BASEBALL'S BEST Short Stories. This item is unavailable.BASEBALL'S BEST Short Stories

In this collection of 25 baseball stories, good yarns slide in between nostalgic reveries on the lore of the game and thoughtful reflections on American culture. Among the contributors are T. Coraghessan Boyle, Michael Chabon, Zane Grey, Garrison Keillor, James Thurber, P.G. Wodehouse, and Ring Lardner.

With the current malaise surrounding the sport, the time is ripe for this excellent collection chronicling more than a century of America's love affair with baseball. With an all-star cast of writers drawn from various eras and genres, Staudohar (Labor Relations in Professional Sports) demonstrates how thoroughly the game permeates American life?its psychology, sense of drama, mythology and moral code provide archetypes familiar even to those who have never set foot in a ballpark. The tales dramatize the conflicts between youth and experience, pride and humility, skill and luck, team loyalty and personal ambition. Master storytellers like Ring Lardner (author of three entries here), Zane Grey, Damon Runyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Robert Penn Warren, James Thurber, Garrison Keillor and T. Coraghessan Boyle celebrate the national pastime in 27 memorable tales and one poem, some poignant, some uproarious, each introduced by a brief editor's note. Baseball and literary fans may debate whether these are indeed the "best" baseball stories (where's George Plimpton's "The Curious Case of Sydd Finch"?). So many good writers have felt the need to write about baseball that compiling a good anthology of baseball fiction isn't the hardest of tasks. Still, even if this project is a bit of a hanging curveball, Staudohar has hit it out of the park.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This outstanding anthology is a testament to baseball's enduring drawing power as subject matter for some of our most renowned authors. Among those represented are Zane Grey, Robert Penn Warren, Ring Lardner, James Thurber, and Garrison Keillor. Highlights include Warren's "Goodwood Comes Back," in which a man recalls the fate of his town's best-ever ballplayer; Eliot Asinof's "The Rookie," a poignant tale of an aging rookie's belated shot at the major leagues; and "A Pitcher Grows Tired" by Ashley Buck, which relates the thoughts of a still-successful but aging pitcher. There's also Thayer's famous "Casey at the Bat" and Frank DeFord's sequel, in which mighty Casey crosses paths with John L. Sullivan and James Naismith. Plus, it's hard not to treasure a book that exposes readers to such old favorites as Thurber's "You Could Look It Up" and Lardner's "My Roomy." A worthy addition to most sports-literature collections. Wes Lukowsky

Any collection of baseball stories that fails to include examples from W.P. Kinsella's work is leaving out some of the finest short stories ever written; at the very least, "K-Mart" and "The Thrill of the Grass" should have been included here. So should one or two of the short stories in Jerry Klinkowitz's Short Season and Other Stories (Johns Hopkins, 1988). This said, editor Staudohar (coauthor of Labor Relations in Professional Sports, Greenwood, 1986) includes some of the classics from Ring Lardner (The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner, LJ 4/1/95), James Thurber, and Damon Runyon, as well as a few unexpected treats from P.G. Wodehouse and Garrison Keillor. But there's a lot of dreck here, too, stories that were born in men's magazines and should have been allowed to rest in peace there. Only comprehensive collections need consider.?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.