Brittle Innings

Bishop. Michael

ISBN 10: 0553081365 / ISBN 13: 9780553081367

Published by New York, : Bantam Books, 1994, 1994

Description:

In a clear protective Brodart mylar cover. Danny Boles is a shortstop 1943 for the Highbridge Hellbenders. He befriends the team's seven-foot first baseman, Jumbo Hank Clerval, who looks like he was put together from spare body parts, but he's a hell of a baseball player. Especially when the pennant race is on. An excellent fantasy and gothic baseball novel that coul be construed as a sequel to a famous 19th Century novel. Seller Inventory # 000027

About this title:

Synopsis: For seventeen-year-old Danny Boles, a 5'5" shortstop out of Tenkiller, Oklahoma, the summer of 1943 would be a season to remember. The country's at war, and professional baseball needs able-bodied men. Danny's headed for Highbridge, Georgia - home of the Goober Pride peanut butter factory and the Highbridge Hellbenders, a Class C farm club in the Chattahoochee Valley League. He's a scrappy player with one minor quirk: a violent encounter on the train to Georgia has rendered him mute, his vocal cords tied up in knots.
Danny's idiosyncrasy, however, is nothing compared to that of his new Hellbender roommate, an erudite seven-foot giant by the name of Jumbo Hank Clerval. With his yellow eyes, strangely scarred face, and sausage-sized fingers, Hank seems to have been put together in a meat-packing plant. But he plays a mean first base and can hit the ball a mile. With the Hellbenders in a pennant race as hot as the relentless Georgia sun, the eloquent Clerval forms a special kinship with the speechless kid from Oklahoma. Danny soon realizes that Hank is not an ordinary man but something more complex...more mysterious than he'd imagined.
These two very different ballplayers forge a bond as the season moves inexorably toward its dramatic, and ultimately violent, conclusion. Both want a shot at the major leagues and both want to know what it's like to be a man. But they are about to discover how ambition and desire can turn even the gentlest soul into the worst kind of monster.
At turns funny, tragic, and ultimately uplifting, Brittle Innings is a brilliant evocation of a uniquely American drama: a season-long contest in which fantasies are engaged, heroes are created and destroyed, and innocence is lost forever.

From Kirkus Reviews: From the author of such noted works as Unicorn Mountain (1988), No Enemy But Time (1982), and others comes this remarkable novel, set in 1943, inspired by bush-league baseball and--it sounds incongruous, but Bishop pulls it off brilliantly--literature's most famous monster. Talented 17-year-old shortstop Danny Boles leaves Tenkiller, Oklahoma, to join the Hellbridge Hellbenders, a class C farm club in Georgia's Chattahoochee Valley League--but on the train to Hellbridge he's robbed and brutally raped, and loses his ability to speak. The Hellbenders' manager, Mister JayMac, rooms Danny with first-baseman Henry ``Jumbo'' Clerval, who, despite his intimidating yellow eyes, huge bulk, mysterious scars, and awesome hitting, turns out to be a gentle and understanding companion. Yet Henry is not what he seems: He talks a courtly, old-fashioned English and keeps secret papers hidden under his bed inside a kayak he claims to have made himself. He is, of course, Frankenstein's monster (savvy readers will have been tipped off by the name). After wandering in the Arctic for many years seeking redemption, immortal Henry came to Georgia--and discovered baseball. Danny soon wins the starting shortstop's job, to the chagrin of the incumbent, Buck Hoey, who nurses a deep resentment of the youngster. Through the summer of 1943, the complications mount: the Hellbenders, in the thick of a pennant race, lose their star centerfielder, a hemophiliac, in a bizarre accident during a game on an army base with a team of Negro All-Stars; Hoey is traded to the team's pennant rivals, the Gendarmes; during the last, crucial game of the season, with Danny and Henry slated to join the Philadelphia Phillies, Hoey extracts a horrid revenge. Resonantly evocative of time and place, with a splendid gallery of characters in a beautifully reticulated plot. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Brittle Innings
Publisher: New York, : Bantam Books, 1994
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Hard Cover
Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Edition: First Edition-First Printing.