Field of Fantasies

Baseball Stories of the Strange and Supernatural

By: Rick Wilber

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot, Aaron Abano, Eric Pollins, Christine Marshall, Norman Dietz, Corey Gagne, Christopher Price, William Dufris

Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America's national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural. Whether it's a frozen curveball, a robot pitcher, or fantasy outcomes (the Cubs winning the World Series!), these terrific stories are ones that fans of science fiction will enjoy, while fans of baseball will find strangely believable. Included in this wonderful anthology are stories from such prolific authors as: Stephen King, Jack Kerouac, Karen Joy Fowler, Rod Serling, W. P. Kinsella, and many more!

Never has a book combined the incredible events of baseball and science fiction like Field of Fantasies does. Whether you're a sport or science fiction fan, these stories will appeal not only to your fandom, but also to your appreciation and acceptance of the unknown taking place on the baseball diamond. If you've ever held a bat or glove in your hand (or just watched the game on TV), you'll be enthralled by these terrific tales that range from the sandlot to the sold-out stadium.

©2014 Rick Wilber (P)2014 Audible Inc.

So So

Some of the stories are okay. I liked the Rod Serling one about Mighty Casey except the name of the Yankee manager was Miller Huggins, not Muller Higgins. The last story by “Tripper” Kinsella was the best.

Hodge Podge of Baseball is Worth a Listen

I was intrigued at the title and saw some of my favorite authors, so definitely worth a listen to as I did some walking in the neighborhood. Forgive me as I didn't write down titles, but there were really only two that were too tough to listen to. "McDuff on the Mound" had the feel of an Andy Warhol style comic strip come to life. The incessant "Gobble, Gobble" of the one character named Turkey made me skip it. The other hard-to-listen to short story was "Jones at Third." Jones being a horse that somehow could hit and play third base (though no explanation of how the horse would throw anyone out at first was missing.

I really enjoyed the story where George HW Bush battes against Fidel Castro for the 1959 World Series. Excellent revisionist history that I wish had been reality. For "Twilight Zone" fans, you will enjoy hearing Rod Serling's "Casey" in narrative form. The work by Stephen King where a lonely aging bachelor starts seeing dead people as he watches the Tampa Bay Rays games may hit a little too close to home for those of us at a certain age.

All in all, it was better than listening to Players and Owners reject proposals for a CBA with the 2022 season in the balance.

If you buy it, they will read it to you

If you could sum up Field of Fantasies in three words, what would they be?

Fun Baseball Stories

What did you like best about this story?

The different views of the national pasttime is fun to listen to. Some of the stories have a small glimpse of baseball while others tell a story that makes you long for Spring Training to start back up. I enjoy the alternate universe timeline stories, especially those where Fidel Castro decides to play baseball instead of heading back to Cuba (there's 3.) Some of these stories had me laughing while others had me thinking deeply about the game and its effects on people, including myself.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

There are several narrators which switch from story to story. With the change of narrators, it makes it easier to tell where one story ends and another begins.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

The bite-size stories made it easy to end when I needed to and start back up not feeling like I needed to catch back up to where I was. I didn't feel like I needed to listen to it all at once but enjoyed the time that I did listen to it.

Any additional comments?

Some of the stories of fantasy are a little on the strange side while others are way out in left field. We get to play baseball on Mars, with long-dead authors, robots and world leaders, and watch the game through the eyes of someone who knows what's going to happen before it does. It is a fun read that will get you geared up for the ball game even if something really weird happens that makes it impossible to continue playing it here.

Disappointing

I listen to many books but don't regularly leave reviews. But if I can save you the $ or credit I'd be glad to.
This audiobook is painful to listen to. The stories are dry and some go on and on while you wait for them just to be finished to move in to the next one. Sadly, they just get worse the deeper in you get. Even hard core baseball fans will think the stories are really bad.
Listen to Shoeless Joe, Eight Men Out, Pete Rose or Long Shot (Piazza) instead.

Not my taste

The writing was good, the performance was food, but it was just too creepy for me. Honestly i couldn’t get past the first story. It’s probably a fantastic book for people who like spooky creepy stories.