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The Thrill of the Grass
No one can write about baseball with the same brilliant combination of mysticism and realism as W. P. Kinsella. Lovers of the game and lovers of fine writing will thrill to the range of the eleven stories that make up this new collection.
From the magical conspiracy of the title story, to the celestial prediction in The Last Pennant Before Armageddon, to the desolation of The Baseball Spur, Kinsella explores the world of baseball and makes it, miraculously, a microcosm of the human condition.
From the magical conspiracy of the title story, to the celestial prediction in The Last Pennant Before Armageddon, to the desolation of The Baseball Spur, Kinsella explores the world of baseball and makes it, miraculously, a microcosm of the human condition.
134 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1984
17 people are currently reading
385 people want to read
About the author
W.P. Kinsella
56 books233 followersWilliam Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
September 8, 2018
We went to a baseball game this past June and saw our home team, the Colorado Rockies, play at Coors Field in Denver. My first time in 20 years of living here.
My observations were. . .
The stadium is monstrous, as though a simple bleacher shouted “Supersize me!” as it was being constructed, and bad magic then occurred.
Beer was everywhere, including the bottom of my skirt, as soon as I sat down on my plastic seat. If someone's not sloshing some on you, you're stepping in it or you're smelling it. (God, I hate beer, especially on a new skirt or sticky on the bottom of a nice pair of shoes).
We were too far away from the “action,” if any could be described as happening, and we realized, quickly, that we just don't know any of the local players.
And, in case it's unclear; this is a recipe for a bad evening. Within minutes, I wished I had stashed a novel next to the pepper spray in my handbag.
I entertained myself instead by watching the sun set over the gorgeous Rocky Mountains, or at least until a woman with large breasts and a tiny tank top stepped in and distracted my attention.
She was a Superfan, seated in front of me, and she kept shouting out particular players' names as her breasts begged to break free of both the confines of her clothing and the curse of our shitty seats. She was just dying to get closer to the owners of those tight poly pants. She and me, both, if only we could have been close enough to see them.
But, regardless, now I was interested. Now I had me some real entertainment. I got to watch Patty or Tracy or Stacie or whatever her name was shake her beer and her breasts in an attempt to summon the players. Wow, who was the player now? (Why did she even think they could possibly see her??) Everything was just plain old boring, until the woman arrived.
Who knew that just three months later my baseball experience would be mirrored by this book, The Thrill of the Grass?
There were several comparisons to be drawn. As I started this short story collection, with The Last Pennant Before Armageddon, I yawned right into my hand. Just as I had, earlier that summer, at the actual ball game. Baseball statistics are beyond boring to me, and boy is it a bad decision to start your short story collection with a bunch of them. I could fall asleep reading baseball stats (and I did, several times).
But, just as a colorful woman saved me from boredom in real life, as soon as a fictional woman entered the picture, in story #2, The Baseball Spur, W.P. Kinsella also had my attention:
My own wife, Sunny, is squashed into the corner of the back seat behind me. She hasn't said a word since we left the ballpark in Cedar Rapids. I catch a glimpse of the red glow of her cigarette. She is tiny as a child sitting back there. I wonder how someone so small and insignificant-looking can tear me apart the way she does.
Ah. Now we were getting somewhere.
The Baseball Spur is a story that compares the average trajectory of a man's life with an average baseball player's career. They're never exactly what you'd want them to be, they're usually too short, and they're full of dead ends and unfulfilled dreams.
The wife, Sunny, is positively fascinating. She's the only one in the story who has an exit strategy, who keeps in motion to escape being trapped. But, does she have any more freedom than any one else? Who the hell knows?
There's a surprisingly sexy story in this collection, too, the seventh one, Driving Toward the Moon. What it did is drive me to a cold shower. Ironically, it's about a fan and a player who spark an undeniable attraction.
The man: We are like magnet and metal, longing.
The woman: “I'm married too,” she whispers, kissing me again in a way that tells me it doesn't matter at all.
That one's worthy of a re-read for sure.
Women saved almost all of these stories for me. Without them, Kinsella just wants to keep on playing with his damn balls.
In all but one. . . the unbelievably short title story, The Thrill of the Grass. In just 10 pages, Kinsella shows his readers how precise and impactful prose can be, if you keep it simple and make each word count.
It was brilliant, sir. Tugged hard at the heart, begged the world without being preachy. . . let us not always sell out, give in to greed, choose the artificial over the natural:
Baseball is meant to be played on summer evenings and Sunday afternoons, on grass just cut by a horse-drawn mower.
Yes. So is life.
My observations were. . .
The stadium is monstrous, as though a simple bleacher shouted “Supersize me!” as it was being constructed, and bad magic then occurred.
Beer was everywhere, including the bottom of my skirt, as soon as I sat down on my plastic seat. If someone's not sloshing some on you, you're stepping in it or you're smelling it. (God, I hate beer, especially on a new skirt or sticky on the bottom of a nice pair of shoes).
We were too far away from the “action,” if any could be described as happening, and we realized, quickly, that we just don't know any of the local players.
And, in case it's unclear; this is a recipe for a bad evening. Within minutes, I wished I had stashed a novel next to the pepper spray in my handbag.
I entertained myself instead by watching the sun set over the gorgeous Rocky Mountains, or at least until a woman with large breasts and a tiny tank top stepped in and distracted my attention.
She was a Superfan, seated in front of me, and she kept shouting out particular players' names as her breasts begged to break free of both the confines of her clothing and the curse of our shitty seats. She was just dying to get closer to the owners of those tight poly pants. She and me, both, if only we could have been close enough to see them.
But, regardless, now I was interested. Now I had me some real entertainment. I got to watch Patty or Tracy or Stacie or whatever her name was shake her beer and her breasts in an attempt to summon the players. Wow, who was the player now? (Why did she even think they could possibly see her??) Everything was just plain old boring, until the woman arrived.
Who knew that just three months later my baseball experience would be mirrored by this book, The Thrill of the Grass?
There were several comparisons to be drawn. As I started this short story collection, with The Last Pennant Before Armageddon, I yawned right into my hand. Just as I had, earlier that summer, at the actual ball game. Baseball statistics are beyond boring to me, and boy is it a bad decision to start your short story collection with a bunch of them. I could fall asleep reading baseball stats (and I did, several times).
But, just as a colorful woman saved me from boredom in real life, as soon as a fictional woman entered the picture, in story #2, The Baseball Spur, W.P. Kinsella also had my attention:
My own wife, Sunny, is squashed into the corner of the back seat behind me. She hasn't said a word since we left the ballpark in Cedar Rapids. I catch a glimpse of the red glow of her cigarette. She is tiny as a child sitting back there. I wonder how someone so small and insignificant-looking can tear me apart the way she does.
Ah. Now we were getting somewhere.
The Baseball Spur is a story that compares the average trajectory of a man's life with an average baseball player's career. They're never exactly what you'd want them to be, they're usually too short, and they're full of dead ends and unfulfilled dreams.
The wife, Sunny, is positively fascinating. She's the only one in the story who has an exit strategy, who keeps in motion to escape being trapped. But, does she have any more freedom than any one else? Who the hell knows?
There's a surprisingly sexy story in this collection, too, the seventh one, Driving Toward the Moon. What it did is drive me to a cold shower. Ironically, it's about a fan and a player who spark an undeniable attraction.
The man: We are like magnet and metal, longing.
The woman: “I'm married too,” she whispers, kissing me again in a way that tells me it doesn't matter at all.
That one's worthy of a re-read for sure.
Women saved almost all of these stories for me. Without them, Kinsella just wants to keep on playing with his damn balls.
In all but one. . . the unbelievably short title story, The Thrill of the Grass. In just 10 pages, Kinsella shows his readers how precise and impactful prose can be, if you keep it simple and make each word count.
It was brilliant, sir. Tugged hard at the heart, begged the world without being preachy. . . let us not always sell out, give in to greed, choose the artificial over the natural:
Baseball is meant to be played on summer evenings and Sunday afternoons, on grass just cut by a horse-drawn mower.
Yes. So is life.
June 8, 2025
Easy, breezy reading; this collection of eleven baseball stories is a game day hotdog of whimsy served with a schmear of magical realism mustard with an aftertaste of melancholy, like a game lost one to nothing in the ninth.
Three and a half stars rounded up. Kinsella always delivers for those of us who love baseball.
Three and a half stars rounded up. Kinsella always delivers for those of us who love baseball.
January 25, 2020
I was about to be all cute here and use baseball terms to describe my experiences with Kinsella and his work, but I'm sleepy so I will just say that this one was another dud for me. The only story in this collection that had any real entertainment value for me was the title story, The Thrill Of The Grass, which was the final selection in the book.
The narrator and some other baseball fans have a little adventure during the summer of 1981 when the professional players were out on strike and no one was around their local Big League stadium. This story had a nifty idea in it and plenty of poetic images.
I didn't think I was expecting anything other than good stories when I opened this book, but I think now that I am indulging in the cardinal sin of expecting a certain something from an author who is not trying to offer that certain something all of the time.
I first read Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, and the second of his books for me was Dance Me Outside. Both of these titles were stunning, and I suppose I just automatically expected the rest of his work to be the same caliber. The Fencepost Chronicles did not meet that high bar, and neither does this book, at least not for me. Others may feel about these stories the way I felt about the ones in Dance Me Outside, who knows.
I just know that we are all allowed our opinions and reactions to the books we read, and mine in this case was a very loud 'Strike two'!
The narrator and some other baseball fans have a little adventure during the summer of 1981 when the professional players were out on strike and no one was around their local Big League stadium. This story had a nifty idea in it and plenty of poetic images.
I didn't think I was expecting anything other than good stories when I opened this book, but I think now that I am indulging in the cardinal sin of expecting a certain something from an author who is not trying to offer that certain something all of the time.
I first read Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, and the second of his books for me was Dance Me Outside. Both of these titles were stunning, and I suppose I just automatically expected the rest of his work to be the same caliber. The Fencepost Chronicles did not meet that high bar, and neither does this book, at least not for me. Others may feel about these stories the way I felt about the ones in Dance Me Outside, who knows.
I just know that we are all allowed our opinions and reactions to the books we read, and mine in this case was a very loud 'Strike two'!
May 10, 2010
A compendium of short stories about baseball by W.P. Kinsella, who wrote the book Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams is based. To say that these stories are all exclusively about baseball would be incorrect. Instead, they more or less use baseball as an angle of approach. This is a smart way of doing things, and, I think, speaks highly of baseball's almost-universal applicability to matters of life and family.
There's no way to rate this story by story, which is a shame. If I could, however, the title story "The Thrill of the Grass" would be getting 5 stars and made all the rest of them worth reading. The language is absolutely beautiful, and it made me want to declare a guerilla war on astroturf, just like the one undertaken by its narrator. Other stories, I enjoyed less. In many of them, I got the impression that Kinsella is not exactly a fan of women, which dampened my enjoyment a little bit. There also seemed to be some unnecessary vulgarity in others.
Basically, baseball fan or not, pick this up for "The Thrill of the Grass." If you're a fan of the game, you'll want to go find a baseball diamond and lay down in the middle of center field and just rejoice. If you're not, it may shed some light on what this game means to the rest of us.
There's no way to rate this story by story, which is a shame. If I could, however, the title story "The Thrill of the Grass" would be getting 5 stars and made all the rest of them worth reading. The language is absolutely beautiful, and it made me want to declare a guerilla war on astroturf, just like the one undertaken by its narrator. Other stories, I enjoyed less. In many of them, I got the impression that Kinsella is not exactly a fan of women, which dampened my enjoyment a little bit. There also seemed to be some unnecessary vulgarity in others.
Basically, baseball fan or not, pick this up for "The Thrill of the Grass." If you're a fan of the game, you'll want to go find a baseball diamond and lay down in the middle of center field and just rejoice. If you're not, it may shed some light on what this game means to the rest of us.
February 27, 2025
I first read the eponymous story in a Reader's Digest from the late 90s. Very fond of that story. So I snapped this collection up hoping to enjoy more of Kinsella's works. Sadly, I was disappointed. I gave it two stars for the memories.
August 26, 2020
All eleven stories in this collection by W.P. Kinsella have a baseball connection. Here are my favorite three stories, all ranging from 4 to 5 stars.
1. The Firefighter - a young man who plays in the minor leagues and his firefighter brother-in-law are finding it hard to keep out of trouble in rural Oklahoma. His wife is rarely impressed. Probably the most realistic story in the collection and a wonderful job of capturing a day in the life.
2. Bud and Tom - a vivid and beautifully told story about a young boy and his two elderly uncles Bud and Tom. Uncle Bud has recently passed away but at the funeral Uncle Tom, inexplicably tells everyone within earshot that Uncle Bud is probably in hell right now but offers up no further details. The boy wants to ask his taciturn parents what happened between the uncles but he knows his parents will rebuke him. Decades later after both uncles are dead he finds out from his mother that the uncles’ enmity for one another has to do with baseball.
3. The Thrill of The Grass - a wonderful tale that is quintessential Kinsella. During a baseball strike a fan conceives of a plan to replace the artificial turf with the help of his friends. The most well known of his short stories here. It is amazing how much magic Kinsella can bring to his stories even without antagonists or drama.
4 stars. Kinsella was a uniquely talented writer and I’m glad to have read his stories.
1. The Firefighter - a young man who plays in the minor leagues and his firefighter brother-in-law are finding it hard to keep out of trouble in rural Oklahoma. His wife is rarely impressed. Probably the most realistic story in the collection and a wonderful job of capturing a day in the life.
2. Bud and Tom - a vivid and beautifully told story about a young boy and his two elderly uncles Bud and Tom. Uncle Bud has recently passed away but at the funeral Uncle Tom, inexplicably tells everyone within earshot that Uncle Bud is probably in hell right now but offers up no further details. The boy wants to ask his taciturn parents what happened between the uncles but he knows his parents will rebuke him. Decades later after both uncles are dead he finds out from his mother that the uncles’ enmity for one another has to do with baseball.
3. The Thrill of The Grass - a wonderful tale that is quintessential Kinsella. During a baseball strike a fan conceives of a plan to replace the artificial turf with the help of his friends. The most well known of his short stories here. It is amazing how much magic Kinsella can bring to his stories even without antagonists or drama.
4 stars. Kinsella was a uniquely talented writer and I’m glad to have read his stories.
July 14, 2017
If you love baseball and a good short story, this will be a walk in the park. Slightly weird at times, and maybe a bit dark around the corner, but definitely worth the trip. You will find something as pure as baseball turned into an allegory for life.
August 29, 2021
A really charming collection of short stories revolving around a baseball theme. My absolute favorite and a story well worth the price of admission is "How I Got My Nickname" which I first read in an amazingly fun magazine called "Spitball" years ago. Highly recommended.
August 19, 2025
W.P. Kinsella writes about baseball in a way that is truly so romantic. He gets it. In these stories, the baseball diamond is a mythical, ethereal space. It's a sacred site where time holds no sway, capable of inspiring, maddening, haunting, and even redeeming those who enter. It's a place of pure magic and it's beautiful.
Most of these stories don't focus on the game of baseball itself, but on the lives of those who can hear its siren song: down-on-their luck minor leaguers, washed pros, lifelong fans, and of course, children, as well as those around them. Kinsella uses the magic of baseball as a contrast to the painful parts of life; the beauty of the game serves as a (sometimes painful) reminder of life as his characters once imagined it to be, and as a beacon of possibility. The seasons of baseball echo the seasons in their lives, from the crushing emptiness that strikes with the final, losing at-bat in a pennant race, to the pure, unadulterated thrill of opening day.
Like most collections, some of these stories were better than others. I likely would've rated this higher were it not for a nasty bit of fatphobia in one of them. As a whole, they were also a lot hornier than I expected. My favorites were "The Baseball Spur", "Barefoot and Pregnant in Des Moines", and "The Thrill of the Grass".
Most of these stories don't focus on the game of baseball itself, but on the lives of those who can hear its siren song: down-on-their luck minor leaguers, washed pros, lifelong fans, and of course, children, as well as those around them. Kinsella uses the magic of baseball as a contrast to the painful parts of life; the beauty of the game serves as a (sometimes painful) reminder of life as his characters once imagined it to be, and as a beacon of possibility. The seasons of baseball echo the seasons in their lives, from the crushing emptiness that strikes with the final, losing at-bat in a pennant race, to the pure, unadulterated thrill of opening day.
Like most collections, some of these stories were better than others. I likely would've rated this higher were it not for a nasty bit of fatphobia in one of them. As a whole, they were also a lot hornier than I expected. My favorites were "The Baseball Spur", "Barefoot and Pregnant in Des Moines", and "The Thrill of the Grass".
November 3, 2025
I love baseball. I love books about baseball. I love the other books I have read from, W. P. Kinsella. He's a great author.
This one just didn't grab me. I had a hard time keeping up with the story and the characters. I wasn't sure who was talking some of the time. Part of that was my lack of wanting to listen closely because the story just never sucked me in. Part of that was the lack of baseball in a book that I was expecting to be about baseball. To be fair, it was a strong supporting actor! To read this book for the baseball would be like reading Charlottes Web to read about farms. As the book ended, I guess the author's intro at the very beginning was written more as a warning about the book to come.
Anyway, if you are expecting something like the Shoeless Joe book, or expecting something to compete with the Roger Angell books, you might be disappointed like me.
This one just didn't grab me. I had a hard time keeping up with the story and the characters. I wasn't sure who was talking some of the time. Part of that was my lack of wanting to listen closely because the story just never sucked me in. Part of that was the lack of baseball in a book that I was expecting to be about baseball. To be fair, it was a strong supporting actor! To read this book for the baseball would be like reading Charlottes Web to read about farms. As the book ended, I guess the author's intro at the very beginning was written more as a warning about the book to come.
Anyway, if you are expecting something like the Shoeless Joe book, or expecting something to compete with the Roger Angell books, you might be disappointed like me.
February 10, 2021
I absolutely love Kinsella's baseball writing. He had an amazing ability to understand the minute points of the game and express them in brilliant prose. This collection has some great stories, with "How I Got My Nickname," "The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record," "The Firefighter," "The Battery," and "The Thrill of the Grass" being my favourites. As one might expect from Kinsella, some of the stories contain magical or fantasy elements so farfetched that they would derail the story in the hands of most writers, but this is where Kinsella is at his finest.
It's interesting to see how baseball is weaved into each story. It's often right in front of your face--the struggles of an aspiring ballplayer, or the successes of a superstar. Other times, baseball seems only tangentially related to the story, but it's always an essential component.
The collection isn't perfect. There was a recurring motif of resentful and unsupportive wives, and the "I'm crazy about her, and she's indifferent to me" felt overdone. I didn't feel that this worked, as I actually sympathized more with the wives--it would be incredibly difficult to know that you'll be alone for most of February through November. The "I pay the bills, so you have to suck it up" mentality prevented me from sympathizing with the characters. If there had been a story included from the wife's perspective, it would have presented an engaging balance.
Overall, I went with five stars. Kinsella's love for the game, metafictional inclusion of himself, and occasional ties between stories make his work exciting to read. The descriptions are brilliantly unique (one character describing his wife's smell of "new rope" struck me as particularly creative). The stories are unpredictable, and the endings sometimes still leave the reader wondering which of the possible outcomes came to pass, giving just enough of a hint to leave people considering it for days. More masterful storytelling from my choice for greatest baseball writer of all time.
It's interesting to see how baseball is weaved into each story. It's often right in front of your face--the struggles of an aspiring ballplayer, or the successes of a superstar. Other times, baseball seems only tangentially related to the story, but it's always an essential component.
The collection isn't perfect. There was a recurring motif of resentful and unsupportive wives, and the "I'm crazy about her, and she's indifferent to me" felt overdone. I didn't feel that this worked, as I actually sympathized more with the wives--it would be incredibly difficult to know that you'll be alone for most of February through November. The "I pay the bills, so you have to suck it up" mentality prevented me from sympathizing with the characters. If there had been a story included from the wife's perspective, it would have presented an engaging balance.
Overall, I went with five stars. Kinsella's love for the game, metafictional inclusion of himself, and occasional ties between stories make his work exciting to read. The descriptions are brilliantly unique (one character describing his wife's smell of "new rope" struck me as particularly creative). The stories are unpredictable, and the endings sometimes still leave the reader wondering which of the possible outcomes came to pass, giving just enough of a hint to leave people considering it for days. More masterful storytelling from my choice for greatest baseball writer of all time.
May 11, 2021
Kinsella was a special kind of genius, as I discovered since reading "Shoeless Joe" and "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" years ago. My sister had bought this paperback and had it signed by the man himself back at a signing in Chicago years ago, and it was unearthed when my daughter was visiting and helping organize our books. It's baseball season (the only sport I follow) so I read "The Thrill of the Grass" in the course of a day. The stories are infused with magical realism and the hard luck lives of players stuck in the minor leagues. Kinsella's love of Iowa also shines through. A great summertime read.
December 12, 2012
I was not happy with this book. I had read it years and years ago... and as with most things I remember from back in the day, it had a fairy tale-esque tint. I remembered it being more romantic and magical. Maybe I just did not get it then. Or maybe the stories do not age well. While a few of the stories did rekindle that baseball romanticism, I was left with more of a taste of bitterness, chauvinism, and unhappiness. These stories were not full of hope. They were about failure and wasted lives. I wish I had not read it again.
October 2, 2021
Kinsella had a gift and when he used it to write baseball-related stories like Shoeless Joe he was at the top of his game. This collection of short stories exhibits some of the same skill in marrying real life with fantasy in eleven uneven stories. I loved The Battery as well as the title story but the one that most captured my imagination was How I Got My Nickname, the tale of a bookish high school Latin (not Latino) student who makes a difference in the 1951 pennant race and Bobby Thomson’s shot heard round the world. Though not his best work, it is still vintage Kinsella.
March 9, 2024
I really like Kinsella, and some of these short stories were very good, but overall I was disappointed a little bit. I was expecting greatness in each one, but alas it was not to be. Nevertheless, they are pretty good. I just built up my anticipation because I hadn't been able to get my hands on this whilst reading many of his other works. Still, if you love baseball, many of these will appeal to you.
October 29, 2011
I read this after hearing a great deal of praise for Kinsella's writing from various sources. However I found the writing to be flat and unengaging. Neither the stories or the characters interested me.
December 14, 2020
I found this to be a mean spirited collection of depressing baseball based short fiction. Very different from the whimsical and at times spiritual depictions of baseball by this author.
July 12, 2021
Sometimes writers get too irreverent.
July 24, 2022
Oh my, I won’t get this four hours of my life back. A group of dull, meaningless, random short stories that add up to a collective mess.
March 13, 2025
The Thrill Of The Grass
W.P. Kinsella
Shall I confess it’s an excerpt I’m reading in Alan Maitland’s anthology. The author of Shoeless Joe is obsessed with baseball. I’d attended games played by my fellow letter carriers on local pitches and one game in the fifth tier at the Sky Dome. Given my eyesight I couldn’t tell which side of me a thrown ball was going to break so....
I did enjoy the first Sandlot movie. The introduction of Astroturf to Arenas enabled closed domes but is controversial. Since it takes 45 minutes to close the Skydome it has suffered rain delays due to miscommunication. The falcon who keeps gulls out of the stadium is named Winfield.
The story here is a work of fiction. But it would have been fun to hear the reaction of players who returned to real turf.
W.P. Kinsella
Shall I confess it’s an excerpt I’m reading in Alan Maitland’s anthology. The author of Shoeless Joe is obsessed with baseball. I’d attended games played by my fellow letter carriers on local pitches and one game in the fifth tier at the Sky Dome. Given my eyesight I couldn’t tell which side of me a thrown ball was going to break so....
I did enjoy the first Sandlot movie. The introduction of Astroturf to Arenas enabled closed domes but is controversial. Since it takes 45 minutes to close the Skydome it has suffered rain delays due to miscommunication. The falcon who keeps gulls out of the stadium is named Winfield.
The story here is a work of fiction. But it would have been fun to hear the reaction of players who returned to real turf.
March 11, 2025
I, like many, discovered W.P. as a result of seeing “Field of Dreams”.
I liked this collection generally, but found one or two of the stories not to my liking. That said I love Kinsella’s clear reverence for the game and the fervour of his fandom. I think the interesting bit is that W.P.’s work focused on the marginalised and the “never-were” type of character that compromise the 99% of baseball aspirants…he treated them with reality and respect, but never stooped to washing them in dreams and insincerity.
I liked this collection generally, but found one or two of the stories not to my liking. That said I love Kinsella’s clear reverence for the game and the fervour of his fandom. I think the interesting bit is that W.P.’s work focused on the marginalised and the “never-were” type of character that compromise the 99% of baseball aspirants…he treated them with reality and respect, but never stooped to washing them in dreams and insincerity.
January 9, 2022
There’s something magical about Kinsella’s voice. He evokes belief in each of his stories, no matter how far fetched. Reading his work feels like listening to a radio announcer in the dark of a long-night drive. The man can turn a phrase and craft a story, and they all come back to the same place: baseball.
April 26, 2023
While these short stories might be interesting to some readers, this book was not what I expected. I expected stories about baseball, but baseball was peripheral in most of them. They would have been little changed if baseball had been completely removed.
As a devotee of history and biography, this is what I get for venturing into fiction.
As a devotee of history and biography, this is what I get for venturing into fiction.
September 2, 2024
How is this the guy that wrote the story that led to the amazing Field of Dreams?
This guy seems to hate, or hold a dim view, of pretty much everything in life. His writing isn't gritty and real - even when the subject is fantasy - it's faux sepia-tinted pulp. I LOVE baseball, and this guy makes it all seem so banal and depressing.
This guy seems to hate, or hold a dim view, of pretty much everything in life. His writing isn't gritty and real - even when the subject is fantasy - it's faux sepia-tinted pulp. I LOVE baseball, and this guy makes it all seem so banal and depressing.
September 29, 2024
Kinsella is a talented writer, who captures the wonder of baseball and the magical fascination that it provides so many middle-aged fans. His perception of women and relationships is uncomfortably locked in the embrace of Boomerville, so I would only recommend to baseball fans willing to grit their teeth through the tired stereotypes in order to savor the sweetness of his baseball mysticism.
January 14, 2025
A collection of short stories by Kineslla are always enjoyable. My top 3 were The Thrill of the Grass, Barefoot and Pregnant in Des Moines and The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record. The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record has a very interesting concept and my head is now thinking off all the ways it could be made into a full book.
March 16, 2025
After waiting 40 years to read Kinsella's baseball short fiction based in the 70s and early 80s, I really expected to enjoy it more than I actually did. The last story about fans sneaking into a stadium every night during the Strike season of 1981 and removing the artificial turf and replacing it with grass was about the only truly enjoyable one in the collection.
June 28, 2025
There are some poignant moments in these stories, and Kinsella’s love of baseball occasionally shines through in a piercing way, but the overall tenor of these vignettes is a strange blend of schmaltzy-sentimental, on the one hand, and cramped, bleak, and cynical—even mean—on the other, making the collection both unpleasant and hollow.
January 27, 2020
Baseball is the background on all of the stories, but there is so much more to these wonderful, magical tales. You don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy them---just allow yourself to acknowledge there are mysterious moments in all our lives that are hard to explain but easy to appreciate.
January 20, 2022
Honestly, three stars might be generous for this one... however, I tacked on the extra star due to the quality of writing. There was little thematic content that interested me, and baseball has never been a sport I've followed (which is a detriment in the case of Kinsella's works).
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