Baseball Fiction

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.

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.

Hi! My name is Lucas Anderson, and moving to Pinewood was a big change for me—not the good kind either. Everything seemed to be going wrong…until I discovered baseball. The game brought new challenges, but I wasn’t alone. Dad, a former Navy SEAL, taught me to be brave and keep trying no matter what. And Mom (a genius) was always there, teaching me tricks to level up.

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.

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 sponsor of his baseball team tells Stosh about the bum rap Shoeless Joe Jackson got for his part in the scheme to fix the 1919 World Series. Now Stosh decides to use his special talent of traveling back in time to warn Jackson against becoming involved. The trouble is, some vicious gangsters stand to make a bunch of money if the fix is on - and they'll do anything to keep Stosh from interfering.

In these 11 stories, Gary Soto scores again. With a sensitivity and humor born from his own experiences while growing up in California's Central Valley, the author brings to the surface issues such as success and failure, honesty and deceit, love and friendship.

Shortstops who run with the wolves, painted eggs that reveal deeply disturbing meanings, long-dead Hall of Famers who miraculously return to the game, an Iowa minor-league town with a secret conspiracy: these are the elements from which W.P. Kinsella weaves nine fabulous stories about the magical world of baseball.

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.

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.

When Joe Stoshack holds a baseball card, his hand starts to tingle. And if the card is old enough - like the rare Babe Ruth card his father gives him for his 12th birthday - Joe can travel back in time! One of baseball's greatest mysteries is whether or not the Babe actually called his fifth-inning home run in the 1932 World Series. With Joe's new card, he can solve that mystery once and for all. But when Joe and his father travel back in time, they find more than the answer to a baseball mystery.

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.

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.

Chief of homicide district attorney Abby Endicott hasn't had the easiest adjustment to normal life. Her wealthy Boston family has cut her off because of her dangerous job. However, her personal life is about to be put on hold when the catcher for the Red Sox goes missing and she gets the case. Soon, it's not just a case of a missing celebrity. Another player turns up dead and the frantic search for Rudy Maddox escalates. It's when Abby discovers greased baseballs and mysterious sums of cash belonging to the victims that she realizes this goes far deeper than she realizes.

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.

I'm the coach's daughter, watching from the shadows as my father's best friend and star player wins the World Series for his team. Trick Lowry is almost twice my age and a bonafide celebrity, and I love him with my entire heart. It's the kind of secret, off-limits crush that feeds wild fantasies and reckless ideas—like sneaking into his hotel room while he's celebrating, just to have a little slice of him to myself. I innocently surround myself with his smell, thinking he doesn't have to know.

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.

This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.

Cooperstown! Josh is thrilled when all his hard training pays off in a big way and his team, the Titans, makes it to a national tournament in Cooperstown, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. More is on the line for Josh than just a trophy. Winning would mean everything to his dad, now Josh's coach. Winning could mean a major endorsement deal for the Titans and the attention of big league scouts!