For Love of the Game

by Michael Shaara

Overview

“Moving, beautiful . . . If Hemingway had written a baseball novel, he might have written For Love of the Game.”—Los Angeles Times

Billy Chapel is a baseball legend, after seventeen season a sure Hall of Famer. He is a man who has retained the endearing qualities of youth, a man who has devoted his life to the game he loves and plays so well. But, because of his unsurpassed skill and innocent faith, he has been betrayed.

It's the final game of the season, and Billy's got one last chance to prove who he is and what he can do, a chance to prove what really matters in this life. A taut, compelling story of one man's coming of age, For Love of the Game is Michael Shaara's final novel, the classic finish to a brilliantly distinguished literary career.

Praise for For Love of the Game

“A delightful and lyrical story about a great athlete's momentous last game . . . A fairy tale for adults about love and loneliness and finally growing up.”—USA Today

“An endearing, timeless novel that can be enjoyed by both serious readers and baseball lovers for generations to come.”—The Orlando Sentinel

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345408921
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/11/1997
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.95(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Michael Shaara was born in Jersey City in 1929 and graduated from Rutgers University in 1951. His early science fiction short stories were published in Galaxy magazine in 1952. He later began writing other works of fiction and published more than seventy short stories in many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Redbook. His first novel, The Broken Place, was published in 1968. But it was a simple family vacation to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1966 that gave him the inspiration for his greatest achievement, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels, published in 1974. Michael Shaara went on to write two more novels, The Noah Conspiracy and For Love of the Game, which was published posthumously after his death in 1988.

Editorial Reviews

Moving, beautiful . . . If Hemingway had written a baseball novel, he might have written For Love of the Game.”—Los Angeles Times

“A delightful and lyrical story about a great athlete's momentous last game . . . A fairy tale for adults about love and loneliness and finally growing up.”—USA Today

“An endearing, timeless novel that can be enjoyed by both serious readers and baseball lovers for generations to come.”—The Orlando Sentinel

From the Publisher

Reading this posthumously published baseball novel is best compared to watching a gifted young player whose promise slowly fades with every strikeout and weak groundball, despite occasional flashes of potential. Shaara, who won a Pulitzer in 1975 for The Killer Angels , died just after the book was finished, and one feels he might have liked to give it a rewrite. Just before the last game of the season, star pitcher Billy Chapel, a veteran of 17 years in the major leagues, discovers that his team plans to trade him. Moreover, he learns that his New York editor/girlfriend has inexplicably ended their romance--leaving him adrift and the reader more than a little indifferent. The love affair, seen in flashbacks (notably a scene in which they achieve congress in a small airplane), must compete with an unhealthy number of baseball cliches and a series of featureless characters; even Billy, whose thoughts we share, seems a blank. The book does come to life, fittingly enough, as Chapel takes the mound for his final and greatest game. Shaara succeeds in conveying the extraordinary physical and psychological demands of the professional game as well as the dizzying pleasures of its triumphs. But even the account of Chapel's greatest victory is marred by a trite ending. While flawed, however, this is a noteworthy attempt to capture the simultaneous loss of a life's love and a life's obsession. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Pulitzer Prize-winner Shaara's final work (he died in 1988) is about a baseball player's final work. Billy Chapel, a great pitcher, is going to be traded after 17 years of service. He plans to end his career with this game, rather than accept this betrayal by his team's new owners. We follow him pitch by pitch through his perfect game, and memory by memory through his imperfect life. Cushioned by a children's game, he has never quite grown up, never taken the ultimate risk of trusting a relationship; the woman he loves is equally frightened of commitment. They come together now, when Billy has to go home, with no home to go to. As much a psychological novel as a baseball tale, this is a good choice for popular fiction collections.-- Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.

Library Journal