REVIEW: Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time by Ryan McGee

JayneB Reviews / Book ReviewsBaseball / coming-of-age / Memoir / non-fiction / North-Carolina / Sports3 Comments

A gloriously funny, nostalgic memoir of a popular ESPN reporter who, in the summer of 1994, was a fresh-out-of-college intern for a minor league baseball team. Madness and charm ensue as Ryan McGee spends the season steeped in sweat, fertilizer, nacho cheese sauce, and pure, unadulterated joy in North Carolina with the Asheville Tourists.

In the spring of 1994, Ryan McGee (new college graduate) bombed his coveted interview with ESPN–the only place he ever wanted to work. But he did receive one job offer: to work for $100 a week for the Asheville Tourists, a proud minor league baseball team in the heart of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. McCormick Field, home to the Tourists, had once been graced by Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson. What could go wrong?

Welcome to the Circus of Baseball is McGee’s hilarious, charming memoir of his first summer working in the sporting world. He has since risen the ESPN ranks to national TV, radio, and Internet host, but his time in Asheville still looms large. Among the many jewels of his experience. . . McGee recounts one of the most entertaining on-field brawls you’ll ever witness (between the fourteen league mascots who had assembled for the all-star game–an eight-foot-tall foam-costumed crustacean, a pudgy red fox, a giant skunk . . . and they were really fighting), as well as the nervous moment he oversaw the game-day entertainer known as “Captain Dynamite and His Exploding Coffin of Death.” Most important, McGee details a magical summer of baseball, of learning the ropes, of the ins-and-outs of running a minor league team, and of coming to understand how the pulse of a community can beat gloriously through a minor league ball club.

Dear Mr. McGee, 

First, the honest truth that I am not a fan of watching the sport of baseball. Apparently reading about it or maybe watching movies  about it are my forte. I saw this book last year and nabbed a copy but am just now getting to it. This is my kind of memoir – funny, informative, and written by someone who cares about the subject and the people.

From going airborne during tarp pulls (go to youtube and type in baseball tarp pulls) to wrestling with the Dairy Queen soft serve machine (love soft serve ice cream and I will treat it with more respect now that I know the full danger of what can go into filling the machine), this book covers all you need to know about MiLB (Minor League Baseball) and ballparks. Need more info? Yeah, McGee has got it including deep intel on minor league ballparks and teams across the south. 

He tells the good, the bad, and the ugly. But mostly it’s a tale of love for the sport, respect for the people who spent that summer with him, and how he named a ballpark cat who stuck around after McGee and the other interns used a little bit too much Speedy Dry (which turned out to be kitty litter) on the wet field and the feral cats of Asheville answered the call of nature on the field. Why was the head groundskeeper not there to correct this? Well, it was Tuesday evening and he was out line dancing. 

Then there was the mountain guy who’d duck into the honeysuckle and other vines and snakes behind the outfield wall to search for baseballs ($150/box of twelve and three boxes had to be handed to the umpires before a game started). And the night the poor trusting announcer didn’t catch onto the prank before broadcasting to the entire ballpark “Heywood Jablowmee please report to the press box.” 

Asheville was used for a lot of movies in the early 1990s so plenty of celebrities spent some time with ball caps pulled low as they ate hotdogs and watched the games. 1994 was also Michael Jordan’s lone summer of trying a new sport and spending time on the bus traveling to games in the Class AA Southern League which were mobbed by frenzied fans. McGee also fell a little in love with Shelley Fabares who attended one game to speak on behalf of the National Alzheimer’s Foundation as well as tell fans about kissing Elvis in a movie. 

But I swear, the funniest thing, the thing that had me clutching my side as I laughed long enough to cause pain and make my cats stare at me was the story of The Great Mascot Brawl of ’94 – aka the Battle of Hickory. Imagine fourteen costumed mascots – most with Big Smiley Face heads – fists/paws swinging, lunging, tripping, falling, and running all while wearing some goofy looking fur. Yes, I know I shouldn’t even laugh at the description but … I did. 

Ryan McGee obviously had a wonderful time doing far more than forty hours of work a week for the glorious pay of $100. The opening chapter was a teensy bit slow as McGee waxes rhapsodically about his love of the game and about the number of ballparks he and his family watched games in but once he gets his “high paying” job, it gets going complete with mascots, food services (what is “nacho cheese product?”), promotions (with free t-shirts!), Blues Brothers impersonators, and Captain Dynamite. God bless America. B         

~Jayne

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