The Thrill of the Grass (Penguin Short Fiction)

Rating:
Summary: Some gems (diamonds, actually)
Review: A collection of baseball stories - or rather, stories involving baseball and baseball players in some way. Kinsella is at hist best when he stays close to earth - hopeful bush leaguers, women trouble - but tends to go way over the top when he tries to involve more "magic" (in his own words) to the game and the story. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy suffered from this problem, and so do a few of the stories in this collection. But when his "stories aren't about events, they're about the people they happen to", he has a wonderful touch. Some of my favourites in this collection are "Drive me to the moon", about a Rookie leaguer and his affair in a one-horse town in Canada, "Barefoot and pregnant in Des Moines", about a big league star and his marriage. Some of these stories are true gems and fully warrant the five-star rating; others are filler, but then even the most classic games have their straightforward 6-3 groundouts.

Rating:
Summary: Kinsella's best collection of short stories
Review: My brother told me about W.P. Kinsella in 1984 and I've been a huge fan ever since. I've read everything I can find by him, starting with "Shoeless Joe" and this might be my favorite book of his. He has written at least three collections of baseball short stories and this is easily the best.

Most of the stories are not so much about baseball, it's more a case of using baseball as a background and common thread to tie the stories all together.

These are the kind of stories you can read over and over again. One of my favorites was the story about the fans who decided to turn the latest player's strike into a chance to replace astroturf with real grass. With the stadium shut down for the strike, they came in and returned the field to a natural state. I've always thought that when the players strike they should strike to get rid of astroturf; a cause many fans could get behind.

I don't know of any baseball fan who would not enjoy these stories.

Rating:
Summary: A Lot of Baseball and a Little Magic
Review: The eleven stories contained in THE THRILL OF THE GRASS are, at least to me, a little more appealing than those in Kinsella's later book, JAPANESE BASEBALL AND OTHER STORIES, though both books are wonderful collections.

Although all of the stories in THE THRILL OF THE GRASS are set against a backdrop of baseball, only some of them are really "about" baseball per se. Instead, these stories concern themselves with the players and their personal lives and how their lives and the decisions they make are influenced by baseball. I think Kinsella made a wise choice to concentrate on the players more than the game (at least in most of the stories) because, ultimately, people want to read about people, not ideas.

The stories in THE THRILL OF THE GRASS aren't related, except that each centers around the game of baseball, all of the narrators are men and many of the narrators are named W.P. Kinsella. I found most of the characters, and especially the narrators, very sympathetic. Although there were many ways in which I couldn't identify with them (they were men, after all), I could identify with their hopes and dreams, their regrets and disappointments.

If you're looking for a "feel good" baseball book, THE THRILL OF THE GRASS certainly won't fill the bill. The stories contained in this volume are thoughtful and melancholy and many have a downright unhappy ending. Others are open-ended and Kinsella leaves it up to the reader to extract what he or she wants from the story.

Kinsella is an author who doesn't give us straightforward stories about the game of baseball. Like his best known work, SHOELESS JOE, upon which the film, FIELD OF DREAMS was based, this wonderfully talented author usually infuses his short fiction with a dose of magic realism as well. Personally, I love this marriage of baseball and fantasy because, when you get right down to it, baseball at its best is definitely magic. Readers looking for something more "reality based" might be disappointed with this book, however.

The book's biggest drawback is that it's uneven; some of the stories are decidedly better than others and that's not just personal preference talking.

I thought the title story "The Thrill of the Grass" was one of the book's best. Although it centers on fans who replace the despised artificial turf with real grass, the most interesting thing in this story was Kinsella's description of the different types of fans and how they choose their seats at the ballpark.

I loved "The Baseball Spur," but I'm familiar with Kinsella's magical book, THE IOWA BASEBALL CONFEDERACY. Readers not familiar with that book probably will find this story a bit confusing.

"The Last Pennant Before Armageddon" is one of the best stories in the collection and it's the one that is most centered on baseball, although the protagonist does have to make a decision that will affect all of mankind, not just the game in which he's involved.

"The Battery" is the story most heavily infused with fantasy, magical realism and symbolism. Although I love all three of the above elements, I didn't feel they worked well in this story.

Very surprisingly, at least to me, is the fact that Kinsella got some of his facts wrong. He's an author so knowledgeable about the game of baseball that I would have expected every fact to be "dead center." One example exists in the story, "Nursie," a story I really didn't like because it centers more on a marriage than it does on baseball. That aside, when the story concludes, the protagonist, Jimmy, is flying off to Sun City, Arizona to the St. Louis Cardinals spring training camp. What? The Cardinals train in Florida and, as far as I know, they always have. For a writer as good, and as knowledgeable, as Kinsella, a mistake like this is unforgivable.

Finally, no one should buy this book for his or her ten- or twelve-year-old baseball fanatic son (or daughter). THE THRILL OF THE GRASS, like all of Kinsella's work, is meant for adults. These are pensive, melancholy stories and the level of understanding needed to comprehend them, coupled with their subject matter, definitely means they were crafted for the grown up mind.

Despite a few reservations, overall, I loved the stories in THE THRILL OF THE GRASS. I would definitely recommend this collection to any baseball fan. Just make sure you know what you're getting into.