Josh Brennan couldn't hit for power, and he wasn't much of an infielder, either. But he was out to make folks remember his name. He was going to hit .400 in the Big Leagues.
Size: 180 KB (33,856 words)
Genre: Fiction
Sex Contents: No Sex
Tags: Ma/Fa, Consensual, Romantic, Heterosexual
Review by Quasirandom [other reviews by Quasirandom]
Reviewed:
Disclaimer: I don’t like baseball, but I do enjoy Tony Stevens’ baseball stories. (Mitsuru Adachi is the only other comparable author I’ve met.) His ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ series is Great Stuff, being sweet and sexy romances with young adults where it just so happens at least one partner is involved with the game.
This story is installment #5, but that number means little — the series has a shadow of an overall arc, but each story stands alone and can be read in any order. You can also read it knowing little (like I do) to nothing about baseball — the sport is important in the story only because it’s important to the characters, and the emotional significance of sportsball events is always made clear.
As for this one, Josh is a horrible fielder but he sure can hit the ball, not for power in his case, but he can get on base better than anyone else. Literally — his on-base average is the best in the league, his rookie year, and potentially on track to set a modern-era record (set by a Ted, thus the title). Until he’s hit in the face by a fastball, after which he keeps flinching,and given this is his only real skill this is a problem. In a last-ditch effort to get his batting mojo back, he turns to the non-professional therapeutic efforts of Sandy, an (of course) attractive young woman who writes internet advice columns.
Funny thing is, her therapy works. So does their resulting romance.
That said, this isn’t my favorite — Josh is not the most appealing narrator. The story is carried instead by Sandy being a worthy foil, and it sparkles when they spark together — but when Josh is alone or she lets him walk over her, it doesn’t. The main tension revolves around superstitious behavior, and while I expected to be interested in exploring this side of professional athletics (baseball apparently being particularly known for it), the exploration was very surface, not enough to really engage me.
Oh, and one final note: this story is Premium, which makes it one more reason to support this site by getting a Premier membership so you can read it yourself.
