I turn to this George Bowering-edited 1990 anthology every few summers for its ideal blend of beautifully written short fiction and the escapism of a good baseball tale. Featuring stories from the likes of Kinsella, Kerouac and Richler, it can be enjoyed sporadically through the summer, or in one marathon sitting, like a double header.
Baseball fiction covers an escapist topic, sure, but that doesn’t mean the stories need to put the reader in a relaxed frame of mind. In Jack Kerouac’s Ronnie on the Mound, you can practically feel the nervous energy of a young pitcher making his big-league debut in the top of the first in a pivotal game in Chicago.
Mordecai Richler’s Playing Ball on Hampstead Heath is a droll recounting of an annual softball game between film industry types on a late June day in London. Here, the game is merely a pretense for the players’ obvious manoeuvring and soft politics under the watchful gaze of their current and former romantic partners.
In The Thrill of the Grass, the desperate civil disobedience of W.P. Kinsella’s protagonist is apparent as he leads a clandestine charge to replace turf with sod in the local ballpark during a baseball players’ strike, simply to protest the sad turn the professional version of the sport has taken.
And Bowering himself gets in on the act with October 1, 1961, a surprising time-travel journey that attempts to put Roger Maris’s historic achievement in its proper place.
There’s no wrong way to read Taking The Field, but I recommend reading it with a ballgame on in the background, volume set to low, and a refreshing beverage in hand.