Guide to Baseball Short Stories: H
Back to the Short Story index page
- Haldeman, Jack C., II. "Louisville Slugger." Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (Summer 1977). Big series for dietary rights to the Universe turns sour.
- Handy, Scott. "Hardball." Aethlon 18.2 (Spring 2001): 37-46. A friendship between two second-graders, forged over a baseball, founders on the racism and alcoholism of adults in their lives.
- Hanlon, Matthew. "The Curious Case of Dr. Belly and Mr. Itcher." In Further Fenway Fiction. The surreal baseball life of a pitcher by the name of Steve Bellyitcher.
- Hanlon, Matthew. "The Long Dark Voyage." Sane. Repr. Pachter. Victim of a misdirected practical joke, Johnny Damon spends an offseason cultivating a Crusoe-like appearance.
- Hano, Arnold. "The Umpire Was a Rookie." Saturday Evening Post (1956). Repr. Holtzman, Staudohar. In his first major-league game, an umpire must take on a player who'd seen him for a weakling in the minors; but the umpire redeems himself by making a correct call against the player, thereby winning his respect.
Told with appropriate steely manliness.
- Hanson, Nels. "Homer." The Antioch Review 38.4 (Fall 1980): 449-461. A kid ballplayer has a conflicted relationship with a veteran on his team in this uneven story that veers between realism and magical realism.
- Harris, Jimmy Carl. "From Out of Left Field." NINE 13.2 (Spring 2005): 116-117. Short-short story about a Marine on patrol in Vietnam, dreaming of baseball until war intervenes.
- Harris, Mark. "The Bonding." In Ron Fimrite, ed., Birth of a Fan (New York: Macmillan, 1993). Repr. The Self-made Brain Surgeon and Other Stories (Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1999): 188-205. Aging professor in Tempe, AZ is recruited by a younger man to play softball, with storybook results.
An interesting story, combining wish-fulfillment, metafiction, and archetype.
- Harris, Webb, Jr. "Homer." Aethlon 20.2 (Spring 2003): 37-45. Narrator gradually absorbs elements of his ex-ballplayer roommate's life history.
Strongly-worked central psychological idea.
- Hedley, Leslie Woolf. "The Day God Invented Baseball." Pig Iron 9 (1982): 66-68. Repr. Bjarkman. A college pitcher muses on the eventual fate of his teammates, and recounts how his coach threw him off the team for not joining in a prayer.
Overwritten anecdote.
- Heinz, W.C. "One Throw." Collier's (1950). Repr. Holtzman, Staudohar. A traveling salesman meets a frustrated minor-leaguer and tries to egg him into throwing a game away to get the big club's attention.
A twist ending reveals the theme of the story, that merit will out and will be recognized.
- Heuman, William. "Brooklyns Lose." Sports Illustrated 1 (20 Sept 1954). Repr. Staudohar. In the wake of a heartbreaking Dodger loss to Cincinnati, a fan contemplates the value of good neighbors who pull together when the home team is losing.
Interesting study in the production of Dodger nostalgia even when the team was still in Brooklyn, this story is a sharp description of some fans' desires for an experience of sport that integrates leisure and community. 
- Highsmith, Patricia. "The Barbarians." In Eleven (London: Heinemann, 1970). Repr. Nauen, McNally. An amateur New York artist can only paint on Sunday--the very day that neighborhood men play a loud ballgame under his window.
Claustrophobic, nightmarish story of a man unable to cope in the city; the ballplayers are ambiguous, representing both menace and the spirit of play.
- Hildebidle, John. "His Big Chance." In Bjarkman. A white small-town star gets a chance to play in front of major-league scouts, but the opponents that day are superbly talented black barnstormers.
Routine vignette.
- Hill, James L. "Spike Shy." Sport Story Magazine 31.6 (25 June 1931): 18-29. Hard-boiled manager takes over a soft-boiled ballclub, but does not win the respect of all his players till he endures a vicious spiking on the basepaths.
As soon as "Crabby" Mallory is felled, his charges rename him "Spike" and go on to win the World Series.
- Hoctel, Patrick. "Baseball in July." In Phil Willkie and Greg Baysans, eds., The Gay Nineties (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1991). 207-221. A gay man is apprehensive about bringing his new lover home for a Texas family reunion, but finds that the lover wins over both of his parents.
Low-keyed and believably sentimental. This story doesn't have all that much to do with baseball except as metonym for the security of summertime family experience.
- Holdefer, Charles. "Wild West Show." Aethlon 20.2 (Spring 2003): 109-122. American has-beens on French exhibition club play an improbable game with an even more improbable backstory.
Offbeat but rings true in its details.
- Hollister, Michael. "Soft Pitch." Aethlon 18.2 (Spring 2001): 67-77. In the years 1939-41, a man who never played ball as a child becomes fascinated by "workup" softball; at the end of the story, softball and Pearl Harbor converge.
Short fiction with an epic stretch.
- Howard, Bill, pseud. "The Charlie Pepper Letters." See Mike Shannon. Spitball. Repr. Shannon.
- Humason, S. W. M. "Madame Southpaw." In Nauen. A small-town baseball coach tells the yarn of how an arm injury turned a team member's wife into an unhittable pitcher.
A gender-role-reversal story where the woman's success is both freakish and gladly abandoned.
- Hutchings, William G. "The Kid, the Aliens, and Uncle Charlie." Slow Trains 2.1 (Summer 2002). Kid who believes his arm speed is provided by E.T.s faces canny veteran slugger.
Hybrid of the eldritch-kid motif and the old-timer's-last-hurrah story.
