Guide to Baseball Short Stories: V

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Quirky idea, well-executed.


Odd story that mixes surrealism and Boys Life-turned-bittersweet motifs; worth reading.


Lardneresque story that is much gentler than anything the master would have written.


Very interesting as a repository of little details about the way the game was played in small towns a century ago.


If that's a confusing ideology, well, it's an old-fashioned athletic creed, and this is an old-fashioned story. While it doesn't rise to the linguistic or literary level of Ring Lardner, this story is better than most of the adult baseball fiction by Van Loan's other contemporaries.


Decent fiction about a spectator's experience.



Nicely observed setting and true-to-life dynamics.