The Best Baseball Fiction Around
Discover the best baseball fiction books with our curated list of top reads. From classic tales to modern stories, find your next home run hit today!
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The Natural
by Bernard Malamud
Malamud uses the fanatical and aggressive world of professional baseball to mirror contemporary society.
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Bang the Drum Slowly
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A poignant portrayal of professional ballplayers' lives on and off the field during the sport's golden years in the 1950's.
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The Southpaw
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The Southpaw is a story about coming of age in America by way of the baseball diamond. Lefthander Henry Wiggen, six feet three, a hundred ninety-five pounds, and the greatest pitcher going, grows to manhood in a right-handed world. From his small-town beginnings to the top of the game, Henry finds out how hard it is to please his coach, his girl, and the sports page?and himself, too?all at once. Written in Henry?s own words, this exuberant, funny novel follows his eccentric course from bush league to the World Series. Although Mark Harris loves and writes tellingly about the pleasures of baseball, his primary subject has always been the human condition and the shifts of mortal men and women as they try to understand and survive what life has dealt them. ø This new Bison Books edition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Southpaw. In his introduction to this edition, Mark Harris discusses the genesis of the novel in his own life experience. Also available in Bison Books editions are The Southpaw, It Looked Like For Ever, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch, the other three volumes in the Henry Wiggen series.
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Shoeless Joe
by W. P. Kinsella
Inspiration for the movie "Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe" is the ultimate baseball novel.
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The Entitled
by Frank Deford
Sportswriter, screenwriter, and author Deford scores another hit with this novel of athletes behaving badly.
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For Love of the Game
by Michael Shaara
Billy Chapel is a baseball legend, a man who has devoted his life to the game he loves and plays so well. But because of his unsurpassed skill and innocent faith, he has been betrayed. Now it's the final game of the season, and Billy's got one last chance to prove who he is and what he can do, a chance to prove what really matters in this life. A taut, compelling story of one man's coming of age, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME is Michael Shaara's final novel, the classic finish to a brilliantly distinguished literary career.