Most sports magazines make me nauseous. At their best, they are beautifully written celebrations of the inconsequential; at their worst, they are badly written paeans to the truly boneheaded. But Elysian Fields Quarterly is different. In moving short stories, poems, and essays on everything from the 1906 White Sox (–the Hitless Wonders–) to the Juan Marichal-Sandy Koufax rivalry to the passionate quest of women’s pro Anita Selvaggio, this inspired journal of baseball writing captures the beauty of the game that stirred my imagination as a boy, before it became just another denatured satellite of Infotainment Inc. Elysian Fields is a celebration of love, and though it runs the risk of sounding naive at times, it’s a much-needed antidote to the mind-numbing patter of ESPN and all its clones.
Elysian Fields Quarterly: The Baseball Review, 2034 Marshall Av., St. Paul, MN 55104. Subscriptions: $18.50/yr. (4 issues) in the U.S.; $30 in Canada and Mexico; $52 overseas.
