By James Bailey
Each spring book stores are inundated with a new crop of baseball books. Nearly all are non-fiction. In fact, it’s hard to find baseball novels in your average book store, as most of them are released by small publishers who don’t typically land most of their titles in Barnes & Noble, etc.
I’m always on the hunt for good baseball fiction (key word: good), but I approach most new baseball novels with skepticism. There are just too many where the baseball is poorly done, the characters are unrealistic, or the writing just sucks overall. Some writers may think they have a natural in with baseball fans by picking the national pastime as the setting for their story. What they don’t realize is if they don’t know what they’re doing they will easily be exposed as an amateur and turn baseball fans off.
When I received an e-mail a few months ago from Chin Music Press about Jeff Gillenkirk’s upcoming release “Home, Away,” I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The blurb said:
How much is a father’s love worth? Jason Thibodeaux has a $42 million contract to pitch for the Colorado Rockies and a romantic bachelor lifestyle when the son he lost in a searing custody battle reappears in his life. Home, Away follows Thibodeaux’s colorful rise to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball and his agonized decision to quit in the prime of his career to care for his troubled son. Their evolving relationship and resulting confrontations — on the baseball field and off — test the limits of loyalty and the meaning of fatherhood itself.
An interesting premise that could so easily become a train wreck in the wrong hands. But I wrote back and asked for a copy, which arrived several days later. I was in the middle of another book at the time, but when I opened the package I started paging through, just to see what I had in store.
Within minutes I was hooked. I spent most of the afternoon reading “Home, Away.” I think I finished it the next night, which is highly unusual these days with a baby in the house. Back then he wasn’t sleeping through the night regularly, either. But it was so good I just had to keep going.
What made it good? Well, instead of repeating myself, I’ll just refer you over to my review on BaseballAmerica.com. But in short, the baseball was well done, the characters were realistic, and Gillenkirk did a great job convincing me that Jason Thibodeaux really would walk away from the money to take care of his son.
I would rank “Home, Away” among the best baseball novels to come out over the last few years. It’s a short list. Here’s my top three (with links to my reviews):
Home, Away – Jeff Gillenkirk (Chin Music Press, 2010)
The Fade-away – George Jansen (Pocol Press, 2007)
The End of Baseball – Peter Schilling Jr. (Ivan R. Dee, 2008)
All three are from small presses. Ivan R. Dee looks like Random House compared to the other two, but they’re relatively small and do almost no fiction. I’m not sure why the big houses shy away from sports novels, but at least the little guys are out there catering to our needs.
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