Where Garagiola Waits — Rick Wilber

Writers write about what they know, and Rick Wilber knows baseball. He grew up a child of The Game, a Major Leaguer's son in St. Louis, Boston, and Philadelphia. As a baby he made his first spring-training trip to Florida when his father played with the Cardinals. At age five he wore a tiny Red Sox uniform and posed with his brother in Fenway Park. By his college years he was a scholarship pitcher and first-baseman before turning to writing and teaching, where he has become an award winner, regularly publishing short stories and essays in top national magazines and newspapers.

This fine new collection of stories weaves the thread of the national pastime through touching and powerful tales of relationships that sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, where tragic violence ripples through two lovers' lives, where a father learns essential truths from a handicapped son, and where a middle-aged ballplayer finally comes to understand his father through the wonder of a single base hit in an amateur ballgame.

With stories ranging from an autobiographical account of the rigors and delights of joining a forty-something local team to fantasy fiction that brings Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Joe Garagiola, and even Stephen Crane and Fidel Castro onto the field, Wilber invites you to join his team in a collection that's so much fun that everybody wins!