The Dog Sox
This novel is a hilarious ride into the heart of washed-up dreamers, delusional heroes, and, oh yeah, a baseball team. ----Logan and Noah Miller, writers of Touching HomeSpeaking of lyrical, remember last year s extraordinary The Lord God Bird, by Russell Hill? Well, Hill s back, and with a big surprise. His astounding The Dog Sox (Caravel/Pleasure Boat, $16.00) proves that the gifted author is as funny as he is poetic and that he loves baseball. Normally I don t drool over books about sports teams, but the Dog Sox, a hapless ball team made up of misfits, had me slavering. As unexpected as it is wondrous, Sox is so lyrical you can actually sing its pages.  Set in the farming country of Central California, the Sox are such losers that Ray, their owner, runs the hot dog concession to finance them. The tide turns when pitcher Billy Collins (named after America s former Poet Laureate, quoted in the book) joins the team. Billy has a freak pitch no one can hit, but it only lasts for four innings before his arm wears out. Even worse, Billy is afflicted by a drunken, abusive father who can t be trusted not to stagger onto the field during a game. To solve the interruption situation, Dutch, the team s elderly coach/manager, takes the problem to his synagogue, where two just-as-elderly scholars of the Torah try to figure out a way of getting rid of the father permanently while remaining in good graces with God. The old rascals religious hairsplitting is hilarious: So he should go to a bar and maybe he should have one too many and maybe he should get hit by a car or fall down some stairs, God forbid.  As with the best of novels, each character surprises us in his or her own way. Ray is realistic about his ball team, but still dreams of glory. His lover, Ava, is a baseball-loving broad with a ribald mouth. In the end, this story about a team of oddballs struggling through the season is about something other than baseball. It s about dreams, and the unlikely, though not impossible, chance of them coming true. If you re having a bad time, if your car needs a new transmission and your mortgage is upside down, READ THIS BOOK. It ll give you the laughs and the hope you need to keep on keeping on. As Ray points out in one stirring scene, one day you just might make it to the top of the 9th with a 10-run lead. --Mystery Scene, by Betty WebbCultural historian Jacques Barzun wrote that anyone who wanted to understand the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game. He also advised that it is best learned in small towns. Hill s brief and utterly winsome jewel of a novel will likely delight the eminent historian and baseball aficionado. It follows the fortunes of the low-minor-league Knights Landing Dog Sox, who play in California s vast agricultural Central Valley. The Dog Sox are owned by beautiful, baseball loving Ava, a San Francisco attorney; they re a gift from the team's general manager Ray Adams, her deeply smitten lover, who also loves dogs. Most of the players have day jobs: high-school English teacher, backhoe operator, policeman, and farm laborer. Seventysomething Manager Dutch Goltz, knows two things, baseball and the lessons of the Torah, and he thinks he has a Golem in young pitcher Billy Collins, a submarine-balling phenom still shaken by a drunken, abusive father. When Billy s father appears, the misfit team must rally to protect him, and Hill skillfully maintains the threat and suspense as the season passes. The Dog Sox boasts memorable characters, Ava s and Ray s torrid love affair (reminiscent of the movie Bull Durham), the aforementioned suspense, and it oozes baseball and small-town verisimilitude. It may recall Steinbeck s delightful Cannery Row for some readers, but most of all, it s a wise and charming take on the heart and mind of America. --Booklist (starred review), Thomas Gaughan