Go the Distance

As in Shoeless Joe and his other baseball fiction, Kinsella uses the sport not as subject but as context in these ten stories, which range from the realistic to the fantastic. Here a legendary base stealer for St. Louis Browns tries to perpetuate his skills, an extraterrestrial pretends to be the Seattle Mariners mascot, and three middle-aged baseball buddies play a nostalgic pickup game in the women's wear section of K-mart. The collection was first published in 1988 as The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt.