Age: Adult
Genre: Fiction, short stories, baseball
An eighty-three year old is signed to a major league team
just to bunt. The hitter and catcher of a homerun ball stay mysteriously
connected throughout their lives. A little league coach’s players don’t follow
his signs but still win the game. All these are subjects in Bob Weintraub’s
collection of fictional baseball stories.
In the eleven stories, the author displays a deep knowledge of baseball:
how the game is played, players, scouting, fans, management, etc. He presents scenarios that seem as if they are
real, but adds something that puts them just a little out of reach. He creates
characters that the reader will probably find likable, and his stories are
creative, though sometimes get a bit heavy on the baseball jargon.
If I am reading a sports story, it is because I hope to be
able to talk to my husband or friends about it. See, in my current circle of
friends, I am the only one who doesn’t know the sports commentators by name, voluntary
watch televised games, or visit espn.com on a daily basis. You could say I am a
casual fan and am mostly interested because those around me are. So when I saw
a book of baseball stories, I thought it might be interesting and maybe I would
learn something I could share with my friends. However, I realized shortly
after starting the first story that this collection was obviously fiction and
would provide me with no interesting facts or anecdotes to discuss. I read the
first five stories, but my interest waned and I simply stopped. It is to the
author’s credit that a non-sports fan such as me got that far in the book and
was able to mostly follow the jargon and explanations of happenings in the game.
That proves the author wasn’t writing only to hardcore fans. However, being a
casual baseball fan only, five stories was the limit of my attention span, and
I decided to hang it up and find something more engrossing. Short stories (and
essay collections, for that matter) are always a bit of a hard sell because
without the continuous narrative there is little to keep the reader turning the
pages. Collections are more suited to being read piece by piece, so the reader
must truly enjoy each story and be drawn in by the voice of the author to want
to continue on. For me, this book and this author did not draw me in. A real
baseball fan may find the collection more enjoyable, but I cannot speak for such
a person. Hopefully the author can find the right audience for this book.
Perhaps one of my friends would like it.
Bibliographic Information:
Weintraub, Bob. Painting
the Corners, Volume I: A Collection of Off-Centre Baseball Stories.
Toronto, ON, Canada: Iguana Books, 2011.
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