Looking for a quick read? This book is only 148 pages long and is worth the short investment in time it will take to read it. What is it about?

A talented pitcher and cocksure small-town kid with big dreams, Nick Grimes is certain his blazing fastball will send him straight to the Major Leagues. And he’s not the only one with big dreams. Jess, a young waitress who captures his heart, dreams of becoming a famous novelist. The future is bright, they can both feel it – and barely out of high school, Grimes signs a professional contract to pitch for the Detroit Tigers.

But what if it turns out that the minor leagues are a lot tougher than he expected?

And what if his other big love, fly fishing, is not quite it, either?

Can he even find what it is?

In addition to being short it is also quite interesting. Nick has skill as a pitcher: his fast ball is really fast, and he is a small-town hero on the baseball field who gets not one but two chances to make it to the big leagues as a pitcher. He is a confident young man who really likes to play baseball and who also likes to fish. His father is supportive of his dreams and pushes him to try out with the pros.

The novel is peopled with Nick, his father, his home town employer, a baseball scout and, of course, a love interest: I met a girl that winter. Jess was a waitress at The Bull’s Eye, a restaurant and bar in Klegersville. I first laid eyes on her one December night right before Christmas. I was out with some friends from my home town, drinking too much beer, thinking about baseball …. and well… not really much else when she took our order for yet another round. I could see right away that as a waitress she’d seen our kind before: young guys a bit full of themselves, on the prowl for young women.

After receiving a call to try out for a major league team Nick is off to give it a try. He pitches some minor league games, learns from the scout about some new pitches to try, and gives it his all. But, he is cut from the team. He returns home and begins a life of fishing and guiding tourists to the great spots for fishing in the small town in Pennsylvania. Baseball was something I no longer had in my life, and I didn’t know if it was something I could really live without.

But working and fishing is also a passion and he prevails. He pitches for the hometown team, has success and loves his fishing life. The book is a quiet look at life, love, work, family, fishing and baseball. He continues to think about Jess and baseball. There is also a strange man he runs into while on fishing trips: Sir Jon. Nick is invited to try out a second time. During one game, between innings, I had sat on the bench and marveled at the sight of one of my teammates, spitting sunflower seeds and clapping his hands for our cleanup hitter to “knock the hell out of the ball.” There was something simple, pure about the moment.

But, it is not to be. Instead, And at the end of the season the team got together for a weekend trip to Jim Downing’s cabin. We were a team, an amateur club, a group of guys having fun playing ball and just being together, not professionals looking to climb to the next level of the game.

Jess returns to the town and wants to write. Nick realizes that the world is good. I could see myself marrying Jess and becoming part of a family. One night, I told Jess that I loved her.

What attracts this reader to the book? 

It is realistic: we don’t always get the prize, but the measure of a person is in the way he/she pursues that prize – the way we live, or as Nick puts it, It was the journey, you see, not the destination. It took me a while to learn that. I guess it takes most of us a long time to get it, if we get it at all.

Bob Lane is an Emeritus Professor at Vancouver Island University.

Categories: Fiction

Keywords: Baseball fiction