Short Story Genre Survey, Part 1

cover art by George Gross

Recently, my Thursday posts have proportionally been concentrating on short stories more than movies or other subjects I normally cover. I didn't plan it that way, but what the hey. It happened.

So I thought "Why not give the short story reviews more structure?" Because if there is one thing that is lacking in the world, it's more structure on obscure blogs in coverage of short stories. It is, I think, the greatest failing of our civilization.

So I decided to make a list of genres, then--over the course of the "Short Story Genre Survey" I am starting today--cover one story from each of these genres.

Here's the Genre List:

Sports

Adventure

Mystery

Horror

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Western

War

Sports is crossed off because we are knocking the sports story out of the park today.

"Ol' Knucklehead," by Paul R. McCully, was published in the Summer 1946 issue of Baseball Stories. According to the FictionMag index, this is his only published work.

But it's a good one. In fact, the baseball stories (and sports stories in general) from this era were always a lot of fun. Written without cynicism, they tell straightforward tales that usually depend on inning-by-inning accounts of key games to generate tension. I love 'em.

The story involves a fictional National League team called the Barons that brings up a new catcher from the minors. The new guy is an extremely confident hotshot who soon gets on everyone's nerves. But he's a good hitter and he has an uncanny ability to signal for just the right pitch.

But he screws up, once with an embarrassing fielding error and, in another game, with an even more embarrassing running error. This gets him benched and earns him the nickname "Knucklehead."

It's only when the Barons play the Cubs in the last game of the series that "Knucklehead" might have a chance to redeem himself when he improvises a brilliant plan during a key at-bat. It's a plan that is perfectly within the rules, but I can't find an example of it being done deliberately. Kudos to the writer for coming up with something both original and plausible. 

As I said, it's a fun story--hitting all the right vibes that make the sports stories from the first half of the 20th-Century so gosh darn entertaining.

It's also fun to think about another aspect of the story. Or at least it's fun if you are a total nerd: Why was the protagonist put on a fictional team rather than a real one?

As far as I can determine (and I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt), it was (and is) okay for writers to use real-life teams in fiction as long as it's for story purposes and not marketing. John Tunis' classic 1943 baseball novel The Keystone Kids, for instance, put its main characters on the roster of the Brooklyn Dodgers. There's no evidence that Tunis had to obtain permission to do this. He just did.

But the pulp magazines often used fictional team names. Part of the reason, I think, was to stay neutral and not alienate any fans. If you put your hero on the Yankees, you might drive Red Sox fans away from buying your magazine in the future. A fictional team avoids this problem and also allows the writer to ignore real-life schedules, pennant results and so on.

Also, I thought I caught the writer of "Ol' Knucklehead" in a slight error, but when I looked it up, I discovered there was no error AND there was actually a factoid from baseball history I actually DIDN'T KNOW!!! I hang my head in shame, of course. The "error" is that the Barons and the Cubs end the season with 1/2 game difference in the standings. This means they didn't play the same number of games, which in turn means someone had a game cancelled (likely a rain delay) that was not made up. With the pennant at stake, I thought, wouldn't the league have made a point of getting that game played?

The answer is NO: Unless the game needed to be played because of a tie for first place, the League would allow the 1/2 game lead to stand. Travel restrictions and other logistical matters made playing the game impractical. In 1908, for instance, the Detroit Tigers had a never-made-up rainout and finished 90-63. This put them one game over the Cleveland Naps, who finished at 90-64. Gee whiz--why didn't I know this? I pride myself on my impeccable knowledge of baseball history, but didn't know this! WHY, UNIVERSE? WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?

Anyway, you can find this story online HERE. If you like baseball, I can pretty much promise you'll enjoy reading it. 

Next week, we will look at a story from another genre.