Guide to Baseball Novels: M
- McAllister, Troon. The Kid Who Batted 1.000. New York: Doubleday, 2002. A team of misfits battles its way to the pennant with the help of the title character, a player with extraordinary eyesight who can walk every time up.
An exceedingly old-fashioned novel; the central idea is in fact taken from a 1951 juvenile by Allison & Hill. It's a wisecracking tale akin to '70s romps like All G.O.D.'s Children and Screwballs, or earlier comic novels like A Pennant for the Kremlin. To its credit, it's self-consciously old-fashioned, and if you can endure lots of wry comedy and snappy dialogue, you might like it.
- McAlpine, Gordon. Joy in Mudville. New York: Dutton, 1989. Three unlikely Chicagoans--an orphan teenager, a mad scientist, and a taxi-dancer fleeing from Al Capone--head west to follow the flight of Babe Ruth's "called shot" home run ball in the 1932 World Series.
An appealing magical-realist novel, Joy in Mudville shows the influence of Kinsella, but is lighter and more lyrical than any of Kinsella's fantasies. The first reviewers also compared the book to the work of E.L. Doctorow; McAlpine blends celebrities and invented characters in a similar nostalgic mix, but his approach is more magical than Doctorow's. Unfortunately out of print, this book deserves a new edition. 
- McManus, James. Chin Music. New York: Crown, 1985. An amnesiac pitcher for the White Sox, beaned and mortally wounded during a World Series game, struggles to get home as the city of Chicago is destroyed around him in a nuclear holocaust.
Dense and verbally tricky, this novel connects violence, sex, mutual assured destruction, and retaliation for injuries in a postmodern moral fable. Too pathologically and graphically violent to succeed as entertainment, it is nevertheless a skillful mix of literary techniques.
- Malamud, Bernard. The Natural. New York: Farrar, 1952. A young prospect goes to Chicago to try out for the Cubs, is shot by a madwoman, recovers, joins the New York Knights years later and almost leads them to a pennant, resists throwing the decisive game, and loses it anyway.
Heavy and thick symbolic novel that just avoids congealing altogether. It is, as one should remember, a first novel by an author who went on to greatness. The Natural has had a tremendous impact on later baseball fiction, and remains a true archetype of the genre. Filmed in 1984.
Criticism: Candelaria, Dodge, McGimpsey, O'Connor, Petty, Schiavone, Sullivan, Turner, Vosevich, Wasserman, Westbrook.
- Maloney, Andrew. End of a Dynasty. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2004. After three straight World Championships, the arrival of a selfish superstar portends the collapse of the Buffalo Pioneers.
Defies the usual formula by having its central team become truly awful.
- Manderino, John. The Man Who Once Played Catch With Nellie Fox. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1998. A fortyish Chicago ex-minor-leaguer watches his life disintegrate, then picks up the pieces.
Moderately funny life's-losers novel; similar in setting and theme to Lorenz's Guys Like Us, but lacks that novel's edge and abandon.
- Mayer, Robert. The Grace of Shortstops. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984. An eight-year-old rabbi's son in the Bronx follows the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers while unearthing secrets about his dying grandmother, his adulterous mother, his kidnapped cousin, his gunrunning father, and a tragic neighborhood bag lady.
The kidnapped-cousin subplot keeps one's attention, but the novel drags on after it is sewn up, and ends with spasms of melodrama and a truly bad pastiche of Molly Bloom's soliloquy from Ulysses.
- Miller, John A. Coyote Moon. New York: Tom Doherty, 2003. Various oddball characters converge in the Mojave Desert and wait for the advent of something wonderful, which may be heralded by a brilliant rookie catcher for the Oakland A's.
Readable magical-realist fare.
- Molloy, Paul. A Pennant for the Kremlin. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964. Rich crank bequeaths the Chicago White Sox to the Soviet Union, and the Soviets send a cerebral commissar who manages the club to the World Series.
Dreadfully unfunny Cold War comedy, possibly a trial balloon for a movie treatment that Hollywood was too smart in the long run to buy.
- Moon, Scot. Open Season. Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1993. A star ballplayer has assorted troubles in the weird world of baseball in the 2000s.
- Morgenstein, Gary. The Man Who Wanted to Play Center Field for the New York Yankees. New York: Atheneum, 1983. Thirtysomething magazine writer dusts off his spikes in a stab at the title ambition.
A mix of wacky character business and overly fraught marital trouble somewhat detracts from the central theme, which is American male midlife wish-fulfillment in its purest form.
- Mosher, Howard Frank. Waiting for Teddy Williams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Lad grows up in rural Vermont with dreams of pitching for the Red Sox in a World Series.
And does so. Sporadically interesting local-color farce that hits about .150 in its attempts at humor and pathos. See my review at lection.
