It takes a lot to get me to read an entire book. I buy, borrow and steal books by the hundreds, but the actual number I read from beginning to end are very few. In the last seven years, I've

C.J. Hribal (a.k.a. – Juice Hardball) is a stone cold baseball freak. The kind of guy who can tell you who played third base for Cincinnati in 1990*, or who was commissioner when the designated

Cory glares at me across the room. His left eye is swollen and purple. If you look closely you can see his veins throb as they pump blood to his stupid, beedy-eyed, cat's asshole of a face.

His

If the game of baseball is a narrative in numbers, try this one on for size: on Saturday March 30, 2008, 115,300 people showed up at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for an exhibition game between the

I Telltale
My dad still has the lanky, deceptively thin frame typical of most pitchers, with long, gibbon-like arms – he is 6'2' but wears 37' shirt sleeves, giving him the reach of a man four

I've seen em all.

The pretty boys with all the talent and not an ounce of sack.

The Latinos so flashy they trick you into thinking they're good.

The fake hustlers who got everybody

When I was a kid, my dad took me to a Mets game at Shea on my birthday. I remember walking up the ramps and looking outside the stadium, past the corrugated blue and orange panels that hung

A friend once told me a story about a kid he'd known who played right field and caught flies. Not fly balls – this kid hated Little League, hated his father for making him play, was afraid of the

To the editor: 

I enjoyed your baseball preview issue but wholeheartedly disagree with your predictions for the National League East. If you look at the schedules for both the Mets and the

A swing and a miss.
And now the lone samurai
Returns to the bench.
        - Ted Weir 



Longball
The flyball skies

I had worked in a bottle factory, a bottle-top factory, a paper factory, a nut factory, a bolt factory, a clock factory, a wall factory, a door factory, a window factory, a whisky factory, a wheel

Tom had been promising for some time to take Stevie to the zoo, and today was the day. He paid their admission and the two entered the zoo grounds, passing the gift shop, built to resemble an

I wanna have cool recurring dreams, ones that'll make me sound smart when I describe them to people. Right now, I only have the same dreams everyone else has -- you know, where your teeth fall out,

Her heart swells like someone turned a faucet on. It is enormous. A fast-moving cloud of blackbirds dissipates into the trees. Or are they bats. They're at the zoo. It is the same as the bowling

7:13 

Tate found a sawbuck turtle near the metal shed. He called inside for me. I sat at the kitchen table, a napkin spread across my lap, ketchup from the bacon and egg sandwich swabbed along

After work on Fridays we'd usually go over to The Holly on 27th for a beer.

One night I'm working late so I don't get there till seven. Quigley is sitting at the bar in his usual place. I take

His name is David and he's in the hospital with a lot of things stuck in his arms, nodes pasted to his chest, tubes going into his nostrils and mouth. He has been staring at the TV for

I'm a big fan of blue. The dark, deep blues. Like that James Taylor song, deep greens and blues are the colors I choose. Green's nice, too, but I prefer blue.

Don't know if I could call it my

Up to our lunch room table came the newest, biggest loser in the ninth grade -- Intercom! We called him Intercom because he wore a big bolt-like hearing aid that, protruding from his ear, made him

Earl Jenkins was a security guard at PNC Park where the Pittsburgh Pirates play baseball. Every time he worked one of the sidelines, right down on the field, and he snagged a foul ball, he

Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong. Sugar or Baby, something sweet, something helpless, something you are not and never will be. If they studied your face instead of grabbing your ass

Before the curious series of events that stunned a quiet community, Calvin Flack DDS wondered if he would ever find the perfect dental hygienist. Two weeks prior to opening his practice in

In May of 2003 there appeared, in a small corner of the internet, a literary webzine called "Pindeldyboz."

Pindeldyboz was more than just another webzine with a name that doesn't mean anything

A selection from Picnic in Ten Years' Time
an as of yet unpublished manuscript by Jesse Ball

Here is some information about turtles: The Corinthian Ambulant Turtle is named for

Samedi The Deafness, the debut novel from Jesse Ball released this September is baffling readers and reviewers. The novel itself is being described as a "mnemonist trapped in a sanatorium for

And the earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming 
--Tom Waits 
 

He came from Wal-Mart. Some fellow was loitering by the automatic doors with a stink my wife described as rotten apples