally making contact with a lime-green softball can distract the teen reader.
At a picnic table behind the chain-link fence that’s behind home plate sit two even younger girls, maybe 10 and 8, apparently the sisters of the young home-plate umpire. The 10-year-old has her nose stuck in a library hardcover copy of Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage.” I ask her, “Are you reading that for school, or for pleasure?” She smiles and responds, “For pleasure.” Wow.
On the table behind her younger sister sits a smallish book whose title speaks for itself: “Sharks and Other Scary Sea Creatures.”
Standing at the side of the bleachers is a man with Asian features, reading a magazine published in some Asian language and alphabet. Only when his daughter squats in catcher’s gear behind home plate does he look up from his magazine — and then not for long.
OK, 7-year-old girls playing softball hardly generate the excitement of the Cardinals playing the Cubs. But books in the bleachers? At a game last month featuring my other granddaughter, I’d noticed a grandmotherly sort devoting her attention to a bodice-ripper romance and a father wrapped up in the sports section of the Post-Dispatch.
Does anybody out there read at sporting events? If so, are certain genres more appropriate than others?
As a sports fan and the mother of two high school athletes, you bet I bring a book. I may not always get to pick it up — but it’s there for halftime. It’s there for the 3200 in track that neither child competes in. It’s there while we wait for the pole vault to conclude and the events my kids compete in to begin. And it’s there in the event of rain delays (baseball and track meets). I don’t bring a book to my son’s football games, but that’s the exception.
As for the genre, whateve I’m reading at the time is always appropriate.
No it’s not a huge deal to read in the bleachers. It’s a softball game Harry - Not a funeral, a wedding, a HS graduation or even church. Were they reading their books during the playing of the National Anthem? Then you might have a point. I’m guessing you were bored yourself or you wouldn’t have paid attention to what others were, or weren’t, doing. I have only two questions that I think you need to address:
1) Why make any reference to the man “with Asian features”? Geez, Harry….that’s hardly relevant to anything in your article and you just pointed out quite nicely your own lack of diversity.
2) Did you happen to catch the title of the bodice ripping romance? I’ve got a gymnastics tourney to attend soon.
Tuck,
I think the answer to your first question is that the man was reading a non-English newspaper. It’s an authentic detail. Guess Harry didn’t recognize the language though…
My husband used to take books to Cardinals games. He’s not a big sports fan, and I’m not one to leave a game early, so a few innings of him reading helped us both reach the end of the game happy. He has since become interested in score keeping and learned a thing or two about the game.
As for the kids you observed, I’d much rather see them reading than playing DS or blasting an iPod in their ears.
Dear Tuck:
I wrote that the man had Asian features because the magazine he was reading was printed in an Asian language. I fail to see how the observation makes me insensitive to diversity, but maybe that’s because I’m — well, insensitive.
Harry Levins
My nephews wrestle in high school and college and I always take a book with me to pass the time. They always kid me about my perfect timing to look up when their matches come up and go back to reading as soon as they are finished. I’ve probably read over 100 books during wrestling season since the first one started wrestling in 1996.