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Diamonds Forever: Reflections from the Field, the Dugout & the Bleachers
Gathers baseball wisdom from the likes of Joe Garagiola, Pete Rose, Casey Stengel, George Steinbrenner, and Roy Campanella
- GenresBaseballNonfiction
150 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1997
21 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 of 1 review
March 26, 2013
Very nice collection of baseball quotes and stories. Here are some examples.
1. Willie Mays and Willie McCovey volunteer to explain English to the first Japanese player Masanori Murakami. When giants manager Herman Franks comes to the mound, Murakami bows and says, "Get lost, fatso."
2. It's the same as any other ball game you'll remember as long as you live.--Joe Garagiola
3. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.--Lou Gehrig in his farewell speech.
4. I never knew how someone who was dying could say he was the luckiest man in the world. But now I know.--Mickey Mantle on his farewell speech.
5. The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.--Bernard Malamud
6. You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out it was the other way around all the time.--Jim Bouton
7. Baseball is dull only to dull minds.--Red Smith
8. If you're not having fun in baseball, you miss the point of everything.--Chris Chambliss
9. Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection.--Red Smith
10. Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose--unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched baseball with distinction.--Robert Frost
1. Willie Mays and Willie McCovey volunteer to explain English to the first Japanese player Masanori Murakami. When giants manager Herman Franks comes to the mound, Murakami bows and says, "Get lost, fatso."
2. It's the same as any other ball game you'll remember as long as you live.--Joe Garagiola
3. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.--Lou Gehrig in his farewell speech.
4. I never knew how someone who was dying could say he was the luckiest man in the world. But now I know.--Mickey Mantle on his farewell speech.
5. The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.--Bernard Malamud
6. You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out it was the other way around all the time.--Jim Bouton
7. Baseball is dull only to dull minds.--Red Smith
8. If you're not having fun in baseball, you miss the point of everything.--Chris Chambliss
9. Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection.--Red Smith
10. Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose--unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched baseball with distinction.--Robert Frost
Displaying 1 of 1 review