Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm not saying Roy should have learned anything from being shot other than sheer randomness, as you say. However, I think 15 years as a carnie, a roustabout, playing semi-pro ball and all the rest of it, should have taught him a lot about people and their motivations. "Blinded by lust" isn't a good excuse, ever.
And timing is everything. He had his chances in that last game, didn't take them, and by the time he changed his mind it was too late. So it goes; everyone can look back on opportunities lost through poor choices. Why should his redemptive arc have been completed? What's the more realistic outcome? I vastly preferred this one, because it spoke as the truth to me.
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It may be truth, but this is fiction, and Malamud made the decision to give this story a lousy ending. He chose to crush Roy. It wasn't enough that he wouldn't be able to play baseball anymore; no, let's make it even worse. Let's humiliate him, wipe out his records, make people shun him. Was his crime so great, so unforgivable? Malumud couldn't give him the game-winning hit, couldn't let him triumph over the gamblers at least, couldn't let him have Iris? Malamud chose to take this character with all his hopes and dreams and destroy him totally. Why? What message does that send? Why did Malamud want to use baseball, a game of optimism and there's-always-tomorrow and wait-till-next-year to be so unbearably pessimistic?