Baseball Fiction

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.

Stephen Satlow is an eight-year-old boy living in Brooklyn, New York, which means he only cares about one thing - the Dodgers. Steve and his father spend hours reading the sports pages and listening to games on the radio. Aside from an occasional run-in with his teacher, life is pretty simple for Steve. But then Steve hears a rumor that an African-American family is moving to his all-Jewish neighborhood. It's 1948 and some of his neighbors are against it. Steve knows this is wrong. His hero, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier in baseball the year before.

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.

Rhys Rivera is the star short-stop for the Longview Lumberjacks. Many know him, even more love him. He has a pretty face, a quick smile, and an air of danger about him that everyone seems to adore. He's not known as the bad boy of baseball for nothing. It all started with his father, who decided to be a criminal mob boss, then died. Fortunately for his uncle, Rhys wants absolutely nothing to do with the family business and runs before anyone can figure out which way is up.

Adrian does not like sports—especially baseball! He’s eager to impress his new friends, though, so he goes to a baseball game with them. When they start speaking in baseball lingo, it almost sounds like a secret code! Will they figure out that he isn’t really a fan of the game? Maybe baseball isn’t really as bad as Adrian thinks!

Jon Hamm returns as intrepid private eye Jack Bergin in this thrilling, hard-boiled Audible Original series. Set against the backdrop of the real-life battle to bring the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, Bergin investigates a brutal murder at the request of an old flame (Ana de la Reguera), and uncovers a deadly conspiracy to forcefully evict a Mexican-American community.

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.

For Katie McKenna, passing out and landing in the arms of Washington DC Soaring Eagles baseball player AJ Williamson is one of those moments she'd rather forget. Embarrassed beyond belief, she tries to pretend the incident never happened. She puts the escapade behind her, choosing to spend the summer preparing for law school and admiring AJ safely from afar.

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.

Gideon Clarke is a man on a quest. He is out to prove to the world, as his father tried before him, that the world-champion Chicago Cubs traveled to Onamata, Iowa, in the summer of 1908 for an exhibition game against all-stars from the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, an amateur league. The game, which was to be short, pleasant, and the Cubs thought, one-sided, turned into a titanic battle of over 2,000 innings, played mostly in the pouring rain. This game is not on the record books.

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.

Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. It’s Rays/Mariners, and David Price is breezing through the line-up. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone from decades past, someone who shouldn’t be at the ballgame, shouldn’t be on the planet. And so begins a parade of people from Evers’s past, all of them occupying that seat behind home plate. Until one day Dean Evers sees someone even eerier….

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Cole Anders is in his last season at Fullton State. If he doesn't get drafted this year, he'll be forced to hang up his cleats for good. It's not something he's ready to do. To prove he's serious about his final season, he's given up girls. No more casual hookups, dates, or one-night stands. But there's one girl who has always refused to give up on him. One girl who has been there since the start of freshman year. One girl he stupidly assumed would always be waiting for him when he got off the field, no matter how long it took.

My name is Lux Weston, and I’m a matter of national security... apparently. All I did was meet a beautiful girl in a bookstore and then rescue her. Once… twice… and maybe a third time—from a creeper. The problem? The creeper turned out to be Secret Service, and the girl… well, she’s Radley Andrews—the President’s only daughter. It has disaster written all over it. I should stay away. She’s a student, I’m a Major League Baseball player. She’s trying to hide from the spotlight, I’m standing underneath it. Not to mention I’ve never had a relationship, and Radley has her own demons to battle.

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.