Baseball Fiction

Josh is still flying high from his team's tournament win at Coopers­town when his parents start talking about a divorce. Now his dad is challenging him to play the best of the best at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. But does he just want to get Josh out of the way? Two things are sure: His father's new girlfriend, Diane, is looking to change things, and Josh is determined to get her and her terrible son out of his life.

My name is Jupiter Reeves, and I am a fraud. It's not that what's written about me isn't true. I am the greatest third baseman of my generation, possibly ever. I am surly and unapproachable. I do have a constant scowl with an armor of tattoos. To the outside world, I play my role as the bad boy of baseball like I was born to do it. But when the doors are closed, and you boil it down, I'm nothing more than a man who lost his heart too young, with no prospect of getting it back... especially as I still have no idea where its current owner is.

It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey's chosen champion doesn't exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

Malcolm loves two things—baseball and science. He’s always studying the stats and coming up with ideas to help his team gain an advantage over the competition. But when Malcolm’s homemade glove oil causes a major blowup with his teammates, he must find a way to win back their trust.

Before he was “Babe” or “The Sultan of Swat” or “The Great Bambino”, George Herman Ruth was just another teenage misfit at St. Mary’s School for Boys. But Ruth has something the other boys don’t, and when Baltimore Orioles manager Jack Dunn watches him throw a baseball over a building, Ruth gets the chance to punch his ticket out of the orphanage. All he has to do now is make the team.

Stephen Satlow is an eight-year-old boy living in Brooklyn, New York, which means he only cares about one thing - the Dodgers. Steve and his father spend hours reading the sports pages and listening to games on the radio. Aside from an occasional run-in with his teacher, life is pretty simple for Steve. But then Steve hears a rumor that an African-American family is moving to his all-Jewish neighborhood. It's 1948 and some of his neighbors are against it. Steve knows this is wrong. His hero, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier in baseball the year before.

The Baseball Code is a story about the love of the game; about the smell of a well-oiled glove; about the feel of the handle of the bat as you turn it in your hands; about running across an expanse of green grass on a hot summer afternoon, gazing up at the spinning red seams of a white baseball as it cuts its arc against a bright blue sky, timing your stride and the reach of your arm so perfectly that the ball drops into your mitt like a plum ripe from a tree.

Highlights in this set include "The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record", "The Battery", and "The Thrill of the Grass". In a plot that preceded anything written by Mitch Albom, "The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record" explores the feelings after the death of Yankee catcher Thurmon Munson. Would a hardcore (non-Yankee) baseball fan give his life to save Munson's? "The Battery" takes readers to Santo Domingo where a wizard created in the vein of author Terry Pratchett sees the birth of baseball playing twins.

Dwayne Devero is just like you and me, except he simply doesn’t give a sh*t anymore. He’s had enough. He’s done with people living life wrong. You’ll do it right, or he’ll bury you under the bases at the ballpark where he coaches. It’s just that simple. Tired of poor decisions being made all around him, from the politics of player positions on his son’s little league baseball team to the philandering of his wife in his own bedroom, Dwayne decides that breaking is better than bending.

During the spring and summer months, Melody Carrick lives, eats, and sleeps baseball. As a Baltimore Blue Birds season ticket holder, she attends every home game to enjoy the action. When a foul ball hits her in the face and knocks her out during the season opener, the last thing she expects is for the handsome rookie who caused the mess to visit her in the hospital. Injuring a fan during his first game in the majors is rookie Carson Lawrence's worst nightmare. Knowing he won't be able to clear his conscience until he's assured she's not seriously hurt, he visits the woman in the hospital.

Shortstops who run with the wolves, painted eggs that reveal deeply disturbing meanings, long-dead Hall of Famers who miraculously return to the game, an Iowa minor-league town with a secret conspiracy: these are the elements from which W.P. Kinsella weaves nine fabulous stories about the magical world of baseball.

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first - and some would say still the best - novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material - the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era - and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

On his 11th birthday, Jackson is nervous about moving up to middle school where he knows he'll be bullied by older kids, so he makes his wish, "I don't want to grow up!" When his 12th birthday rolls around, he discovers his wish came true: he's still 11, and he's starting fifth grade (again). At first, this is the perfect life. Jackson is the smartest kid in his class, the best on his baseball team, and the star of the school band. But after a few years of being eleven, he realizes his life is passing him by.

It’s the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records.

In the tradition of his best-selling Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella has created another literary baseball classic. A warm tale of magic, humor and the power of a second chance, its hero is Joe McCoy, an unemployed newspaper writer who by some bizarre circumstances is now a fugitive from the FBI. There's only one thing left for Joe to do - go home to Iowa and tell his story to the only two men who just might believe it - Shoeless Joe's Ray Kinsella and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy's Gideon Clarke.

Frank Ryder is unstoppable on the baseball field—his pitches arrive faster than a batter can swing, giving his opponents no chance. He’s being heralded as a game-changing pitcher. But within the maelstrom of press, adulation, and wild speculation, Frank is a man alone. Haunted by a tragic incident from years past, he yearns to be the best but cannot reconcile the guilt he carries with the man everyone believes him to be.

Joe Stoshack has to write a report for school about a famous African-American who contributed to society. Joe chooses to write about legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in the 1940s. But unlike every other kid in his class, Joe has a special talent: with the help of old baseball cards, he can travel through time.

As a boy, Kenichi “Zeni” Zenimura dreams of playing professional baseball, but everyone tells him he is too small. Yet he grows up to be a successful player, playing with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig! When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, Zeni and his family are sent to one of ten internment camps where more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry are imprisoned without trials. Zeni brings the game of baseball to the camp, along with a sense of hope. This true story, set in a Japanese internment camp, introduces children to a little-discussed part of American history.

Baseball is life - the rest is just details. Everyone who's played the game has heard those words a time or two. But Hancock has heard them his entire life from his parents. His family has lived and breathed baseball even before he started little league. Hancock "Parts" Peters has a name that inspires grins across many faces, but the moment those faces get their first look at him, those grins slide away. Hancock is gruff, filterless, and doesn't give a crap who he offends. He is the only man in baseball who doesn't care if he gets an endorsement or not. He's there to play the game.