Description
“CIRCLING TOWARD HOME: Grassroots Baseball Prose, Meditations, and Images”
by Bill Meissner
$21.99, Full-length, paper
978-1-64662-684-7
2022
Circling Toward Home: Grassroots Baseball Prose, Meditations, and Images by Bill Meissner is a collection of 99 unique color photographs of small-town, amateur baseball fields accompanied by 63 short prose pieces. In recent years, Meissner has been taking photos of out-of-the-way baseball fields, and as his collection of photos grew, so did the idea of writing short prose pieces to accompany them. The result is this coffee-table style book, which is divided into five sections, including a focus on relationships (“Love and Baseball”) and a multicultural section featuring players and the rustic fields in the Latin leagues in Mexico (“In the Other Leagues”). The book portrays various nostalgic and poignant aspects of baseball, with characterizations of players—from young kids learning the game to 102-year-olds—and celebrations of baseball rituals. Even the fields themselves have their say, with the sometimes wise and Zen-like, sometimes comic voices of the backstop, a light pole, the scuff marks around home plate, and even the sky that hovers over a game. One piece in the final section (“An Elusive Kind of Light”) is a tribute to the great Hank Aaron, describing the racial prejudice he had to overcome as he rose to the Major Leagues. As the author writes in his introduction, “If you look at a well-used baseball, you’ll see that the scrapes and scuff marks resemble a map. I’ve followed that map for years, and during that time, the game of baseball has taken me on a kind of journey. What I began to understand is that baseball is a game which, in many ways, parallels human nature, with its aspirations and shortcomings, its disappointments and triumphs. The prose pieces, vignettes, and meditations in this book try to capture the essence of those moments.”
Meissner’s previous baseball story collection, Hitting into the Wind, was hailed as “A quiet masterpiece of baseball writing.” As they round the bases, these new pieces in Circling Toward Home will follow in those footsteps. Like a baseball’s cushioned cork core, the writings touch the heart as they become metaphors for our joys, our lives and our dreams.
Minnesota writer and teacher Bill Meissner grew up in Iowa and Wisconsin and has been a lifelong baseball enthusiast and/or player. In recent years, he’s been taking photos of the unique, nostalgic settings of small-town amateur baseball fields. As his collection of photos grew, so did the idea of writing short prose pieces to accompany them. The result is this coffee-table style book, which includes 99 color photos accompanied by 63 prose pieces. Meissner is the author of ten books, including three previous baseball-theme books: Hitting into the Wind, and Spirits in the Grass, a novel, for which he won the Midwest Book Award, and Light at the Edge of the Field, published by Stephen F. Austin University Press in 2021. His latest book of poetry is The Mapmaker’s Dream, from Finishing Line Press. He has written articles for the Minnesota Twins Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, and Baseball Cards Monthly, for which he interviewed such baseball stars as Nolan Ryan, Kirby Puckett, Ken Griffey Jr., Paul Molitor, Dave Winfield, and Don Mattingly. He lives with his wife, Christine, in St. Cloud, and plays occasionally with a pick-up group called The Catch and Release Baseball Club. His Facebook author page is https://www.facebook.com/wjmeissner
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