* New baseball fiction: The Man Who Threw Too Much?

I should copyright that.

Actually it’s The Man With Two Arms, which sounds like a science fiction title but is really about an ambidextrous pitcher. Judging by the review from Publishers Weekly below, it seems better suited for young adults than adult adults.

The book is published by Overlook and due out in February.

You know how you decide, based on the trailer, whether to see a movie or not? Based on this review, not. My snarky comments appear in parenthetical italics. Please note they are based solely on the hyperbolic review and not are in no way an indication of the quality of the author, since I have not, in fact, read the novel.

The Man with Two Arms Billy Lombardo.

This debut novel from Lombardo … (technically correct, although he has published previous books of fiction, mostly as short stories) follows ably in the cleat-prints of W.P. Kinsella and Bernard Malamud (Really? to use a recent catch-phrase from Saturday Night Live. Two of the greatest baseball fiction writers? Really?), chronicling the life of a talented Chicago pitcher. In their middle-class Chicago suburb of the mid-1980s, baseball nut Henry Granville and his wife, Lori, face marital discord regarding Henry’s immediate, insistent campaign to commit their baby son Danny to a life in baseball. When Henry discovers his son’s natural ambidexterity, visions of raising a superstar “switch pitcher” (an almost unheard-of athletic skill) (actually there have been a couple such pitchers who have made it to the Majors) kick his obsession into overdrive. One rocky boyhood later, Danny signs with the Cubs and finds instant fame (“Danny can throw like Tom Seaver with one arm and Sandy Koufax with the other”) as well as a bit of infamy; he’s a “freak” in the eyes of opponents (they’re just sooooo jealous, but is he pitching in the major leaguers or the minors at this point?). Meanwhile, Danny falls in love with an art instructor (oh, puh-leeze, the dumb jock and the sensitive, artistic female? Isn’t that a bit of a cliche?) and nurtures another rare talent: clairvoyance (thud). Fans of sports fiction should find this an enjoyable trip to the mound, with just enough old-fashioned Americana magic to keep them guessing.

* RK reviews: The End of Baseball and Safe at Home

I don’t often read baseball fiction these days. I find them too hit-or-miss, pardon the metaphor. One problem is that authors often employ too much exposition, as if their readership knows nothing about the game. Those who do know a fair deal about how baseball is played or its history, might find this boring and even insulting. Still, this is one person’s opinion. Fiction is so subjective, which is another reason I dislike commenting negatively about the hard work of these writers, who obviously have a love for the game and the craft, otherwise they would have picked another topic. So kudos to them all for seeing their dreams through. The only thing I would strongly suggest, especially for those who self-publish: have someone look over the manuscript, or at least use spell-check. Nothing says “amateur” more than tons of typos (speaking as one who’s been guilty of that sin).

Having said all that, there are two titles from 2008 that do justice to its shared theme of African-Americans in the national pastime, a subject which is not told very often, other than in juvenile literature and/or books about Jackie Robinson.

Peter Schilling Jr. goes the pro route in The End of Baseball, a theory held by those in the game’s hierarchy when it came to the color line: allow black players in, and that’s the end of baseball as we know it.

The author poses a “what-if” scenario, allowing Bill Veeck to stock a team full of Negro Leaguers in the period immediately after World War II. He weaves real-life athletes and personnel such as Veeck, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Branch Rickey, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Roy Campanella, and many others in this against-all-odds story that may or may not come to the desired conclusion.

Schilling– who hosts the wonderful Mudville Magazine website — has a good eye for research and detail in this predictably sad and often shocking novel, which, at times, pounds the points home a bit overmuch: the degradations of finding suitable accommodations and places to eat; the seething hatred of opposing players and baseball’s administration; and the empathy of the far-seeing “maverick owner” trying to accomplish more than just keeping a faltering team afloat.

Safe at Home, by Richard Doster, picks up the game in small-town America, specifically the minors in the southwest in the early 1950s, as one team, faced with dwindling attendance and in dire straits, must decide whether to make an ultimate gamble and add a Negro to its roster.

This one is a little more cliched, using an enterprising and upright journalist as the voice of reason, urging others to rethink generations-held beliefs and do the right thing against the odds (again. One can easily picture this as a feature film, prehaps aimed at teaching tolerance to a younger audience. Think The Express) as a talented, shy player battles to win the respect of teammates and fans who were brought up with the belief that the races should not mix. To borrow from Schilling’s book, to do otherwise would mean “the end of baseball” and other slices of long-held customs.

* Strike a pose

Alan Gratz’s Brooklyn Nine, the story of a young Jewish boy’s love for baseball in the early 20th century, is featured on the cover of the September  issue of Booklist, the publication of the American Library Association.

The issue highlights a sports theme and includes a number “top 10″ choices in several categories, such as

• Books for adults: baseball titles include American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime; The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound; Six Good Innings: How One Small Town Became a Little League Giant; and Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee

• Books for young readers (including Gratz’s title)
• Top audiobooks, including Leigh Montville’s The Big Bam read by our friend, Scott Brick; The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn; and Joe Torre’s The Yankee Years.

* RK Review: Double Play

by Robert B. Parker. Putnam, 2004.

Robert B. Parker’s heroes epitomize the strong silent types. Like the cowboys of old, they are taciturn, unfailingly loyal and determined to pursue the causes of right in the face of superior numbers or disadvantageous circumstances.

Joseph Burke is the latest in this mold.

Parker, known primarily for his Spenser novels, takes a stab (no pun intended) at the noir and historical fiction genres in Double Play.

Burke, a wounded WWII veteran, has little to live for. His wife left him after his return to the States. His recovery is slow and painful, though he doesn’t complain. This makes him the perfect guy for a series of dubious opportunities where a cheery or promising outcome isn’t necessary.

After a succession of jobs calling for a degree of physical prowess combined with a generous helping of discretion, Burke winds up as bodyguard for a very important person: Jackie Robinson, the African-American who broke baseball’s color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

One of the codicils to which Robinson had to agree in his first two years in the big leagues was to turn the other cheek in the face of beanballs, threats, spikings by opponents and the cold shoulders of some of his own teammates. To retaliate, the Dodgers worried, would give ammunition to those who supported the notion that blacks weren’t ready to play in the majors.

While life on the field was no picnic, at least Robinson was able to channel his energies through baseball. His teammates grew to respect and protect him. It was during those long hours after the final out that Burke’s special skills are needed.

There aren’t a lot of actual baseball aspects to the book, but Parker does a credible job of relating the omnipresent tension Robinson faced, painting a very sympathetic picture and making Burke’s course clear.

Double Play mixes many clichés from noir classics such as The Big Sleep — the spoiled rich girl who invariably falls for the hero; the bad-guy competition who shares a mutual, if begrudging, admiration with Burke; the wealthy and cowardly villain who has others do his dirty work, etc. Throw in the race card and you now have rival gangs competing for turf.

Mixed in with the narrative are “pentimenti,” which serve as back story/flashback, explaining how Burke came to his current situation. Parker also slips in “Bobby” chapters without any explanation at all. Are these his own memories as a young boy, serving as a rationale for writing this novel? Are they those of a fictional character? Either way, they might strike some as intrusive and unnecessary.

Parker’s latest is another example of his courage to try new things. In addition to the Spenser books, he created two other series: Sunny Randall, featuring a female detective, and Jesse Stone, a small town police chief. Further reaching outside his comfort zone, he wrote Gunman’s Rhapsody, a western novel featuring Wyatt Earp, and took it upon himself to write “sequels” to some of Raymond Chandler’s novels.

While Parker’s “Spenser” books are much more detail-oriented (for some reason, he has a mania for describing the most minute details of the characters’ food preparation and clothing), Double Play is stark by comparison, mirroring the bleakness characteristic of this genre.

[Note: This review originally appeared on Bookreporter.com.]

* RK review: More baseball fiction

A version of this review originally appeared on Purebaseball.com in 2001.

Summer is firmly entrenched. So is your favorite team … in last place. The time for spring training optimism is over. Face it, it’s the cellar for sure. Now what?

Time to tum off the radio, shut the TV and head for the great outdoors. Turn your mind from the daily grind of newspaper accounts and statistics and relax with a good baseball book. Not necessarily one about the majestic history of the game or a particular team or player. Try fiction for a change.

Breaking Balls, by Paul Lebowitz (McFarland) looks at three years in the life of Brett Samuels, a minor league pitching prospect of the sandlots of Brooklyn. Author Lebowitz accounts not only for life on the field, but off as well. Many young players are away from home for the first time and must deal with mundane matters for the first time, too. Laundry, setting up a bank account, eating properly — things their parents took care of for them, are the day to day doings that the author presents in a realistic yet never boring manner.

While there is a diverse group of young men, there are very few of the ethnic stereotypes that one often finds in sports novels, a most welcome change and a sign of maturity. Having said that, however, Samuels is deemed by his teammates to be something of a brain, relatively speaking, by dint of his Jewish heritage. Some things never seem to change.

Lebowitz takes Samuels through a believable apprenticeship, complete with teammates of greater and lesser ability, and managers both keen and incompetent. There’s little in the way of drama, but Breaking Balls is one of those books that could be termed “a nice summer read.”

* * *

About 80 Percent Luck: A Novel (Total Sports) is another relaxing story, this time from the perspective of the sportswriters. Gene Wojciechowski, an analyst for ESPN, makes a realistic go in his novel of Joe Riley, a poor Chicago hack for one of the windy city’s newspapers, thrown into the middle of a labor dispute, forced to cover the Cubs during spring training. In a case of publish or perish, he must overcome the petty rivalries with his brethren media, angling for exclusives in an atmosphere of, at best, the players’ benign neglect or, at worst, physical intimidation.

What was previously mentioned about stereotypical characters in Breaking Balls doesn’t apply as much here, although it is still an improvement over prior writings. There are Hispanics who don’t want to learn English, rednecks who can’t abide anyone who speaks in words of more than one syllable, prima donna superstars … the works. Even the front off personnel are shown with the light of suspicion and contempt.

There are a few twists and turns to keep the pages turning, along with some cliched storylines, but all in all Eighty Percent gets lucky enough to win over its reader.

* * *

Sut McCaslin: A Baseball Romance (Steve Spoerl, Writers Club Press) is a much deeper and introspective attempt. The Washington Senators of the 1950s are in their usual doldrums, bringing up the rear of the American League. McCaslin, an outfielder trying to hang on, is something of an anomaly, a mediocre athlete with more on his mind that RBI and home runs. In fact, his teammates consist of an unusual company of locker room philosophers, spouting off on such topics as the McCarthy hearings and communism and race relations.

The daily grind wears on McCaslin, who questions the path his life has taken. It’s a heavy piece of fiction that almost seems to be a metaphor for the ambiguity of life. This is not one of your more lightweight beach books, and definitely not for those who prefer Susan Isaacs to Isaac Newton.

* * *

Shadow Ball: A Novel of Baseball and Chicago (Peter M. Ruckoff, McFarland considers what might have happened to the 1919 White Sox had Charles Comiskey been able to sign Pop Lloyd, one of the early stars of the Negro Leagues, as a mid-season addition. Author Ruckoff’s research is comparable to Troy Soos, author of the Mickey Rawlings murder mysteries, in the attention to detail of the time period.

In the years surrounding World War I, southern blacks migrated northward in. hopes of finding jobs left by those who had entered the service. With the end of the hostilities, and with the soldiers returning home to reclaim their employments, the depiction of racial tension between Chicago’s white and African American communities is palpable. This goes for the effects of having a black man on the White Sox as well.

The main characters include Comiskey, the legendary owner of the White Sox; Rube Foster, one of the pioneers of the Negro Leagues; Pop Lloyd, dubbed “the black Honus Wagner,” and two minor characters, Sam Weiss, as the stereotypical Jewish lawyer, and Kid Douglas, a torch singer working as domestic for Comiskey and the object of Sam’s unrequited affections. There are also appearances by the infamous Black Sox: Risberg, Gandil, Cicotte, Williams and Jackson, and their nemesis, Eddie Collins.

Shadow Ball (the pre-game warm ups sans baseball performed by Negro players for the amusement of the crowds) revolves around Comiskey’s attempt to land Lloyd, looking to light a fire under his team (not to mention beating New York Giants manager John McGraw to the punch). Ruckoff artfully depicts Comiskey’s machinations as he browbeats subordinates, fences with Foster and generally bullies his way around.

The book is full of moralizing, pondering the evils of racism and the injustices of denying black athletes, in many cases far superior to their Caucasian counterparts, th~ chance to play in organized baseball. It winds its way to a roller coaster ending, an almost sci-fi foreshadowing of the ramifications of Comiskey’s actions. At times the story meanders. In fact, one might wonder about the necessity of the Kid Douglas character at all, as she plays no useful purpose other than to give Sam something to think about.

Ruckoff makes his characters almost caricatures: Comiskey is a loud, insulting boss, spouting racial epithets as a matter of course, albeit with equal disdain towards all minorities. One wonders if the most odious plantation owner could be any worse than the “Old Roman.”

* * *

Like the books by W.P. Kinsella mentioned in the previous entry, Murderer’s Row: Baseball Mysteries (edited by Otto Penzier, new Millennium Press) is another collection of baseball variations on a theme. You’ve got your hit men; you’ve got your witnesses in hiding; you’ve got your basic detective searching for the murder of Eddie Gaedel, pint-sized pinchhitter for Bill Veeck’s St. Louis Browns. All in all, the proverbial something for the hybrid mystery/baseball fan. The quality herein ranges from all-star to rookie and includes contributions from such well-known mystery writers as Elmore Leonard; Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser detective series; sports columnist Mike Lupica; and Tory Soos. Editor Otto Penzler offers further reading suggestions in a lengthy bibliography.

* RK author profile: Troy Soos

Apropos of the interview I did with Favorite PASTimes, here’s a profile on Troy Soos, author of the Mickey Rawlings series of historical baseball mysteries, I did for the Summer 1998 edition of The Mystery Review, a defunct Canadian publication.

* * *

The manicured grass of the baseball field doesn’t grow under Troy Soos’ feet. The Cincinnati Red Stalkings, the fifth in the Mickey Rawlings mystery series (Kensington Books), is due out this spring. And he’s already working on his next book. And the one after that.

Mixing well-researched fact with fiction, Soos depicts the travels and travails of Mickey Rawlings, a journeyman ballplayer in the early 20th century. Rawlings possesses a keen mind, if mediocre athletic skills. He must contend not only with the tenuous nature of the athlete’s career, with all its peculiarities and Runyonesque characters, but with becoming enmeshed in the murders that somehow crop up at each of his venues.

As a young man, Rawlings left home to pursue his dream to become a professional ballplayer. His journeys took him to factory towns where work was often secondary to playing for the company team. He caught the eyes of major league scouts and wound up on the Boston Braves of 1911, only to be released after the season. He hooked up with the crosstown Red Sox, where his exploits begin.

In his debut, Rawlings must deal with a Murder at Fenway Park. By the time his train arrives in Boston, he’s missed his first game with his new team. Except for the guard who lets him in, there’s no one left to greet him as he wanders the tunnels of the new stadium – no one except a bloody corpse. Now he has to prove to the authorities thathe’s not the murderer. Before long he will also need to be wary not to become the next victim.

During a recen t conversation with Soos from his home in Winter Park, Florida, the author discussed the complexities of the historical mystery novel.

Soos was born in New Jersey in 1957, two weeks after the Brooklyn Dodgers migrated to the West Coast. He attended his first major league game in 1963, primarily to see Duke Snider, a former Dodger winding down his career with the fledgling New York Mets. Watching his idol sparked a lifelong interest, not in modern baseball, but in the game’s history.

* Lest we forget: Paul Hemphill

The author of Long Gone: A Novel passed away Saturday, Jul 11, at the age of 73.

Written in 1979, Long Gone doesn’t get as much praise as other titles; Some say was it was too cliched, with stock characters, but I thought it was a good ‘un, dealing with minor league baseball in the 1950s South. (It was turned into a 1987 TV movie starring William (C.S.I.) Peterson, as Stud Cantrell (the hero), as well as Virginia Madsen, Dermot Muroney, Larry Riley, William Gibson, and Teller.)

Hemphill also published a non-fiction book, Heart of the Game: The Education of a Minor League Ball Player, which profiled a marginal athlete for the Durham Bulls.

His obituary from The New York Times and another one from BronxBanterblog by Alex Belth, author of Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players’ Rights.

For the time being, you can still access Paul Hemphill’s website, with links to more obits.

* RK Review: Oh, Johnny

by Jim Lehrer (Random House)

Veteran newsman Jim Lehrer considers loss in his newest novel, the story of a young baseball player called upon to serve his country during World War II.

Like many young men of the era, Johnny Wrigley had to put his life on hold. A promising young athlete, he is sent off to the Pacific to use his newly-learned skills, courtesy Uncle Sam: flame-thrower operator. But before he goes, he and his compatriots make a stop in Wichita where a young and very naive Johnny makes the acquaintance of a young women he hopes will change his life.

Physically, he is relatively unscathed, but mentally Johnny returns from the war a changed man, as does everyone who has served in combat. Can he pick up where he left and fulfill his dream to be a major leaguer? Can he reunite with the girl of his dreams? If there’s anything we learn from books like this — indeed, from life — it is that things don’t always work out the way we plan. But it’s what we do after we realize that that makes the difference in whether we consider our time successful or not.

Lehrer, who was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals as a boy, does a good job depicting minor league baseball at the time; you can almost smell the flanel and sweat. You can feel the hope and desperation as these young men — who have based their entire futures on their abilities on the ballfield — find out that perhaps there are things more important that a game.

Oh Johnny is a bit on the skimpy side, and it rushes to its conclusion and it seems there should be more on what he went through overseas and how PTSS affected the young man. But Lehrer is a notoriously prodigious writer. Maybe he was anxious to get to his next project.

* A Guide to Baseball Fiction

I may have done this one before, but I came across it in my Google alerts, so here we go.

Tim Morris of the University of Texas at Arlington, has compiled this massive list:

This Guide to Baseball Fiction is a combination of bibliographic checklist and evaluative critical guide to over 1,000 works of baseball fiction. The opinions expressed are mine alone; but I have tried to acknowledge the critical consensus where I differ from it. This Guide is very far from comprehensive, but does contain the most-discussed works; I add new titles continually.

* Review: Oh Johnny

gets a non-glowing review in The Washington Times.

Upshot:

The veteran newsman thinks he has things to say, about baseball, puppy love and the greatest generation. But the way in which he says those things are so bland and so uninteresting and so hackneyed and so cartoonish that one begins to speed through the pages, plowing through language that rarely employs more than three syllables at a whack and never inspires the imagination or tickles the senses.