Baseball Fiction

Ryan hated the move. He hated being uprooted from his home in New York to the rural outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. But little did he know what was in store for him, as he becomes wrapped up in two worlds, and in two conflicts. After touching a baseball bat found in the attic of his new home, the Belle Meade Plantation, Ryan is transported back in time to the Civil War. It is here that he takes part in a baseball game between Union and Confederate soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Nashville. It would be a summer unlike any other.

Why is a black cat haunting the New York Mets? Kate and Mike arrive in New York for a big game against the Chicago Cubs, but Cookie, the team’s star hitter, is rattled by a phantom feline. Without a win at that night’s game, the Mets’ season might be over.

Humor is the best part of baseball. To survive a long season, the everyday schedule, and the failure that is inherent in the game people have always needed a good laugh about a ballgame from time to time. The stories in Baseball Humor: A Collection of Stories by Master Storytellers poke good fun at the struggles, ambition, greed, romance, envy, wisdom, and quirks of the players, managers, wives, and fans. Included are “The Pitcher and the Plutocrat” by P G Wodehouse, “Horseshoes” and “Alibi Ike” by Ring Lardner, “The Red-Headed Outfield” and “The Rube” by Zane Gray, and many others.

Play ball! Jack and Annie aren’t great baseball players... yet! Then Morgan the librarian gives them magical baseball caps that will make them experts. They just need to wear the caps to a special ballgame in Brooklyn, New York. The magic tree house whisks them back to 1947! When they arrive, Jack and Annie find out that they will be batboys in the game - not ballplayers. What exactly does Morgan want them to learn? And what’s so special about this game? They only have nine innings to find out!

In this inventive, fast-paced novel, New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi takes on hard-hitting themes - from food safety to racism and immigration - and creates a zany, grand-slam adventure that will get kids thinking about where their food comes from. The zombie apocalypse begins on the day Rabi, Miguel, and Joe are practicing baseball near their town's local meatpacking plant and nearly get knocked out by a really big stink.

Josh is still flying high from his team's tournament win at Coopers­town when his parents start talking about a divorce. Now his dad is challenging him to play the best of the best at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. But does he just want to get Josh out of the way? Two things are sure: His father's new girlfriend, Diane, is looking to change things, and Josh is determined to get her and her terrible son out of his life.

Marilyn Monroe died just after midnight on August 5, 1962; former Little League champion Kimitake "Clyde" Koba was born on the same day, at the same time. As Clyde struggles to escape the ghost of his brother and his alcoholic father and stumbles through his first love, he finds strength in the belief that he is the reincarnation of Monroe. Meanwhile....

It's another season of Renegade baseball and, as they say, the boys are back in town. All except for all-star pitcher Hawk Sinclair, who has returned to his hometown and back to the ranch he grew up on to rehab after shoulder surgery. Real-estate agent Bellamy Patrick feels like she's failing at being a single mom. Her son is having a hard time fitting in, and she's hoping that playing baseball will be the answer. When he doesn't make the team, she's willing to do anything to help him...except that! And that's exactly what the little-league coach expects.

With a hint of mystery and a collision of love and hurt, sports action, and thoughtful introspection, the debut novel, Baseball Boys: Collision, introduces athletic high school and junior high brothers F.P., Micah, and Mason, transplanted to Redd Rock Ranch and searching for comfort in "home" radically redefined. Competitive, the Redd brothers race ahead, dashing off to a next active exploit and throwing themselves into trouble. Usually with a ball. A rock. A bat. A stick. It's a competition. Play ball!

Dwayne Devero is just like you and me, except he simply doesn’t give a sh*t anymore. He’s had enough. He’s done with people living life wrong. You’ll do it right, or he’ll bury you under the bases at the ballpark where he coaches. It’s just that simple. Tired of poor decisions being made all around him, from the politics of player positions on his son’s little league baseball team to the philandering of his wife in his own bedroom, Dwayne decides that breaking is better than bending.

A rough-and-tumble band of batsmen from a California boomtown insist they're the country's best baseball team. To back up their boast, the Dillontown Nine make the 1881 champion ChicagoWhite Stockings an offer they can't refuse - a wager so bold it may completely transform life in their gold mining settlement. Into this explosive high-stakes climate rides 12-year-old baseball virtuoso Jack Dillon.

Rosie: Capricorn. Her talisman: a magical jacket from her mother's past that gets people to do whatever she says. Caro: Taurus. Rosie's older sister. Her talisman: a baseball bat that fixes whatever it breaks. Zeke: Certified Triple Pisces. His talisman: a manifestation stone that will make anyone fall in love with him. Rosie, Caro, and Zeke—and their talismans—find themselves intertwined in a magical, hilarious, and whip-smart Outsiders for the modern day.

Jess Singer, pitching prodigy and son of the infamous Jewish Joe Singer—who starred on the mound for the same MLB team twenty-five years earlier—is blessed with a plus-plus curveball, possesses immense athletic abilities, and is on the fast-track to stardom. But he's harboring perhaps the most potent secret a professional athlete can possess: his sexual preference.

Taking over the family farm in our small town was the only future I knew. The never-ending work left me with no social life and my virginity intact. Until my childhood rival graced us with his presence and was convinced he could help me with my... problem. Owen Ramsey was an elite professional baseball player who left Ashfield without a backward glance. But when he was left at the altar, he sought refuge back in our town. I hated how he could simultaneously make my heart race and my hands fist. And I really despised how good he looked in a pair of baseball pants.

It seems that the FDR writer is back wanting more Fe-As-Ko stories from cowpoke Royal Leckner. This time it's 1897, Royal and E.M. have been married about four years. And so have Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault, owners of the Four Arrows ranch. Royal is still foreman of the ranch and caretaker of its owner. As he reminds us, Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault are "short a hat size," but "nice and honest, which is better than smart and fox-like any day." It's time to take the cattle to Portland for the annual sale, and Royal is bringing Leviticus along to teach him how "to sign on the dotted line."

In the year 2166, baseball is just a distant memory, lost to history in the aftermath of a devastating second American Civil War a hundred years earlier. But, when Joe Scott, a curious 12-year-old, stumbles upon a relic from the distant past, from before the war, it sparks a search for its meaning. Little does he know that the wheels of Providence have been unwittingly set in motion which leads him on an epic quest of adventure and discovery.

Caitlin Dufresne has never loved anyone as much as she loves winning. A ruthless fifth-year associate at an elite Chicago law firm, she's on the fast track to partner - until a stupid, serious error enrages her bosses. Caitlin's continued refusal to share work - or credit - lands her a forced two-week vacation. She needs to regroup and learn to be part of a team, not just the star. When she meets Eli Grant, head of the firm's IT department, Caitlin knows the overgrown frat boy isn't her type.

Recently widowed and now retired, Billy Bryan is “coming to the end of many things.” Then a long-forgotten scrapbook stirs memories of a distant past - and beckons him and his grown daughter on a reluctant journey to relive his role in history. In 1947 Bryan was playing winter ball in Cuba, his future as uncertain as the island country’s. Then one fateful night Bryan witnessed a young student radical named Fidel unleash an amazing curveball. So begins Bryan's tug-of-war with destiny.

An unlikely team of misfit players, and the coach fighting to hold them all together… The All Nation Team tells the story of the first fully integrated, "post-racial" baseball team, very loosely based on an actual team that played in the years before World War I. In his first season as head coach of the All Nations team, former slave George Grunion must contend with racist crowds, flagging team morale, his own loneliness, and even the ghost of the previous head coach.

From Coney Island sideshows to the brand-new Yankee Stadium, Diamond Ruby chronicles the extraordinary life and times of a girl who rises from utter poverty to the kind of renown only the Roaring Twenties can bestow. But her fame comes with a price, and Ruby must escape a deadly web of conspiracy and threats from Prohibition rumrunners, the Ku Klux Klan, and the gangster underworld.