Bottom of the Ninth Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories Edited and with an Introduction by John McNally Foreword by Richard Russo   March 2003 paper, 0-8093-2505-5, $18.00 cloth, 0-8093-2504-7, $50.00 256 pages, 6 x 9 North American rights only Baseball / Fiction    Writing Baseball Richard Peterson, series editor “[T]he gem of the [Writing Baseball] series so far, to be treasured by any reader who enjoys baseball fiction.” —SportsFan magazine   “Baseball is . . . designed to induce and embrace narrative. It’s not slow, as its critics charge, just leisurely; its plots and subplots unfold richly, like a good novel, which is why baseball has found a place in our literature that’s unparalleled by any other sport.” —Richard Russo, from the Foreword   Skillfully edited by John McNally, Bottom of the Ninth: Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories collects nineteen contemporary baseball short stories from a successful mix of well-established writers, lesser knowns, and a few up-and-comers. These stories are characterized by the same dramatic elements that draw people to the sport itself—the mythologizing of players, the obsessions and romance of the game, the bonds between players and fans, parents and children. From a key play, a missed catch, a chance lost, these are tales of characters facing high stakes and calls to action, metaphorically and literally, in the bottom of the ninth.   John McNally is the author of the short story collection Troublemakers and the editor of three anthologies: Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color; The Student Body: Short Stories about College Students and Professors; and High Infidelity: 24 Great Short Stories about Adultery. He is an assistant professor of English at Wake Forest University.     Richard Russo, a novelist and screenwriter, was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel Empire Falls. He has published four other novels and a collection of short stories and has written or cowritten several screenplays.  The Lineup “Batting Against Castro” by Jim Shepard “Death of the Right Fielder” by Stuart Dybek “Umpire” by Kurt Rheinheimer “The World’s Foremost Fungo Hitter Watches Bugs Bunny in the Spartanburg, South Carolina Days Inn” by Josh Russell “Wonders” by Owen King “What We All Want” by Leslie Pietrzyk “The Bigs” by David Jauss “The Greatest Slump of All Time” by David Carkeet “Basepaths” by Jerry Klinkowitz “Infield” by Philip F. Deaver “Baseball” by Ray Gonzalez “Pray for Rain” by Kip Kotzen “The Barbarians” by Patricia Highsmith “Sunny Billy Day” by Ron Carlson “After the Game” by Andre Dubus “Caught” by Cris Mazza “Gold Moments and Victory Beer” by Gordon Weaver “The Cage” by Floyd Skloot “How to Write a True Baseball Story” by Richard Peterson

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