Go the Distance: Baseball Stories

As in Shoeless Joe and his other baseball fiction, Kinsella uses the sport not as subject but as context in these ten stories, which range from the realistic to the fantastic. Here a legendary base stealer for St. Louis Browns tries to perpetuate his skills, an extraterrestrial pretends to be the Seattle Mariners mascot, and three middle-aged baseball buddies play a nostalgic pickup game in the women's wear section of K-mart. The collection was first published in 1988 asThe Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt.

W.P. KINSELLA is author of several short story collections, including two reissued by SMU Press:Red Wolf, Red Wolf (1990) and Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa (1993). He is best known for his award-winning novelShoeless Joe, which became the film Field of Dreams in 1989. A native Canadian, Kinsella divides his time between western Canada and California.