With freshness and empathy during the 1940s and 1950s, Frank O’Rourke created a world of baseball fiction as evocative as a dusty rural diamond or Wrigley Field’s ivied walls. In this richly enjoyable collection of O’Rourke’s work --- the first in nearly 50 years and including six stories never before in book form --- his heroes compete alongside such real baseball greats as Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays, while confronting the all-too-human limitations of injury, age, and envy.

In “The Catcher,” the longtime star of the St. Louis Blues returns for a game facing his old team and the heartless owner who traded him away. “One Ounce of Common Sense” portrays a dramatic pennant race in which a veteran shortstop counsels a young teammate at odds with the team owner during contract negotiations, only to be benched for this so-called insubordination. And in “Nothing New,” a player modeled on the young Jackie Robinson strides across the color line and makes history with an unforgettable dash around the bases. O’Rourke captures the essence of baseball in elegiac, unsentimentalized fiction that will endure as long as fans of the national pastime love the game.