Leading Off: Opening Lines

"You've probably never heard of me, but I'm in the Hall of Fame."

"Our family came to New York in the winter of '89, and in the spring I saw my first game of baseball."

"Always been in the right place at the wrong time."

"Sister Mary Bernadette! How many times have I asked you not to wear your cleats in the sanctuary?"

"Bottom half of the seventh, Brock's boy had made it through another inning unscratched, one! two! three!"

"My father saw him years later playing in a tenth-rate commercial league in a textile town in Carolina, wearing shoes and an assumed name."



(Murder in Fenway Part, Soos; The Celebrant, Greenberg; Veracruz Blues, Winegardner; The Spring Habit, Hanson; The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., Jerry Waugh, Prop., Coover; Shoeless Joe, Kinsella.)

No Runs, No Hits

Last night Tampa Bay pitcher Matt Garza tossed the fifth no-hitter of the 2010 season (and the first for the Rays' franchise). I took a quick look through my library collection and found the following books that include a perfect game or no-hitter.

For the Love of the Game, Michael Shaara (perfect game)
Screwball, David Ferrell (perfect game)
The Spring Habit, David Hanson (no hitter)

My opinion is that there are just not that many novels featuring, or including, a no-hitter or perfect game. I think, simply, because writing about position players allows for more action and perhaps more drama. If we looked, we're likely to find a multitude of stories that end with the classic bottom-of-the-ninth home run, or late inning comeback. It seems to me that the perfect game and, similarly, the no-hitter are correspondingly as rare in literature as they are in real life.