Baseball Fiction

What better city to spend the Fourth of July than Philadelphia? For Mike and Kate, the holiday is all about hot dogs, history, and baseball! But the Phillies are in no mood to celebrate. They keep losing, and some people blame the lovable Phillie Phanatic! Can Mike and Kate help the Phanatic clear his name?

Thanks to Kate's mom, a sports reporter, cousins Mike Walsh and Kate Hopkins have tickets to the Red Sox game and All Access passes to Fenway Park. But as they're watching batting practice before the game, the lucky bat of Red Sox star slugger Big D is stolen...right in front of dozens of people. Without the bat, Big D can't seem to hit a thing. Can Kate and Mike figure out who pinched the bat before Big D and the Sox chalk up a loss? The Fenway Foul-Up includes a fun fact section about Boston's Fenway Park.

How many 14-year-old boys would turn down an offer of time travel to any baseball game in history? Certainly not die-hard New York Yankees fan Matt Collier. Accompanied by the Time Keeper, guardian of Time throughout the universe, Matt becomes the batboy for his beloved team and tries to change the outcome of the 1960 World Series, the first ever to end with a home run.

Batting second - and perfect for Halloween - audiobook number two in an early listener mystery series where each audiobook is set in a different American ballpark! Mike and Kate are waiting for Kate's mom at a boring press conference in Yankee Stadium when the team official says something that makes Mike perk up his ears. There are rumors that the ghost of Babe Ruth is haunting the new stadium! A chill air blasts down a service hallway before every home game, along with various thumps and bumps. Is the Bambino really searching for his missing locker?

Now batting third, book number three in a brand-new early chapter book mystery series where each book is set in a different American ballpark! It's spring break and Kate and Mike are off to Los Angeles to visit Kate's dad, a scout for the Dodgers. But all is not sunny in L.A.; strange things have been happening to Kate's dad. Pages have gone missing from his clipboard. He's gotten threatening phone calls. And he thinks he's being followed! Is someone after Mr. Hopkins's top secret scouting reports?

Ivy-covered walls--they're the most famous part of the Chicago Cubs' historic ballpark, Wrigley Field. Mike and Kate can't wait to get down on the field to see the ivy for themselves. But when they do, they're horrified to discover patches of the ivy have been ripped away! Who would want to sabotage the stadium? Is it someone trying to curse the Cubs? Or is the rumor of a treasure hidden under the ivy tempting greedy fans? The Wrigley Riddle includes a fun fact page about Chicago's Wrigley Field.

Antonio Ramirez is ready to leave his wild reputation behind in New York and adopt a more respectable life with the Texas Mustangs. When he spies the woman of his dreams at a Fundraiser-its love at first sight. Convincing Clare Kincaid that he's sincere is harder than he expected. Giving Clare what she wants could wreck his career and compromise his feelings for her. When super sexy Antonio Ramirez approaches her, Clare is sure he's playing a cruel game, but the Mustangs new Center Fielder won't take no for an answer.

The story of Negro League baseball is the story of gifted athletes and determined owners; of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship; of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. It is a perfect mirror for the social and political history of black America in the first half of the 20th century. But most of all, the story of the Negro Leagues is about hundreds of unsung heroes who overcame segregation to do the one thing they loved more than anything else in the world: play ball.

Five years ago, Jack Ridley was about to step into baseball's highest echelons. He hoped he had found love with the daughter of the team owner. Bad luck destroyed both dreams. His chance for redemption arrives in an encounter with a young ballplayer whose own dreams were derailed. Life gets in the way as Jack teaches Duncan James the finer points of big-league baseball. Duncan's mother finds healing from her own losses as this stranger pursues revival and renewal through America's pastime. Jack finds that love has many forms and can be unexpected. You have only to be willing to play.

Miles Cartwright had the rookie season of any player’s dreams. The San Francisco Felons made it all the way to the World Series then lost it all in game seven with him on the mound. To make matters worse, a misunderstanding has him in hot water with the law, and on a short leash with his club. Last chances are something Carmen Murphy is all too familiar with. Her goal of becoming a respected sports writer is circling the drain while she wastes her talents writing sports gossip for a trashy, but popular, blog. Getting some insight on the Miles Cartwright scandal would be great for page views.

No one needs that many hookups! Not even soon to be major league pitcher Theo Von Bremen. So, I help him by routinely thinning out his contact list - because I'm the best roommate ever. And he's optimal baby daddy material. For me - not Amanda one, two, or three. But since the man can't take a hint, I'll continue to spray his sheets with my perfume and accidentally leave my panties in his laundry. That has to be enough to break a man eventually. Right?

What’s a 16-year-old boy to do when he learns that his stepmother and a local judge have murdered his father and now plan to kill him, too? Well, when it’s 1906, and you can play pretty good second base, you join a barn-storming baseball team making its way across Kansas. It also helps that the team is the Kansas City National Bloomer Girls. After all, who’d look for a runaway boy disguised as a girl on a women’s team that competes against town-ball teams of male players? Of course, it’ll take more than long hair, a Spalding glove, and a quick bat to stay alive.

Aiden Emerson is an all-star pitcher and the all-around golden boy of Riverton. Or at least he was, before he quit the team the last day of junior year without any explanation. How could he tell people he's losing his vision at 17? Straitlaced Olivia thought she had life all figured out. But when her dream internship falls apart, her estranged mother comes back into her life, and her longtime boyfriend ghosts her right before summer break, she's starting to think fate has a weird sense of humor.

Wes: Life on the road as a pro-ballplayer isn't without it's drawbacks. And now, without a team to play for, I find myself heading home. Maybe it's a good thing. I can focus on my daughter, Izzy, and my life. I need to get things straightened out, including that hole that I never filled after Izzy's mom left. But, is there anything that could keep me in town if another team came calling?  

They say that each of us becomes an entirely new person every seven years. But Rebecca Bradshaw doesn't feel any different when an old lover shows up severely injured at the hospital where she runs the physical-therapy department. Seven years ago, baseball player Jace Cooper left her without a second thought or the chance to share the life-changing secret she swore she'd keep from him forever. Now he was back, wanting both her help and a second chance.

In the third book in the New York Times best-selling middle grade series inspired by the life of iconic New York Yankee Derek Jeter, Derek's father keeps his promise to coach his son's youth baseball team. Derek is sure this will be the best season yet! He has it all planned: His dad will have him start at shortstop, and the team will cruise to a championship. But sometimes life doesn't go according to plan.

It is 1947 when Joseph Burke, ex-Marine, ex-husband, ex-somebody–is hired as a bodyguard to protect Lauren Roach, 25 and spoiled rotten. The unlikely duo becomes entangled with Burke’s boyhood hero, color-barrier breaking baseball player Jackie Robinson, in a story that is both thrilling and engaging. It is in the historical character Jackie Robinson that Mr. Parker finds inspiration and Joseph Burke may find his redemption. This is a work of fiction about a real man. Most of what I’ve written I’ve made up. I have, however, attempted to render Jackie Robinson accurately. As he was, or as I imagined him to be, in 1947, when I was turning 15, and he was changing the world. The rest is altogether fiction. It may be more Burke’s story then Jackie’s story. But, without Jackie, Burke would have had no story. And neither would I. Robert B Parker.

Twelve-year-old House Jackson, star pitcher and team captain of the Aurora County All-Stars, has been sidelined for a whole sorry year with a broken elbow. He's finally ready to play, but wouldn't you know that the team's only game of the year has been scheduled for the exact same time as the town's 200th-anniversary pageant. Now House must face the pageant's director, full-of-herself Frances Shotz (his nemesis and perpetrator of the elbow break), and get his team out of this mess.

Time: August, 1950. Place: A suburb north of Fenway Park. Young Billy Flynn is determined to find truth and direction, in spite of a family that opposes him at every turn and a neighborhood populated by a host of zany, insensitive, un-politically correct characters, who aspire to little and value even less. It is light. It is heavy. It is American. It is Irish/American. It is sad. It is funny. And if it weren't for the irrepressible spirit and persistence of its hero, Billy Flynn, it could have been tragic.

As the Travelin' Nine head to Chicago, the team is filled with hope and optimism. After a disappointing loss in Cincinnati at the start of their baseball tour, the heroes of the Spanish-American War bounced back in Louisville. Doc and Woody came through with timely fielding, Crazy Feet and Tales smacked clutch hits, and champion horses provided that extra kick, helping the barnstormers to their come-from-behind victory.