This is the second time this year that I’ve reviewed a gay book that has portrayed the game of baseball from a participant’s point of view. The connection between homosexuality and professional sport does not surprise me, but I paused to consider why authors are drawn to this subject. In Dave Pallone’s Behind the Mask, the reasons are easy since he lists them, and in so doing, almost gives away why the book fails at some levels. The Dreyfus Affair, however, is clearly fiction, so there must be some fantasy aspect to it, to which I have somehow been oblivious. Mercifully, there hasn’t been any apparent pull to examine basketball this way.
Unlike Behind the Mask, this is a work of fiction whose author has no apparent axe to grind. Unlike The Front Runner, there’s no tragic element waiting to fittingly destroy the love story angle. These are compliments. After all, this is baseball from the inside interwoven with a love story, so it easily could have fallen into either trap.
The most unique and wonderful aspect of this book is figuring out that this story is Peter Lefcourt’s vision for 1998 in his 1991 mind. There are probably many playful instances of guesses about how 7 years of human evolution would turn out. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize the shape of the timeline until late in the story, when one such instance smacked me in the face...Lefcourt guessed wrong on who the President of the United States would be in 1998. He’s never named and I won’t give it away, but you’ll figure it out. This is a very nifty twist to the book, so nifty that I believe that even if the book had been written in 1993, he might still have kept this particular guy to be President, because Clinton would have been less fun.
The main character is Randy Dreyfus, a very good ballplayer who is a typical macho jerk whose head is about the size you might have if you had a shopping mall named after you. He’s also in the throes of coming out, verbally beating the therapist he’s hired to cure him, cheating on his wife with D.J., the second baseman with whom he’s fallen in love, all the while trying to stay focused on the game long enough to secure a big, long-term contract. The supporting cast, mostly baseball’s higher echelon, a private detective hired by Mrs. Dreyfus, and the family dog that just won’t die at the hand of the family gardener, are beautifully characterized.
The story collapses, though, when a long-time sports writer decides to write what he believes will be his career-ending work to support Randy and D.J. by opposing the institution of baseball for making them outcasts. Out of this one article springs a mental shift that occurs nationwide, and causes even the President to change his mind and dispatch 28 or so military planes to scour Maine in search of our heroes in time to save the World Series. How goofy can you get? Don’t get me wrong, such articles must be written and such a mind shift must someday occur, but sadly, it won’t be a cascade reaction like this.
Perhaps Lefcourt is simply being optimistic. I can live with and appreciate that. This is a quick and fun read, and I do recommend it.