Slider

Patrick Robinson is known for his Submarine books, including 'The Shark Mutiny' and 'HMS Unseen' and I presumed that 'Slider' would be another of these. However I was rather surprised to discover it's actually a novel about baseball. Being English I know almost nothing about Baseball except that it evolved from our game Rounders and that it's hugely popular in America. I decided to read the book and see if there was enough of a story in the pages to overcome the fact that I'm not a Baseball fan. The answer was yes, with some reservations. Firstly I found that it wasn't always easy to work out what was going on. For someone who hasn't grown up in a Baseball environment there are a lot of things about the game that are difficult to get a handle on. There were vast amounts of names of former baseball players in this story which of course meant nothing to me. The cast of characters is necessarily very wide but there is also continual reference to the Baseball 'greats' of former years - I imagine baseball fans would know these but the average reader possibly not. It was often hard to keep track of who was who whilst following the story. I also found Patrick Robinson's penchant for making political and tub-thumpingly nationalistic comments throughout his writing as annoying as ever. The story follows Jack Faber who is accepted to Seapuit baseball camp for 10 weeks of the summer, along with Tony Garcia, as they hope to attract the scouts for the main teams whilst they play there. Jack's father has brought him up with his love of the game and is hugely supportive of his son; Tony's mother Natalie wants Tony to get a law degree and sees baseball as a dangerous distraction from his studies and one that might cost the family dearly financially. I found myself rather siding with Tony's mum originally - the whole concept of a baseball scholarship to a university is alien to Brits (our scholarships are only ever academic) and the importance placed on the game by all the people around them seemed rather overmuch. However, comparing this with football in the UK, I could see the similarities and how it could become so all-encompassing. The novel is in three sections, the first being the initial summer camp at Seapuit, the second section being the return to Seapuit (after Jack has lost his pitching abilities) and the third section a pure fantasy on behalf of the author where the Seawolves (the Seapuit team) play against one of the major teams. The second half of the book also had another fantasy element where Jack's father becomes suddenly rich and the worries of the first half of the book, when they had no money, are all over. This felt rather like cheating to me, story-wise, as the amount of money Ben Faber received was so enormous. There's a thread throughout the novel of Ben and Natalie's romance, a plot element about Jack losing his ability to pitch, but most of the actual story is describing different games that the Seawolves play, often in intricate det

i totally agree with jeff reardon when he says "this is the best book about baseball...ever!"i have never read anything better than this book and i 100% reccommend it

Patrick Robinson's "Slider" is like a cool glass of lemonade on a warm summer's night. It satisfies. If you are looking for a baseball book, look someplace else. This is a summer story about a Louisiana farm boy who pitches summer ball in the Cape Marlin League. It is a story about his Farmer's Almanac dad struggling to make ends meet from the sugar cane harvest while waiting and praying for the drilling crews on the western end of the farm to find a natural gas strike. It is a story about his teammate, the catcher from Chicago, and his music teacher mother who detests that baseball is drawing her son away from law school and an escape from poverty. The book is chock full of late inning heroics by collegians trying to get noticed by the major league scouts who camp out in the summer on Cape Marlin (Cape Cod) claiming to work for a living charting players and clocking the speed of pitches. The innings and games move quickly through the book, never lingering too long to be dissected by baseball purists.I like Robinson's work. He doesn't overpower you with a fastball, but his "Slider" is good enough stuff to keep you reading and enjoying until the end.