Guide to Baseball Short Stories: G

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Unashamed hokum.


Sub-Runyon New York baseball yarn; pretty leaden.




The bare plot would lead you to expect a light-hearted or wry story, but it's trenchantly serious.



Dissolves near the end into standard temperance-story formulas, but early scenes of the son trying to cover for his father (an apartment-building superintendent) are nicely drawn.


Atmospheric short-short story.


Metafiction, really: Gopnik's piece is an essay that circles around the central fiction, which he examines as fiction, as nostalgia for America. Very well-done.




Early-20th-century magical realism, anticipating Wallop's The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.


Darker tone in this one, with an ending that anticipates Alan Sillitoe's Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, almost.


One of the better evocations of the lack of a clock in baseball. Told from the perspective of an unusually well-realized (non-stereotypic) Latin ballplayer.


Blends realistic psychology with myth.


Criticism: Solomon