He had played almost all of his career since his defection to the United States in the National League, first for the Phillies, and then for the Mets. He had played centerfield, and then as his legs gave out and the surgeries mounted he switched to right; but since coming to the American League he had played nothing but designated hitter, never taking the field, spending the whole game on the bench until his turn to bat came around. Sometimes an aging player can flourish as the DH, smacking home runs at a decent clip and stretching his career by a couple of years. But hitting, though he did it magnificently, had always been only one part of Rodrigo Buendía’s game. As a younger player he had been one of the top outfielders in the game, covering vast distances, making legendary catches, throwing out runners at home plate from deep in the outfield grass. He had not been moved to the DH position, so much as reduced to it.

Passages like this is why I’ve kept my ticket aboard the Summerland locomotive. There’s whole pages where I give it a blank stare, hoping it will all make sense at the end. But the baseball bits, here Rodrigo Buendía’s back story, where Ethan, Jennifer T., Thor and co have all “jumped” (a form of sort-of time traveling and teleporting?) to Buendía’s compound in some mini-verse Cuba?

Weird.

Chabon, Michael. Summerland. United States, Thorndike Press, 2003.