Customer Reviews

Bottom of the Ninth: Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories (Writing Baseball)

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This book is for fans of literary baseball short stories. If you like the work of Andre Dubus (whose story inspired the movie IN THE BEDROOM), Patricia Highsmith (who wrote the novel THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY), and David Carkeet (whose novel THE GREATEST SLUMP OF ALL TIME is often listed as one of the best contemporary baseball novels), then you'll love this book. Some of these stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, and many have appeared in top literary magazines. Some stories are funny; some are dark. This is NOT a book of baseball anecdotes or sappy sentimentality or play-by-play accounts or simplistic moralizing. Like all great stories, the main subject (in this instance, baseball) is also a metaphor for some aspect of life, and, as anyone who's lived long enough should know, life is nothing if not ambiguous and complex. I highly recommend this anthology of funny, heartbreaking, ironic, scary, and intense stories in which baseball plays a significant role.

In this marvelous anthology of short stories about baseball, editor John McNally has assembled the fiction of contemporary writers, from Patricia Highsmith to André Dubus to Stuart Dybek, who share a fascination with the game and its influence on those who play it. Because these writers have different readerships and styles, these thematically grouped stories never get tiring. Instead, each one takes the reader deeper into the love of the game. The result is an exhilarating read for those who love both high-quality fiction and baseball.

Singling out individual stories from the rest is not an easy task since all are deserving of mention. Dubus's "After the Game" is about a major league shortstop from the Dominican Republic who inexplicably has a breakdown after a winning game. This story contrasts powerfully with David Jauss's "The Bigs", also about a player from the Dominican Republic, a minor leaguer who blows his chance at major league play because he cannot reconcile his ambition with what it has cost. Many of these stories are about missed chances and the heartbreak of never reaching the big leagues. Cris Mazza's brutal "Caught" follows a former minor league catcher haunted by his last moment as a professional player as he is picked up by a gay man in a bar. Leslie Pietrzyk shows the desperation of a minor leaguer's wife who will do anything to give her husband a chance at the show on his thirtieth birthday. Dybek's "Death of the Right Fielder" is an surreal story about a nameless right fielder who dies mysteriously - and is promptly buried - in his position. The more traditional "The Barbarians" by Highsmith explores the violence amateur ballplayers elicit in a painter who wants nothing more than to beautify "something that was, essentially, unbeautifiable." We even get a humanizing story about an umpire by Kurt Rheinheimer. In these nineteen stories, not a single one misses.

I highly recommend this book to all who love baseball and literature. Especially as the season gets underway, I can't think of a better way to spend time between televised games.

I bought this book looking for some stories about players, about the game of baseball, about the human side of it. I bought it for my son for his 11th birthday. I bought the wrong book. This book is NOT appropriate for anyone under 16, and not for many over 16. I'm sure many players use profanity, but almost every story had more than enough. One story led up to a player and his girl going through the trauma of a backroom abortion (where is the baseball in that?), another ended with the picture of a player sliding headfirst into home to be greeted by the batter, a malevolent teammate with a grudge who slugged his face with the bat. Looking for junk story writers trying to be cute or brutally realistic? Fine, this book is for you. Looking for good baseball stories? Look somewhere else.