Download The Summer of 43: R.A. Dickey's Knuckleball and the Redemption of America's Game AudioBook Free
The summertime of 2012 is just about the Summer season of 43 - such as the summer of R. A. Dickey, the 37-year-old knuckleball pitcher who wears Number 43 on the mound for the New York Mets. As his knuckleballs flutter and drop through the reach zone, befuddling batters and producing a 12-1 record by the All Star break, Dickey is becoming one of the biggest feel-good reviews of baseball history: the man who found redemption, after many years of adversity, by learning one of the strangest and most difficult pitches in the overall game. But it's not just his own redemption that R. A. Dickey has discovered. After the Days of Steroids - the time when baseball gone brazen mad and lost itself in a noonday sin - America's game has needed a new narrative. Baseball has been desperate for a better storyline, a new shaping tale. Baseball has needed, for individuals who love the overall game, a way to signal its own redemption and its own go back to the hearts of baseball fans. Just a little beliefs in God - and therefore, a little beliefs in himself - coupled with many years of work, and R. A. Dickey's surrender to the mysteries of the knuckleball has given the man another chance at the greatness that eluded him early in his career. Given baseball itself another chance, for example, and promised us all that second chances do come around in this life. In "THE SUMMERTIME of 43", the widely publicized essayist and poet Joseph Bottum occupies this storyline with verve and skill. The bestselling writer of "The Gospel According to Tim" and "The Holiday Plains", he's, as the essayist Andrew Ferguson has mentioned "one of America's most gifted writers, with a perfect ear and a matchless style". And in his bill of R. A. Dickey, Bottum uncovers both the tragedy and the comedy of baseball - and the pleasure of a tale like R.A. Dickey's.
