Baseball and literature, both high and low have long sat side-by-side in the dugout. The Great Writer, Papa Hemingway watches the game and yearns to hit one more novelistic homerun, while the inarticulate player characterizes a sharp piece of fielding as pure poetry. In Dingers, essayists, fiction writers, and poets describe baseball's combinations and forms, seeking to plumb its meaning as a game and maybe metaphor for Life's deeper truths. Teamed together to play literary ball are writers such as George Bowering, Robert Allen, Timothy Morris, Arjun Basu, Jason Camlot, Dave Bidini, etc. The epic game is dramatized in all its variety, from the major and minor leagues, down to Little Leagues, and pickup games in sandlots. Some cerebral wag high up in the bleachers once reflected baseball is more about losing than winning: a good batter only hits thirty per cent of the time and only one team wins The World Series. In this it bears a resemblance to fine writing, which may explain its extraordinary appeal to the ink-stained class. Happily for the reader, the songs and stories of some of the most verbally eloquent and talented of baseball wannabes can be found between these covers.

David McGimpsey is the author of five collections of poetry including Li'l Bastard which was named one of the 'books of the year' by both the Quill & Quire and the National Post and was shortlisted for Canada's Governor General's Award. He is also the author of the short fiction collection Certifiable and the award-winning critical study Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture. Named by the CBC as one of the 'Top Ten English language poets in Canada,' his work was also the subject of the book of essays Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey. He lives in Montréal.

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