Opening Day: Or, the Return of Satchel Paige

by Les Standiford

Reminiscent of Bernard Malamuds The Natural, W. P. Kinsellas Shoeless Joe, and the film Field of Dreams, OPENING DAY is a novella with the kind of magic charm that transcends sport and rises to the level of heroic myth. When the owner of a downtrodden team in the AA Mid Florida League discovers that his aging groundskeeper was once a star in the Negro Leagues, a public relations scheme is hatched. But what begins as a stunt leads to an astonishing outcome that no one, least of all Buck Wilson, the unassuming former great, could have predicted.

108 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2001

About the author

Les Standiford is a historian and author and has since 1985 been the Director of the Florida International University Creative Writing Program. Standiford has been awarded the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and belongs to the Associated Writing Programs, Mystery Writers of America, and the Writers Guild.