All of the 30 stories in this fine first collection by poet Meissner ( Learning to Breathe Underwater ) boast a baseball underpinning. As is the case in the best sports fiction, the game is usually a pretext for an examination of deeper issues and emotions. Most of these tales, few of them longer than 10 pages, are about the ways in which the game brings people together or drives them apart. A minor-league umpire, unable to deal with his emotions, finds his embittered wife drifting away from him in ``Things Are Always So Close.'' Another variation on the theme, ``What About the World,'' records the frustration of the wife of a middle-aged man who is obsessed with the game; she finally leaves him. In ``Ancient Fires,'' the strongest offering in the book, playing catch becomes a vehicle for exploring the distance between a father and his son. Conversely, in ``Baseball, Fathers and Dreams'' the memory of the time an eight-year-old boy caught a foul ball serves as a poignant link among three generations of a family. For Meissner, baseball is a bulwark against change, against the painful, even tragic evanescence of life itself. The best stories in this collection express that feeling with great tenderness. Several others are little more than prose poems, evocations of the green geometry of the sport; a few are quite slight. At his best, Meissner's slightly out-of-kilter couples are reminiscent of Raymond Carver's. (Jan.)
Meissner's series of short stories and vignettes has baseball as the common element. One story concerns young boys who pick on a classmate because he can't hit or field; another is about a man who hits baseballs every night until his wife leaves him; another attempts to translate the secret language of baseball caps. There's also a poignant note to the wives of more than 30 baseball players and an ode to Hank Aaron. Meissner, an award-winning fiction writer, has a feel for both baseball's appeal and the people to whom it appeals. There's a little kid in every baseball fan, and that little fella (or gal) can appear at the most unlikely times and in the most unexpected places. Meissner's stories showcase a few of those times and places, some in routine occurrences, others lurking between the cracks of everyday reality. Perhaps the highlight is the story about a father and son who decide to unwind an old baseball found at the edge of a field. What if there's nothing inside? A lovely book.
