The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories

by W.P. Kinsella

Shortstops who run with the wolves, painted eggs that reveal deeply disturbing meanings, long-dead Hall of Famers who miraculously return to the game, an Iowa minor-league town with a secret conspiracy: these are the elements from which W. P. Kinsella weaves nine fabulous stories about the magical world of baseball. From the dugouts, clubhouses, bedrooms, and barrooms to the interior worlds of hope and despair, these eerie stories present the absurdities of human relationships and reveal the writer's special genius for touching the heart.

Genres: Baseball, Fiction, Short Stories, Sports, Fantasy, Canada

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

William 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.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

W.P. Kinsella passed away in 2016 - he was 81 years old - image from the NY Times

W.P. Kinsella is best known for his novel Shoeless Joe, which was made into the mega-hit film, Field of Dreams. Kinsella takes the field again in this impressive collection of baseball short stories. In a Caribbean outback, a player routinely transforms into a wolf, and continues to play. No one bats an eye. In The Fadeaway, an aging hurler conjures up Christy Mathewson, who teaches him how to throw a screwball. But the player never gets to try it out, and is doomed to fade away anyway. In The Darkness Deep Inside, a violent player finds Jesus and confronts a whole new set of problems. In Eggs a player tries to hang on while his Russian wife makes traditional nesting eggs in their Canadian home. In How Manny Embarquadero Overcame and Began His Climb to The Bigs, a city boy scams the game, pretending to be mute, and works his way up from the Latin American Leagues on the basis of his unusualness. In Searching For January, Roberto Clemente emerges from the fog and sea fifteen years later, and is surprised to learn that he is dead. In Feet of Clay, Mike Wheeler is determined to be in the best possible shape for old timers games. What he does not realize is that the fans want to see old timers get old. Lumpy Drobot, Designated Hitter manages to take a manager’s suggestion that he take more hits for the team to the point where one is absorbed into his skin. In the title piece a non-draftee is made an offer by a team in the Midwest. It turns out that he, and the other players on the team were scouted as those who choke under pressure, and thus were unlikely to make in pro ball anyway. The townsfolk are really trying to keep small town America alive by bringing in some fresh blood, something to counter the population loss of the genre. They go out of their way to be nice to the players and to get them set up with work, girl friends, a nice life. The protagonist, once he discovers the scam has to make a decision, to stay or go.

This is a warm, interesting collection. I suppose Clemente will always be alive and at the age he was at his death. I suppose the time comes to fade away for us all, and who could help but admire the enterprise of the mute Latin ballplayer. Nice stuff, with content enough mixed in with style. Not a must-read, but I am glad I did. Any true baseball fan will enjoy these stories.

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the baseball fan, as Doris Kearns Goodwin recently noted, baseball is a series of stories.

Our North American counterpart to the magical realism of Borges, Asturrias, Garro, Robles and Garcia Márquez, may be W. P. Kinsella. What I am sure of is that his stories of baseball resonate deeper in me than any other author.

If you saw and enjoyed the movie, Field of Dreams or read the book that it was made from, Shoeless Joe, you will enjoy these vignettes.

My favorites?

The elegiac, Dixon Cornbelt League;

The profane and magical, The Fadeaway; and, maybe,

Feet of Clay about how little we can make the future conform to our fantasies.


“I can’t be mad at people who mean well, who know me better than I know myself.”

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A shortstop who transforms into a wolf, the ghost of Christy Mathewson teaching his signature pitch to a mop-up reliever, Roberto Clemente, adrift out of time, reappearing from the sea fifteen years after his fatal crash, unharmed and un-aged — this is the stuff of W.P. Kinsella’s bittersweet, magical realism baseball universe. These stories capture that special magic that every fan instinctively realizes the game possesses, and, just like the game, (in the words of Bart Giamatti) will break your heart.


The Baseball Wolf
Baseball is wilder in some Latin countries. Our protagonist, the only American on the team, quickly discovers this. They play against the Insurgents — actual insurgents that come out of the jungle to play ball, then fade back into it to reck mayhem. But that’s nothing beside the fact that his team’s shortstop transformed into a wolf during the game. And kept playing. And of course, the shortstop is his roommate.
4 ⭐️

The Fade Away
The 2000 Indians are contenders, but the lack of competent relievers is killing their chances. That’s when their manager, Murtaugh, starts getting phone calls from the ghost of Christy Mathewson offering to transform the team’s washed up mop-up guy by teaching him his legendary fade away pitch.
4 ⭐️

The Darkness Deep Inside
A hard playing, hell raising baseball star is converted by a televangelist, and both his game and his life suffer.
2 1/2 ⭐️

Eggs
A star pitcher seems to be washed up at 31, without any physical explanation. He begins to suspect that his Ukrainian wife and mother-in-law are hexing him with the intricate decorative eggs they are constantly fashioning.
3 ⭐️

How Manny Embarcadero Overcame and Began His Climb to the Major Leagues
A young, minor league phenom from the islands may not be what he seems. Does his talent come from physical skills, or is it some sort of voodoo?
3 ⭐️

Searching for January
The legendary baseball star Roberto Clemente reappears on a life raft on a lonely beach in 1987, fifteen years after his plane crashed into the sea, presumably killing him. But he hasn’t aged, and thinks that it is January, 1973, just a week after the crash.
4 ⭐️

Feat of Clay
A retired major leaguer goes to his first old timers game only to discover that no one wants to see him still at the top of his game.
3 1/2 ⭐️

Lumpy Drobot, Designated Hitter
A squat, lumbering minor league player hates the nickname his manager gave him even more than the manager hates him. Lonely and friendless on his minor league club, he hooks up with the Christian ball player’s clique to find solace, and soon stumbles into a miracle that will bring him a new name.
3 ⭐️

The Dixon Cornbelt League
A young player who choked in his final year of college ball is not picked in the Major League Draft. His agent finds him a job in a small, Iowan town with a team in the unaffiliated Dixon Cornbelt League. He rooms with the locals, and the whole town is friendly and engaging, showing up to the team’s inter squad games like they were the real deal. But there is something odd about the team and the locals, and he begins to suspect that things are not as they seem.
4 ⭐️

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend once observed to me that there’s ultimately no difference between a taco, a burrito, a tostada, or any number of other Mexican dishes. They’re all the same ingredients, in slightly different proportions. My answer then, as now, was that it didn’t especially matter; they all tasted good in any case.

I think that general principle may apply to Kinsella as well. You know what you’re going to get almost every time: baseball, some fantastic element, and a character confused by the speed of modern life. I enjoyed The Iowa Baseball Confederation and Shoeless Joe as much as anyone back in the day, and it’s like slipping into a Mexican restaurant to come back to him in reading these stories. It’s familiar and, even if it doesn’t seem special next to his better work, it still tastes good.

That’s a bottom line assessment: I found two-thirds of these nine stories to be pleasant enough, ones I read, enjoyed and turned the page on. As I reflect on reading them just a few days ago, I have to cheat to look at the table of contents to be reminded of them.

That said, there are three that have stuck with me, and I don’t have to refresh my memory on them. They’re the kind that linger a while. They are, in an easy metaphor that seems appropriate for Kinsella, solid hits.

The first one in the collection, “The Baseball Wolf,” tells the story of a ballplayer in an imaginary country sandwiched between Haiti and the Dominican Republic who develops the capacity to become a wolf. It’s a variation on the werewolf story in that he wants the power. Our narrator discovers there’s nothing off about the transformation. It’s a fulfillment rather than a curse. And it helps the guy play baseball as well. There’s something about it, though, that’s gripping and inspiring.

One of the later ones, “Searching for January,” is more a single scene than a narrative, but it has a strange beauty to it. A man wandering the beach is startled to see Roberto Clemente come ashore in a raft. It’s been 15 years since Clemente’s plane crashed, but the Hall-of-Famer thinks no time has passed at all. He’s back, and he wants to play for the Pirates again. When the narrator explains that it’s 1987, Clemente decides he’d rather go back into the mist, back to where he might be able to find his own time.

Kinsella makes us do most of the heavy lifting ourselves – which is a good thing in a story – but I take it to mean that Clemente the character has come to understand that he is wedded to his own time. He might “survive” as a figure in a transformed world, but he meant something particular when he risked his life in 1972 to carry supplies to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua. He would necessarily mean something else in 1987, something diminished, so he resolves to seek his own past rather than live someone else’s present.

I admire the story for the way it suggests the power of a baseball player to represent something more than himself. It insists on the potential of a surpassing player to be a metaphor for his team, his moment, and even his culture. Clemente excelled at all that in 1972, and he won’t settle for the shadow of it in 1987.

The best of these, though, is the last one, the title story. In it, our narrator is a college player who, drafted highly as a junior, has a lousy senior year. When no one drafts him, his agent finds him a spot in a tiny independent league no one seems ever to have heard of.

Everything is idyllic, almost too much so. For a moment I was irritated by Kinsella’s saccharine description, but I forgave him when the truth emerged. There is, in fact, no league. The small town has a team, but it plays only scrimmages against itself. It exists to help populate the small town which is hemorrhaging its youth. The team draws new citizens who, finding the place appealing, marry local girls and stay.

What’s even more compelling, though, is the way the community conducts its scouting. It looks for players with real skill who come slowly to recognize that they “choke,” that they don’t deliver when the pressure rises. There’s nothing wrong with such people. In fact, when they relax and accept that about themselves – when they realize they’d be happier in small town Iowa than in a big-league city – they have the opportunity for a happiness that seems otherwise impossible in late 20th Century America.

I got my 11-year-old son to read this, and he characterized it as asking, What do you love more: the game or the games? That is, do you prefer the idea of the game, the possibility you feel every time you pull on your glove or put on your cleats, or do you prefer the actual competition where, in ways beneath that Platonic ideal, you scrap to do your best and win the game?

It's a great question, but it’s even more provocative because Kinsella’s answer – the answer that’s built into the story from its premise – becomes the foundation for a whole community, for a whole way of life. The people of the community use baseball to build their town, and then they use the town to build baseball. Each institution is a dream – the town and the team – and each functions to make the other real.

It’s Kinsella at his best, as I see it, and that means something awful good to chew on. I read this one as part of my mission to find material for the class my friend Will and I are team-teaching, and I think this final short story (and maybe the Clemente one as well) is the first sure thing I’ve come across for what we’re doing.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

People gripe that Kinsella writes kinda the same story over and over but consider that it’s a very GOOD story that I enjoy reading (over and over). I liked that more of these stories were on the creepy side as opposed to the “The Thrill of the Grass” which iirc were mostly on the more wholesome side

[Russ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book. Well written. A series of stories straight from the author's imagination. Some a little hard to believe, but most well worth reading.

[Cory Hawksbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice to read magical baseball stories that are so professionally written. I doubt there is much demand for such writing.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stars for the first and last stories in this collection. Two stars for everything in between.

[Andy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

The baseball stories in this collection fall into two categories; ones that include some fantasy or magical realism and ones that don't. They all reflect a love of baseball, but while the main characters are all baseball players, the focus of the stories is one the character of the players.
"The Baseball Wolf" is one of the magical realism stories. The first sentence tells that in the 5th inning of the game, the shortstop turned into a wolf. The narrator had just been demoted from a Triple A team because of his repeated off field escapades including an affair with the general manger's daughter. He ends up in a rural, isolated Central American country where he and the manager are the only English speakers. He also ends up being the shortstop's roommate and comes to know both the human and wolf with a nice twist at the end.
Another fantasy story is "The Fadeaway" about a baseball manager whose team is in the pennant race. The manager knows that the weak bullpen will doom their chances but then gets a series of strange calls from the long dead Christy Mathewson, arguably the best pitcher of all time. Mathewson's suggestions are successful and the manager agrees to learn more from Mathewson so that he can pass it along to his aging pitchers, with another surprise.
The Darkness Deep Inside has no magic or fantasy. But it's a dang compelling story. It is told by an all star player who was known for his aggressive play and aggressive off field personality, both often crossing the line. He becomes a born again Christian and while he is nicer to be around, his baseball success drops dramatically. He watches the reactions of his manager, teammates and fans.
Another story with no magic is "Feet of Clay" which is narrated by an All Star. One thing that bothered him was seeing the Old Timer's games where former stars were now slovenly, out of shape ball players who should be embarrassed by their poor play but aren't. The star stays in shape during his career and in his retirement so that he can prove that former players can still shine in Old Timer's games. But his first game reveals a big shock
These are good stories. I am not a big magical realism guy but I enjoyed even those stories

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the free audio version of this book through audible. I should know by now that my love of the movie Field of Dreams does not translate to Mr. Kinsella’s novels. This is a collection of short stories that are grounded in baseball and fantasy.

Short stories I find lacking in general, and these stories were no exception. Typically they cannot build up the story properly and give it the depth it deserves. This collection of stories was no exception. The fantasy aspect of the stories turned me off also. The first story centers around the SS turning into a wolf. It was odd and ended abruptly. There was just not enough stories to carry this book for me to enjoy it.

If you are a baseball fan who also enjoys fantasy, you will probably enjoy this book. It just isn’t my cup of tea.

[Ron Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this book, with the exception of the title story, read more like unfinished rather than short stories. In the typical Kinsella vein, these baseball tales are rife with mystery and magic. I like Kinsella, Shoeless Joe and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy are two of my favorite books, and I guess I expect more from him than these quite unfinished fables.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a few of Kinsella's books this year and while he writes about baseball well, he sucks at writing about women. In all his books the women are either hardbitten, sex-crazed she-beasts or doe-eyed angels who turn into horrible ex-wives.

[Mark Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it more than I thought. Strange fantastical stories that really only use baseball as a jumping off point. All the the strangest thing of all, that still has me scratching my head, is how a Canadian could know so much about baseball?

[Andrew Neveils · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories were better than others and some are just…odd. Several start quite promising and then fizzle out a little bit. Due to the 2022 MLB lockout, I decided to enjoy some baseball books to get my fix and this hit that, but there’s definitely better out there.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

More readable stories for the nostalgic baseball fan. longing for a bygone era.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection would be interesting for baseball fans only. There are a few stories where baseball takes a secondary role that could be appealing to any lover of short fiction.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure why i keep reading this author’s books. Another Kinsella mishmash of uninteresting and redundant stories. I’m glad his books are short.

[Thad Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a baseball fan you should enjoy these short stories.

[Ronn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very enjoyable is inconsequential short stories about baseball, major, minor, bush, and imaginary leagues.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 A fun collection of short stories with themes relating to baseball, focused on the players rather than the game, many leaving me with a smile on my face.

[Ben Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Book. Very interesting but couldn't put it down.

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I enjoyed all the stories outside of the wolf one. but maybe I was just settling in. I wasn't enthralled by it, I think it is different for sure... also I have no idea what the hell.

[Clint Pearcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was surprisingly good! I was expecting a bunch of folksy glurge, but it turned out to be mostly light fantasy that would have fit right in on the Twilight Zone. Makes me want to go find Shoeless Joe to see how it compares to Field of Dreams.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinsella deftly and most pleasurably combines three fine things: baseball, magical realism, and the short story. Weaving baseball into stories from Canada to an imaginary Caribbean country, from unaffiliated leagues through the minors to The Show, Kinsella does short story magic. The nine short stories all contain acts or hints of magical-realism-like events and most feature superbly created human main characters, most of whom play baseball at one level or another. Those are delightfully combined to make short stories, many of which conclude in that short story treasure, the ambiguity of resolution, that shows so very much respect for the reader’s ability and thought. Truth be told, I thought there was a clunker among the nine stores, but only one (which I will refrain from identifying) surrounded by eight gems. The writing is so smooth, so easy to follow and digest and enjoy, that this collection manages to balance ease of reading with thought provoking creation. Do you have to know baseball to love this? In my opinion, it helps, but no.

[Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinsella's baseball stories are magical, even the ones with no supernatural element. This book is about 50/50 supernatural/realistic, and I enjoyed it all. Some of the stories in this volume could be made into movies as touching and classic as Field of Dreams.

Although I loved every page, it took me about a month to finish because I didn't want it to be over. There are only so many Kinsella baseball stories, and I'm burning through them.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this many, many years ago and gave it another whirl for a few hours on a recent lazy winter weekend.
Easy read. Very enjoyable.
Quite often I get thoroughly disappointed by a book of short stories. But I rather enjoyed this one.
Many of the stories had a high level of mystery, reminding me of a cross between a Twilight Zone episode and baseball.

[Paulrus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as the other books by Kinsella that I've read. Most of the stories are just ok; the best one is the last one (which is also called The Dixon Cornbelt League) which features the themes of the religion of Iowa and baseball.

[The Ghost's Library · Rating 2 out of 5]

This might have been one of the worst books I ever read. But it was about baseball, so I forgive it.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it when I was a kid and loved it, especially the one about Roberto Clemente.

[Ray Charbonneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

On-and-off collection of dreamy baseball stories.