Batter up! Grisham’s next novel is about baseball

Posted Jan 17, 2012 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Jan 17, 2012 at 07:16 PM

The master of the legal thriller is ready for his turn at bat.

John Grisham, author of such classics as “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief” and “A Time to Kill,” has written a baseball novel that will go on sale on April 10. “Calico Joe” (Doubleday, hardcover, $24.95, 208 pages) will explore the lives of Chicago Cubs hitting sensation Joe Castle — “Calico Joe” — a rookie from Calico Rock, Ark.; and Warren Tracey, a hard-throwing, hard-living pitcher for the New York Mets.

On his website, Grisham offers a tease of what is to come:

“Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever.”

According to the publicity sheet put out by Doubleday Books, the careers of both players “take very different paths.”

“The baseball is thrilling, but it is what happens off the field that makes ‘Calico Joe’ a classic,” is how the sheet reads.

I am looking forward to it. It makes me wonder if this book will loosely follow a Ray Chapman-Carl Mays parallel (without the fatal beaning), or will go in a different direction.

Baseball fiction written by authors noted for other genres are rare, but can be effective. The best example is Philip Roth’s 1973 classic “The Great American Novel,” an off-the-wall, zany look at the Ruppert Mundys of the Patriot League during World War II, narrated by an old sportswriter named Word Smith. Sarcastic, filled with puns and ridiculous scenarios, it was one of Roth’s most clever (and underrated) works.

I can’t imagine that Grisham will go off the deep end with “Calico Joe,” but I suspect there will be plenty of twists that will leave the readers guessing. Sort of like a batter expecting a fastball on a 3-2 pitch, only to watch helplessly as a slow-breaking curveball breaks across the plate for strike three.

Should be interesting.