Reflections of the Game: Lives in Baseball

It's funny about baseball; no other sport so oozes with its own wistfulness. Reflections is really two books--a gallery of Ronald Modra's 25 years of spectacular baseball photography and an extended essay by former minor-league pitcher turned major-league journalist Pat Jordan--fused into one by the sentimentality they share. Jordan's memoir, which physically snakes through the book, is a travelogue of his personal journey through the game, ending in a fitting flight of nostalgia: "Even during the 35 years I had turned my back on (baseball)," he writes, "it was still there, waiting patiently for me to turn around and acknowledge its place in my life just like a faithful dog."

With the exception of a few shots of a postretirement Mickey Mantle in uniform, Modra's images--actions, portraits, and candid shots--are anything but nostalgic. They don't look back; they remain sharply fixed in the present of the moment at which they were taken--like Ozzie Smith in midbackflip or Pudge Rodgriguez glaring down a runner he's just gunned down--and they are simply splendid. The sentimentality creeps into the text that accompanies them; most are insights, "reflections" from the players in the photos, and they tend to be mushy. Which is really OK; baseball dissolves our hardness, and Reflections of the Game captures that. Indeed, there are moments when sentimentality divinely reveals essence, as in Mantle's explanation, beside a photo of him sitting alone in the stands, of what he's doing: "Oh, I'm just sitting here thinking, God I wish I could still play." Modra's camera breathtakingly provides us with visual mementos of when our heroes could. --Jeff Silverman