Short Season & Other Stories CB (JOHNS HOPKINS, POETRY AND FICTION) - Tapa dura

"Klinkowitz combines astute observations and analyses with renderings as leisurely and graceful as the game itself... Short Season stands out as a vivid evocation of a rich and colorful part of the summer game, and deserves a spot on the roster of first-rate baseball books." -- Washington Post

"I have known Jerry Klinkowitz only as one of this country's most interesting and responsible literary critics. It comes as a complete surprise that he writes first-rate baseball stories as well. Is there a chance that he is the illegitimate child of Ring Lardner and Edmund Wilson's sister?" -- Kurt Vonnegut

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.