 First edition cover | |
| Author | Emily Nemens |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | February 4, 2020 |
| Pages | 288 |
The Cactus League is a 2020 novel by American author and editor Emily Nemens. The novel takes place in Arizona, during spring training. The title refers to the league of Major League Baseball teams that play their spring training games in Arizona. By contrast, other MLB teams, those in the Grapefruit League, play in Florida.
The Cactus League presents stories from multiple narrators in Scottsdale, Arizona, the home of Salt River Fields, the spring training facility of the Los Angeles Lions professional baseball team. Each of the novel's nine chapters are told from the perspective of a different narrator, with each chapter preceded by narration from an unnamed veteran sportswriter who discusses how each of their various stories are interlinked and provides philosophical musings about baseball and life in general. The story of Jason Goodyear, the handsome and famous star outfielder for the Lions, is a common thread throughout each of the chapters. Although he appears to be very straight-laced and respectable to outsiders, over the course of the novel it is revealed that Jason has recently been divorced by his wife and lost the vast majority of his wealth due to a serious gambling addiction.
The first chapter tells the story of Michael Taylor, an aging batting coach struggling to stay relevant with the Lions. The book opens with Michael and his wife returning to their Arizona house for the start of spring training, only to find that squatters have broken into it during the off-season. The house is trashed and many of the belonging have been stolen, including Michael's prized Cadillac. Undeterred, he cleans the house himself and prepares for the season. When he later finds the stolen Cadillac parked outside a restaurant, he smashes it with a baseball bat. The second chapter focuses on Tamara Rowland, a middle-aged divorcée who attempts to engage baseball players in casual sexual experiences each spring training season. She ends up spending an evening Jason Goodyear, and they trespass at Taliesin West, the former winter home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, where Jason gets arrested after damaging property and starting a fire. The next chapter features Herb Allison, a legendary sports agent recently confined to a wheelchair due to an injury. He hires Sara, an attractive physical therapy assistant with a dark past, to become his new assistant. They bail Jason out of jail after his arrest, and Herb tries to navigate the resulting scandal.
The fourth chapter features Stephen Smith, a partial owner of the Los Angeles Lions who is close friends with veteran player Trey Townsend, who he has groomed over the years to act more like Smith himself. It is implied the two men are in a secret romantic relationship with each other, and when Trey develops an interest in another, younger baseball player, a jealous Stephen arranges for Trey to be traded. The next chapter focuses on Greg Carver, a once-talented pitcher whose career is derailed due to Tommy John surgery. He struggles to return from the surgery due to pain when he pitches and an addiction to painkillers, and he is ultimately cut from the team. Chapter six revolves around the lives of the baseball players' wives during spring training, which includes lavish parties and a strict social hierarchy. The chapter is largely told from the perspective of Melissa Moyers, whose secretly fears losing her status because her husband is planning to divorce her.
Chapter seven features two primary narrators: Lester Morrow, an aging musician who plays the stadium's organ, and William Goslin, a Lions first-round draft pick who showed great potential during his amateur career at his home in New Jersey, but is struggling to adjust to professional baseball. William meets Jason Goodyear at a casino, and Jason manipulates him into lending him $500,000 to help cover his gambling debts. Williams is later cut from the team. The eighth chapter is about a six-year-old boy named Alex, whose mother is a drug addict who has been squatting in various houses, including Michael Taylor's earlier in the novel. She works in concessions at the stadium, and the chapter ends with her leaving Alex in a hot car in the stadium parking lot while she goes with a man to snort cocaine. The final chapter focuses on Jason Goodyear, whose becomes indebted to a loan shark due to his gambling. After paying the loan shark with the money he borrowed from William, the book ends with Jason returning to the stadium and finding an unconscious Alex in the back of the car. He breaks a window and calls an ambulance, saving the boy's life.
The Cactus League began as Nemens' MFA thesis. [1]
Though billed as a novel, the book takes the form of nine interlinked stories, following different characters connected to a fictional baseball team, the Los Angeles Lions. [2] A fictional sportswriter narrates the novel, and his thoughts and writing precede each chapter. [3]
The novel received mostly "Positive" reviews, according to literary review aggregator Book Marks. [4]
Goodyear is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is a suburb of Phoenix and at the 2010 census had a population of 65,275. It was the third-fastest-growing city in Arizona between 1990 and 2000. The 2019 population estimate was 86,840.
Kino Sports Complex is a multiple-use sports complex in Tucson, Arizona. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago White Sox formerly utilized the complex's main ballpark, Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium, for Cactus League games each March and had their minor league complexes on-site. The ballpark was also home to the Tucson Sidewinders of the Pacific Coast League for the team's last decade in Tucson, running from the stadium's 1998 opening season to the 2008 season. The ballpark was a temporary home (2011–2013) to the Tucson Padres of the Pacific Coast League during the team's relocation to El Paso, Texas. It was also the regular season home of the Pecos League's Tucson Saguaros baseball team from 2016 to 2017. It seats 11,500 fans, and hosts concerts in addition to its primary function as a baseball park.
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The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority (AZSTA) is a corporate and political body having the rights, powers and immunities of a municipal corporation. It was created on April 24, 2000, by Arizona Senate Bill 1220. The mission of the AZSTA is to build and operate a multipurpose facility, to provide funding for tourism promotion in Maricopa County, to improve Cactus League spring training facilities, and to build community youth and amateur sports and recreational facilities.
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Compadre Stadium was a stadium located in Chandler, Arizona. It was the spring training home of the Milwaukee Brewers from 1986 to 1997 and the home field of the Chandler Diamondbacks of the Arizona Fall League from 1992 to 1994. The ballpark was privately financed by local developers and built at a cost of $1.6 million in 1985. It closed in 1997 and sat abandoned for a number of years, with the outfield being used for grazing, before finally being demolished in 2014.
Sports in Phoenix include several professional sports franchises, and is one of only 13 U.S. cities to have representatives of all four major professional sports leagues, although only one of these teams actually carry the city name and play within the city limits. Phoenix was the last of the metropolitan areas with teams in all four leagues to gain its first major professional sports team, when the Suns were granted a franchise in 1968.
Sports in Arizona includes professional sports teams, college sports, and individual sports. All four major league sports teams in Arizona are based in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Geronimo Park was a shortlived baseball park in Apache Junction, Arizona that was in use from 1962 until 1963. It lay vacant from 1963 until it was dismantled in 1969 after being sold to Mesa Public Schools. Its location is currently occupied by a lodge of the Loyal Order of Moose. With a view of Superstition Mountains, it was the first spring training ball park of the Houston Colt .45s.
Sun City Stadium was a baseball park located in Sun City, Arizona, from 1971 until the mid-1990s. It was built by developer Del Webb, and served as the spring training home of the Milwaukee Brewers of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1973 to 1985. The park was dismantled in early 1995, and a retirement community was subsequently built on the site.