Guide to Baseball Short Stories: W

Wallace, Robert. "Uncle Wayne." Aethlon 15.2 (Spring 1998): 159-167. A twelve-year-old boy looks on as his uncle starts and fails in the cement business.

Durham Bulls baseball is the backdrop to this closely observed relationship.

Wallace, Robert. "Josh Gibson's Girlfriend." Aethlon 18.1 (Fall 2000): 135-144. In late-1960s Detroit, the title character befriends a young baseball fan.

Waltzer, Jim. "Appointment in Tannersville." Aethlon 17.2 (Spring 2000): 11-20. Two ex-major-leaguers travel to the small town of the title, where festivities are to held for one of them, who's now old and embittered.

Warren, Charlotte. "The American Pastime." Aethlon 17.1 (Fall 1999): 47-57. The narrator looks back on his college friendship with a young woman who was as passionate about baseball as he was.

Warren, Robert Penn. "Goodwood Comes Back." In The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt, 1947). Repr. Staudohar. The narrator remembers a childhood friend, once his protector in sandlot baseball games, who has gone all the way to the big leagues and then fallen because of his drinking.

More a character sketch than a narrative, this is a sharp observation of a certain combination of talent and apathy, told in a confident vernacular syntax.

Watson, Lawrence. "Pinstripe." Arete 2.2 (1985): 111-123. Repr. Bjarkman. A "seasoned veteran" draws the enmity of his manager because he won't conform, but gets the last laugh when the manager is desperate for a pitcher.

Readable and funny vignette.

Weaver, Gordon. "Gold Moments and Victory Beer." December 11.2-3 (1967); in Such Waltzing Was Not Easy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975); repr. McNally. Tough-guy posturing after a city-softball-league victory.

Weiner, Andrew. "Streak." Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1992). Repr. Kinsella. Aliens arrive on Earth and stay just long enough to see a Blue Jays' rookie challenge DiMaggio's hitting streak.

Brisk baseball fantasy with some clever writing.

Weintraub, Robert. "The Autograph." Spitball 49 (1995). Repr. Pachter. A baseball autographed long ago by a minor Red Sox player brings the narrator, the player, and the kid who caught the ball together in an eerie web of coincidence.

Weisman, Jacob. "Lost October." See Sandner.

Wentz, Stephen W. "Stan the Man." Aethlon 13.1 (Fall 1995): 11-18. The narrator remembers his sickly younger brother, a big fan of Cardinal great Stan Musial.

Richly detailed story that tries to stay astringent but ends up getting a little sentimental.

White, Lowell Mick. "The Endless Inning." Aethlon 11.2 (Spring 1994): 97-106. A man spends the day playing computer baseball, then, mellowed by drugs, goes out to play real-life co-rec softball.

Meandering sketch of an existence measured out in baseball action, real or imaginary.

Whitfield, Raoul F. "'Goggles'." Sport Story Magazine 11.5 (8 May 1926): 98-105. Myopic, fastidious, unorthodox rookie hurler wins the respect of grizzled vets with a pinch-worthy stretch performance.

Wilber, Rick. "In Boise." In Richard Gilliam, ed. Joltin' Joe DiMaggio (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999): 357-375. Repr. Kinsella. An ex-minor-league pitcher recalls the summer of '41 with the Boise Pilots, during which his manager carried on a streak-long conversation with Joe DiMaggio via magical catcher's mitt.

Wilber, Rick. Where Garagiola Waits and Other Baseball Stories. Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press, 1999. Twelve stories and essays.

This fiction is well-crafted, mostly on standard themes: fathers, sons, sudden deaths, male bonding. Several stories have an occult or fantastic twist and originally appeared in SF magazines; one, "The Babe, the Iron Horse, and Mr. McGillicuddy," is co-authored by SF writer Ben Bova.

Wilber, Rick, and Nick DiChario. "Blind Spot." 108 1.3 (Summer 2007): 110-117. Son reflects on his late father, a minor-league pitcher of exceptional promise betrayed by emotional volatility.

Wilbur, Richard. "A Game of Catch." The New Yorker (1953). Repr. Bowering. Vignette about an aimless, beautiful game of catch between two boys, interrupted by a third boy.

Williamson, Chet. "Gandhi at the Bat." The New Yorker (20 June 1983). Repr. Staudohar. A little-known (because imaginary) incident from the game's history: Mohandas K. Gandhi's pinch-hit appearance for the 1933 New York Yankees.

There are several laughs in this mostly pointless absurdist sketch, interesting as a document of how baseball fiction sooner or later assimilates anything conceivable to the game. "Gandhi at the Bat" was filmed in 2006. For similar examples, see Parsons, Shepard.

Wind, Herbert Warren. "The Master's Touch." Crowell-Collier (1951). Repr. Staudohar. A wizardly general manager manipulates the sex life of a top minor-league prospect.

Cleverness and paternalism are the themes of this fantasia on organizational manipulation.

Winkler, Scott. The Wide Turn toward Home. Clifton, VA: Pocol Press, 2008. A novella and several short stories on baseball themes, mostly set in rural Wisconsin.

Wodehouse, P. G. "The Pitcher and the Plutocrat." Collier's (1910). Repr. Holtzman, Lewis, Silverman, Staudohar. A millionaire swindler ruins an old aristocrat, forcing the aristocrat's son to go to work as a baseball pitcher, with romantic complications.

Typical Wodehouse, delivering laughs and surprisingly hip to baseball language and situations.

Wolff, Tobias. "Bullet in the Brain." The New Yorker. Repr. The Night in Question (New York: Knopf, 1996): 200-206. The title object touches off a childhood memory of baseball.

A deft short fiction about language and writing -- and what better place to observe them than in the context of baseball?

Wolverton, Barry. "The House That Ruth Built." Aethlon 10.2 (Spring 1993): 17-25. The narrator remembers his Aunt Ruth, a determined feminist who used to teach baseball to boys and even built a field in her front yard for the purpose.