Guide to Baseball Short Stories: E

Effinger, George. "Naked to the Invisible Eye." Analog Magazine 1973. Repr. Holtzman, Kinsella. A veteran baseball man discovers a pitching prospect who can defeat batters with sheer telekinetic willpower.

Mechanically written elaboration of a SF plot idea, this story goes nowhere. Compare Biggle for a similar fear that arcane abilities will destroy the sport.

Einstein, Charles. "The Last Inning." Collier's 131.25 (20 June 1953): 22, 24, 26. A 35-year-old shortstop can't resist one last crack at the big leagues, despite the advice of his friends and his fiancée.

High hokum.

Einstein, Charles. "Reflex Curve." Collier's, 14 June 1952. Repr. Holtzman. A pitcher can never make it out of the sixth inning because he can't help throwing a predictable big curveball--at least till he meets a lady reporter doing a story on what a lousy pitcher he's become.

Throwaway romance story idea, well-executed of its kind.

Elliot, James Vance. "In the Masonic Temple of the Athletes." Aethlon 12.1 (Fall 1994): 93-102. A boy at Fenway park with his grandfather realizes for the first time that athletes and ex-athletes form a kind of mystical fraternity.

Pleasant if over-written magical-realist story.

Esquith, Sam. "Devotions." Elysian Fields Quarterly 21.3 (Summer 2004): 26-31. An aging couple in a minor-league city takes in a ballplayer boarder.

The man in the couple is an ex-ballplayer himself; the woman suddenly relives her youth. Well-evoked setting.

Evans, Frank. "The Diamond Jester." Collier's, 1914. Repr. Strecker. Clown-prince type subverts gamblers' attempt to buy pennant.

Interesting look at the pervasiveness of gambling in the game in the decade before the Black Sox.

Evich, Mitch. "Fischer at Fenway." In Pachter. The weight of world history falls on a college student; to escape it, he visits Fenway Park, where the weight of Red Sox history descends on him.

Evich, Mitch. "Johnny Boy." In Further Fenway Fiction. Washed-up ex-minor-leaguer reflects on his eroding marriage, his current slow-pitch softball career, and the fortunes of his contemporary Johnny Damon.