Benchwarmer: An Anxious Dad's Almanac of Fatherhood and Other Failures

"I've never been able to cry about life but only over aging sports heroes getting their numbers retired," muses Wilker, a sports writer, after he learns that his wife is pregnant, her "belly growing into a wrecking ball." He feels adrift as the birth of the child approaches, and his sense of detachment from the sure bets in his life%E2%80%94the rise and fall of careers, batting averages, and victory formations%E2%80%94likewise offers the reader very little mooring in a sea of self-absorption. Rather than proceeding chronologically, he cannily relates the events of his first year of fatherhood in the style of an A-Z sports almanac%E2%80%94with entries for figures ranging from Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher David Aardsma to New York Giants quarterback Joe Pisarcik, and for terms like benchwarmer, quitter, and zero%E2%80%94in an effort to examine whether his failures at sports have any bearing on his skills as a father. Wilker's account is poignant at times: after asking, "So what is a father?" he notes, "All inherited definitions are reeling, rigid hoaxers flailing at untouchable baseline truths." Elsewhere, the author comes across as achingly na%C3%AFve: "Becoming a father had forced me into a position, an uncomfortable one for a benchwarmer, of making conscious choices." (May)