The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories

Since earning his PhD from the University of Waterloo in 1992, Andrew Thomson has taught Canadian history at several universities, most often at Wilfrid Laurier University. For the past 16 years, he has created and taught a wide range of Canadian history courses from the history of French Canada to Canadian business history. Dr. Thomson has written for The Dictionary of Canadian Biography and been a guest lecturer at Kitchener Public Library’s Ideas and Issues series. He has recently been an active instructor in the Lifelong Learning program at Wilfrid Laurier. Dr. Thomson is also the Academic Reviewer for the Business History section of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada and also works with the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies at Wilfrid Laurier.

W.P. Kinsella has developed a reputation for quirky, entertaining
baseball stories. At their best (as in Shoeless Joe, the novel that
launched Kinsella), the stories sparkle with wit and baseball knowledge.
Although Kinsella does not always reach that standard in this
collection, several of its nine stories are strong entries in the field
of baseball fiction.

The title story—classic Kinsella—concerns a young ball player who
is trapped in a strange but wonderful league that changes his life. The
best story, “The Darkness Deep Inside,” explores the inner pain of a
hard-living baseball star who—to the bemusement of family, friends,
and fellow players—turns to Jesus. The worst stories are those, like
“The Baseball Wolf,” that are little more than sketchy outlines of a
good idea. At their best, the stories in The Dixon Cornbelt League
combine strong characters and important situations in a way that makes
the collection more than a baseball book.