Read it or Weep

Another book that features baseball is Waiting for Teddy Williams by Howard Frank Mosher.  It is an engaging and offbeat coming-of-age novel that stars young Ethan Allen.  His dream is to play for the Boston Red Sox.  Ethan is growing up in a small town in rural Vermont in the 1980s and lives with his fearless mother who bootlegs liquor to pay their property taxes. 

Ethan has never met his father, so he confides in the statue of Ethan Allen, his namesake, on the town’s square.  He asks the statue to send him someone to help him with his baseball dreams.  Could the drifter who appears one summer be the answer to his plea?

You will start rooting for Ethan from the very first page of this quirky and humorous story.

                                                         ~Rosemary

Donna’s post about baseball reminds me of last spring when I prepared for going to Florida to see spring training games in Winter Haven. I decided to read a few baseball themed books. I tracked down some baseball mysteries by a Canadian writer named Alison Gordon. The titles I read were Safe at Home (1990) and Night Game (1992). Gordon is a good writer, who before writing fiction, was a sports reporter for the Toronto Star. Unfortunately, it seems she stopped writing her baseball mysteries featuring the character of Kate Henry in 1997.

I also enjoy Steve Hamilton’s books, and his character, Alex McKnight, was once a professional baseball player so there frequently are baseball references in his books. The Hunting Wind is one of the titles that really emphasizes the baseball. In fact the opening lines of the book are “When the left-hander found me, I was sitting in my usual chair in front of the fire, trying to stay warm. The calendar said April, but April in Paradise is still cold enough to hurt you, and I could feel the sting of it in my hands and on my face. I sat there by the fire, watching the baseball game on the television over the bar …”

~Ann