Short Season, and Other Stories

by Jerry Klinkowitz

Each night, from April through August, up to a quarter of a million people in small towns and cities across America watch minor league baseball, experiencing the ups and downs of their local team -- every move, every player, every inning. Welcome to the world of Short Season. Meet the Mason City Royals. Live with the team for five months, across eight mid-western towns, with "no more than two days off from April through August and a night-long bus ride every three to six days." Join in the triumphs and misadventures of its collection of hopefuls and has-beens as they get to know each other in English and Spanish, admire baseball groupies, crisscross backroads propelled by a beery-eyed driver in a rattletrap bus, play cards, steal cars, get sent up and down, and somehow through it all play good enough ball to become the Class A champions.

Genres: Baseball, Short Stories, Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1988

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading it along with Lucas Mann's Class A Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. Both books are based on the Class A Midwest League (though it is called something else in Klinkowitz's book). Both authors write well, and have an academic background -- Klinkowitz taught at the University of Northern Iowa, in addition to being the executive director of the Waterloo Indians. Mann received an MFA from the University of Iowa. And both look at baseball in the community context, looking at fans as well as players and coaches.

But one is fiction, one non-fiction. Klinkowitz was a baseball insider; Mann embedded with the Clinton LumberKings for the purpose of writing the book, but had an outsider's eye. Mann was a very young man, and Klinkowitz was already mid-career. Klinkowitz's book was published in 1988, and Mann's twenty-five years later. Mann's book seems very much a product of our troubled times - he questions the value and seriousness of the baseball dream much more than does Klinkowitz (although K. does have an alcoholic character in the process of losing his baseball dream). And there is a lot less joy (and less actual baseball) in Mann's book. But he fills that space with valuable social commentary. The team is the star of Klinkowitz's book; the fans and the town are the heroes (if there are any heroes) in Mann's book. The two read together complement each other very well.

[Morgan]

This book is a collection of short stories about the people affiliated with a mid-western (Iowa based, I believe) A ball team of the Royals. Sort of a 22 Short Films About Springfield, just telling the stories as they happen during the course of the season, which, since it's A ball, is a short one (and there we have title). I've loved this book since the first time I read it, and every time since, which has been more than a few. It flows very naturally, and the personably, and has a welcoming tone to it that is very hard to find. Unfortunately, when I tried to replace my slightly tattered copy, I found out that it too is hard to find, and out of print, which I think is a shame. There isn't much fiction out there on baseball that's both good and hasn't been made into a movie.

[James Wayman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and breezy read about a minor league team in Iowa with a timeline varying from the early to mid '80's. Overall it is a collection of short pieces and character studies that gradually extend a larger story about a playoff season.

Be ready for the usual minor league challenges such as playing in smaller cities, having long bus trips, and the financial struggles most of the players encounter. While some of these episodes would now be edited out of political correctness, the author refrains from using profanity, and there is an underlying sweetness to the characters and events. Despite poor behaviors like auto theft and peeping tom, the writing makes you sympathetic to the characters and the conditions that inspired these actions.

Purchased this book from a used shop in Door County several years ago, and just hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. Found it to be interesting more out of nostalgia and being a baseball geek, than out of its actual literary quality. Still, I really did enjoy it, and would give more than a tepid recommendation to those who lived through professional baseball in this time period. I look forward to reading the other books Jerry Klinkowitz has written on baseball and the minor leagues.

[David H.]

Why I didn't finish this: I was recommended this as a book with baseball stories, but I think I got one or two stories in and just didn't like the style.