Marty Coggins was just an oversized small-town boy from New Mexico who wanted to play in the big leagues. Trouble was, Marty was a terrible defensive player. And he'd been drafted by a National League club. No future for lousy fielders in the NL. But Marty could flat-out hit. Nothing to do but keep on keeping on.
Size: 212 KB (41,227 words)
Genre: Romantic
Sex Contents: Some Sex
Tags: Ma/Fa, Consensual, Romantic, Heterosexual, Fiction, Sports, Oral Sex, Slow, Nudism
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 #18, 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.
Though I should hedge that “means little,” as this actually is the last (or at least most recent) installment in the series, posted after a several-year gap. There are a lot of parallels to an earlier story, “Ted Who?,” with both stories featuring rising players who can hit but aren’t great at fielding. They both also have narrators it took me a while to warm to, and who needed a foil in the person of a romantic interest strong enough to stand up to them to get me to really engage with the story.
So is this a retread? No — the tales are sufficiently different, with both couples having to overcome different obstacles, both internal and external, to their relationship. The author is using similar elements as part of another story. Overall, in fact, I like this one more than “Ted Who?”, in part because Marty’s not quite as off-putting, and Peggy’s a little bit stronger, than their counterparts.
So, yeah, if you come for the sweet and spicy romance, you won’t be disappointed. OTOH, if you come for scenes at the titty bar where Peggy works, well, there’s only one of those, so make of that what you will. (But it’s a good one, so you’ll want to become a Premier member of SOL so you can read this Premium story. Support this site!)
Review by Mark Story [other reviews by Mark Story]
Reviewed:
I was so happy to see Tony Stevens return to writing at SOL after a long, long absence. His "Take me out to the Ballgame" series is one of my favorites, and I'm not even much of a baseball fan.
But Tony has a gift for making the trials and tribulations of minor- and major-leaguers (and the people they meet) seem so vibrant and real. The slog of traveling all over the US to play minor-league ball in small towns is so well-described, I feel like I've experienced it.
Many of the stories in this series describe "unconventional" relationships between a ballplayer and a female companion. Might be an age difference, might be a racial difference, might be some other set of unique circumstances. In "Stonefingers," the point of conflict is the woman's job, and also some things that have happened to her in the past.
I won't spoil the ending; I'll just say that it felt a little rushed, a little too much like "well, let's wrap this story up, one conversation, now everything's fine." But that's a minor nitpick, and everything leading up to the final two chapters was brilliantly written, the story developed quite well.
I hope Tony's return to SOL is a permanent one, and I hope to see more stories in the "Ballgame" series. One really nice thing is that the characters from previous installments tend to make guest appearances in Tony's newer stories; so you get a little "follow up" on old favorite characters.
Very well written from a technical standpoint, few (if any) typos, grammatical errors, or continuity problems.
Review by manddscott [other reviews by manddscott]
Reviewed:
A ball player who can hit but can't seem to play defense finds love in an unusual place. His love interest is also an unusual woman with some serious issues of abandonment. This story tells the tale of their journey through it all.
For plot, I give this an A+ (9), mainly because the author does a very good job filling in the back story of each of the main characters.
For technical quality, another A+ (9). I believe there are only a handful errors left after the last batch of revisions by the author (and yes, I went back to check on them).
For appeal score, I give it an A (8). The interaction between the different characters is good, even though the MC takes a different approach to solving his love interest's separation issues. I would have liked to see a little more development after the author chose to end it, but that is my personal preference. Even a short epilogue would help answer a lot. Did they make it? How long did his elevation last? A short epilogue, possibly dated 20 years further down the road, would answer these questions.
