Baseball Fiction

It’s the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records.

Jax has been my best friend since the day we met. We not only share our passion for baseball, but we train together, play on the same team, hang out together, and even sleep in the same bed half the time. I feel safe with him, and he gets me like no one else. Yeah, he's gay, and I'm straight, but that doesn't matter. Until it does. Until one stupid dare to kiss each other leads to the most amazing, epic kiss of my life. Until I suddenly can't stop thinking about him, about what he awakens in me. Until all I want is him.

Has anyone ever told you that baseball is more than a game, that it's really a metaphor for life? Have you ever wondered what they meant? This story imagines the answer. A single mother moves to Kansas City with her young daughter and notices that everyone she meets - her new colleagues, neighbors, even the mailman - can't stop talking about baseball. "It's more than just a game," they tell the mother. "It's so much more. What you need is to come to a game and experience it."

Candy shop owner Charlotte Caine knows temptation. To reboot her life, shed weight and gain perspective, she’s passing up sweet enticements left and right. But willpower doesn’t come so easily when hell-raiser Spencer Gregory comes back to Hope’s Crossing, bringing with him memories of broken promises and teen angst. A retired pro baseball player on the mend from injury—and a damaging scandal—he’s interested in his own brand of reinvention.

Mac has one more year of baseball eligibility left. One more year to show the major league scouts that he’s worth it. That he’s good enough to play professional baseball for them. He’s not sure that he is. So far, not a single scout has approached him. There are no agents banging down his door, hoping to represent him; no emails, no phone calls, no messages through Coach Jackson. No, nothing.

It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first - and some would say still the best - novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material - the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era - and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America's national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural.

Brayden: I'm the man with it all. The pinstriped jersey covering my back garners easy cash, flashy cars and fast women. My gilded name drapes over the city in neon. I have everything. Everything, except the thing I crave most. Ashley Foster. They say you can never go home again. I'm out to prove them wrong. But what if returning requires facing all the things you destroyed? To what lengths would you go to earn forgiveness? Would you beg? Would you borrow? Would you steal?

The proposal was simple: Score a home run and take my virginity. Except my proposal went to the wrong brother. It was supposed to go to my best friend, but as fate would have it, it fell into the hands of his infuriatingly hot, irritatingly charming older brother. Lane Collins is Orleans University's All-Star baseball captain. Cocky pitcher. Player on and off the field. The life of every party. And the same guy I've crushed on in secret since we were kids.

Step up to the plate and separate fact from fiction in baseball’s origins! Did Abner Doubleday really create America’s favorite pastime, or does this story strike out? Listen to learn all you can about baseball’s beginnings!

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey's chosen champion doesn't exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

Twelve-year-old Michael Arroyo lives in the shadows of Yankee Stadium, home of his heroes, but a place that might as well be on a different continent since he can't afford to see the inside. He also lives in the shadows of his Bronx neighborhood, hiding from the bill collectors and the officials who would separate him from his 17-year-old brother if they knew the two boys were living on their own. Baseball is Michael's only salvation.

Malcolm loves two things—baseball and science. He’s always studying the stats and coming up with ideas to help his team gain an advantage over the competition. But when Malcolm’s homemade glove oil causes a major blowup with his teammates, he must find a way to win back their trust.

Resisting the shortstop has never been my strong suit. I failed at it during my first spring training. It sure as hell looks like I'm about to fail at it again. The sport I love playing with my very soul hangs in the balance. But everything my heart craves lies with the guy I've got to resist. A guy who's asking me to make the toughest choice ever.

Two exciting Magic Tree House adventures, narrated by author Mary Pope Osborne. A Big Day for Baseball: Batter up! The magic tree house has whisked Jack and Annie back in time to the 1940s. They're in Brooklyn, New York for a very special baseball game. Hurricane Heroes in Texas: Jack and Annie are on a mission! When the magic tree house whisks them back to Galveston, Texas, in 1900, they find out that a big storm is coming.

It’s my final season to prove myself before the MLB Draft. The last thing I need is a distraction–and especially not one as tantalizing as Mia di Angelo. She’s the drop-dead gorgeous astrophysicist-in-training who ditched me the moment I wanted to take us from casual to committed. Yeah. Ouch. But when she needs somewhere to stay for the summer… well. I offer her my place. Being roommates shouldn’t be so hard. Not distracting at all. Not the least bit challenging.

Nico met the love of his life when he was 17. Immediately, he realizes that the gap in their ages is too significant to make a move on her until she's legal in the eyes of the law. So he joins the United States Navy, killing time until he can come home to her again. But a tragedy strikes while Georgia is alone and vulnerable, and with no other recourse, Georgia leaves, disappearing without a trace. He finds her, but quickly realizes that she needs the time to herself to work out her problems. He leaves her be, knowing that if she ever felt anything for him, she'd come back home to him.

Dan Gutman has won a wide and growing audience among young readers, who have eagerly devoured all the books in the sports-loving author’s Baseball Card Adventure series. In Ted & Me, time-traveling Stosh has finally been found out by the FBI. Tasked with using his Ted Williams card to go back to 1941 to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor, Stosh also seizes on the chance to help the Splendid Splinter add even more home runs to his already legendary tally.

Lachlan Downy was a lover, not a fighter. Okay, he wouldn't lie, he was a fighter, too. But nobody had to know that. Especially not Memphis Tennessee Conner and her stuffy attitude when it came to cops and "men like him". Memphis knew cops. Her daddy was a cop. He was also the president of a motorcycle club. Needless to say, he's about as alpha as they come, and she's tired of overbearing men who think they know how to run her life better than she does.