Scoring from Second: Writers on Baseball

by Philip F. Deaver (Introduction), Lee K. Abbott (Foreword)

Why do accomplished writers (and grown-ups) like Ron Carlson, Rick Bass, and Michael Chabon (to name but a few of those represented here) still obsess over their baseball days? What is it about this green game of suspense that not only moves us but can also move us to flights of lyrical writing? In Scoring from Writers on Baseball some of the literary lights of our day answer these questions with essays, reminiscences, and meditations on the sport that is America’s game but also a deeply personal experience for player, observer, and fan alike.

 

Here writers as different as Andre Dubus and Leslie Epstein, Chabon and Floyd Skloot, Michael Martone and William Least Heat-Moon reflect on the game they grew up with, the players who thrilled them, and the lessons that baseball holds for us all. From the one-season wonder to the long-haul heroes to the hall of fame, the game that has framed so many American summers—and lives—comes to quirky, instructive, and always entertaining life in these pages.

Genres: Baseball

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2007

About the author

Philip F. Deaver is an American writer and poet from Tuscola, Illinois. His work has appeared in literary magazines, including The New England Review, the Kenyon Review, Frostproof Review, the Florida Review, Poetry Miscellany and The Reaper.

He is a professor of English and permanent writer-in-residence at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. He also lectures at Spalding University's limited residency Master of Fine Arts program.
Deaver was born in Chicago, and grew up in Tuscola, Illinois. Following high school, Deaver attended St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana, where he majored in English literature. Deaver married in 1968, and taught in 1968-69 at St. Francis High School, Wheaton, Illinois. In the summer of 1969, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Frankfurt, Germany.

Following military service, Deaver worked in a Model Cities program in Indianapolis. He received consecutive Charles Stewart Mott Fellowships, resulting in a Masters Degree in Education at Ball State University and a Doctorate from the University of Virginia.

In 1986 he received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for his story collection Silent Retreats (University of Georgia Press, 1988). In 1988 his story Arcola Girls appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.

In 1995 his short story, Forty Martyrs, was cited in Best American Short Stories. Later that year his short story The Underlife was cited in the Pushcart Prize XX.

In May, 2005 his collection of poems, How Men Pray, was published. In August of that year two poems—The Worrier's Guild and Flying—were selected by Garrison Keillor for The Writer's Almanac. In the summer of 2006, Deaver's story Lowell and the Rolling Thunder appeared in the Kenyon Review with an interview with the author posted on their website at kenyonreview.com.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every spring needs a baseball book, and this is mine for 2011. Deaver assembled a very enjoyable baseball book as told from a writer's perspective.

This won't appeal to every baseball fan, though. While the prose often crackles like a crisply turned double play, the language does, at times, take a turn toward the literary. If you enjoy spectacular writing as much as you enjoy a pitcher's duel, this book is definitely for you.

[Tom Leland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I've read too many baseball books and stories -- I found so many of these to be overly maudlin, or going too hard for the poetic metaphor, and some of them just plain boring. How many times can you read about "the perfection of the baseball's stitches", or the "beauty of the arc of a fly ball", or how baseball was all that a boy had in common with his father, and on and on. I did like a few of them, perhaps most of all a tribute and farewell to Tiger Stadium.

[Frodo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to the 35 writers who contributed to this little book of baseball related stories. As a baseball fan it is a treat to have a book like this to read casually during a baseball season.