Guide to Baseball Short Stories: T

Tarson, Ruth. "The Natural, the Movie About Robert Redford, and God, and Baseball, and What if the World Were Flat." Aethlon 14.2 (Spring 1997): 17-20. Wonderful incantatory piece of associations touched off by viewing the film; prose poetry of a kind all its own in baseball literature.

Tan, Cecilia. "Bambino Road, Chapter One." In Pachter. Several characters – a woman, her boyfriend, the son he hasn't seen in a while, and a minor-league ballplayer – converge on Fenway Park.

The first chapter of a planned novel. The characters are intriguing and well-drawn, so one hopes that the theme of the "Curse" so prominent in the book hasn't been entirely mooted by the Red Sox' victories of 2004 and 2007.

Tan, Cecilia. "Pitchers and Catchers Report." In Further Fenway Fiction. Aided by Roger Clemens, a rookie catcher tries some springtime pitching.

Agreeable yarn, much in the vein of decades-earlier pulp fiction about unsuspected newbie talents, though with an understated, wry ending that is not in the pulp repertoire.

Thurber, James. "The Tree on the Diamond." In The Thurber Album (1952). Repr. Bowering. Nostalgic sketch about a team of school-for-the-blind employees unbeatable on their crazy home field.

Reflective and restrained; not badly done. Interesting for its time in having as a central character a black coach of a mostly-white team.

Thurber, James. "You Could Look It Up." In My World--And Welcome To It (New York: Harcourt, 1942). Repr. Holtzman, Lewis, Staudohar. A retired big league trainer tells the story of a slumping ballclub that turns, in desperation, to a midget pinch-hitter.

Not in the best of taste and told in a forced vernacular, this story can nevertheless lay claim to having anticipated Eddie Gaedel, the real-life midget pinch-hitter, by nearly ten years.

Todd, Samuel. "The Professor and the Strikeout King." Slow Trains 7.2 (2007). Youth-leaguer can't see to hit out of his new glasses, so remakes himself as a crafty pitcher.

Imagination, as always in baseball, is 90% of the contest.

Tolnay, Tom. "A Rookie Southpaw, With Talent." Saturday Evening Post (October 1983). Repr. Bjarkman. The manager of an impossibly decrepit minor-league club finds a raw pitcher who effortlessly wins his debut.

Depends on a parodic overuse of baseball cliches.

Torres, Steven. "Doubleplay." Aethlon 18.2 (Spring 2001): 143-149. A retired catcher, now scouting, agrees to help a retired star pitcher find his stuff in hopes of a comeback.

Effective story, told mostly in dialogue.

Turner, Richard. "A Cup of Kindness." Aethlon 10.1 (Fall 1992): 53-59. A high-school shortstop suffers through one of the most miserable victories ever narrated, beset and assailed by teammates and opponents alike.

Turtledove, Harry. "The House That George Built." Tor.com (2009). In an alternative 1940s, a thirsty H.L. Mencken visits a bar tended by former Orioles star George Ruth.

Pleasantly done "counterfactual."