In Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, Brooke Horvath and Tim
Wiles wrote in their introduction, "We have attempted to organize the
poems gathered here into five parts, the first four of which sketch a rough
trajectory from youth through old age to death...Yet because this is baseball
and there is always next year, part five pushes past the defeat inherent
in both poetic and athletic striving to allow spring-that season of renewal-to
come around again."
The two editors read "4,000 or so poems" then
agreed upon the final set before organizing them into Line Drives. Their
final selections are spectacular, the organization is perfect, and we believe
it is the best collection of baseball poems ever assembled. Line Drives
is so good that non-poetry lovers who pick it up will find that it remained
in their hands until the final verse was read!
