As any modern English major will tell you, there is never One Definitive Reading of anything, but here’s my take anyway:  Martone is using a fantasized first-person narration by Derek Jeter to explore the instability of individual identity and the anxiety of human awareness of the passage of time and, ultimately, mortality.  These ideas converge in the concept of memory/memorabilia…how will we be remembered after we die, and is there anything we can do about it? 

Just in case we needed any more proof that baseball is, in fact, the master metaphor for the human experience…

I couldn’t get through. Unreadable. Lame.

If you are reading it expecting a plot, I can totally understand your disappointment. The technique is much more toward poetry than fiction - he’s layering images, motifs, and metaphors rather than trying to tell a story in a traditional sense. 

Undoubtedly, tastes vary, but the writing is actually quite good.

Colin - I see what you are saying.  Clarity does count for a lot.  But at the same time, my college freshman in Intro to Literature are absolutely baffled by most of the literature they encounter and they miss all but the most literal information. They read some of the greatest works of literature of all time and call them stupid. Does the flaw lie in the writing or the reader in that case? 

I absolutely have no problem with anyone’s personal taste; my concern is the conflation of subjective enjoyment with objective quality. I personally loathe reading Faulkner, but I would never dream of claiming that he isn’t a master of technique. 

In the interest of not flooding this space with non-baseball commentary, I would be happy to continue this debate off-blog if Craig would facilitate an email exchange.

A clarification, FWIW - There are some Faulkner works I do enjoy a great deal, and some that I deeply despise (The Sound and the Fury leaps to mind). Works need to be taken on their own merits, not by the name of the author. 

Melody - love it, love it, love it. He’s forcing fungo and cricket bats into Jeter’s hands out of phallus envy!  The melting watches are actually a tip-off to his impotence anxiety!  Reading it your way is much more fun. :-D

Unreadable.

Hey, I’m in the middle of a master’s degree in the humanities and social thought (yes, that’s what my degree will say on it) and have recently been subjected to a lot of Lacanian analyses of mid-century French horror movies. So I know what I’m talking about when I say something is unreadable. That thing is definitely unreadable.

Wow, I’m going to take my high school diploma and go home.

I’m way outclassed.

Imagine it being read by William Shatner - makes much more sense in that context.