Slider T [Paperback]

Patrick Robinson is known for his Submarine books, including 'The Shark Mutiny' and 'HMS Unseen' and I presumed that 'Slider' would be another of these. However I was rather surprised to discover it's actually a novel about baseball. Being English I know almost nothing about Baseball except that it evolved from our game Rounders and that it's hugely popular in America. I decided to read the book and see if there was enough of a story in the pages to overcome the fact that I'm not a Baseball fan.

The answer was yes, with some reservations. Firstly I found that it wasn't always easy to work out what was going on. For someone who hasn't grown up in a Baseball environment there are a lot of things about the game that are difficult to get a handle on. There were vast amounts of names of former baseball players in this story which of course meant nothing to me. The cast of characters is necessarily very wide but there is also continual reference to the Baseball 'greats' of former years - I imagine baseball fans would know these but the average reader possibly not. It was often hard to keep track of who was who whilst following the story. I also found Patrick Robinson's penchant for making political and tub-thumpingly nationalistic comments throughout his writing as annoying as ever.

The story follows Jack Faber who is accepted to Seapuit baseball camp for 10 weeks of the summer, along with Tony Garcia, as they hope to attract the scouts for the main teams whilst they play there. Jack's father has brought him up with his love of the game and is hugely supportive of his son; Tony's mother Natalie wants Tony to get a law degree and sees baseball as a dangerous distraction from his studies and one that might cost the family dearly financially. I found myself rather siding with Tony's mum originally - the whole concept of a baseball scholarship to a university is alien to Brits (our scholarships are only ever academic) and the importance placed on the game by all the people around them seemed rather overmuch. However, comparing this with football in the UK, I could see the similarities and how it could become so all-encompassing.

The novel is in three sections, the first being the initial summer camp at Seapuit, the second section being the return to Seapuit (after Jack has lost his pitching abilities) and the third section a pure fantasy on behalf of the author where the Seawolves (the Seapuit team) play against one of the major teams. The second half of the book also had another fantasy element where Jack's father becomes suddenly rich and the worries of the first half of the book, when they had no money, are all over. This felt rather like cheating to me, story-wise, as the amount of money Ben Faber received was so enormous.

There's a thread throughout the novel of Ben and Natalie's romance, a plot element about Jack losing his ability to pitch, but most of the actual story is describing different games that the Seawolves play, often in intricate detail. The dialogue between the Coach and his team and the young men themselves often felt very stilted and unrealistic to me and the characters themselves seemed rather cardboard cut-out to me. However, despite all this, and despite the huge amount of baseball in this book, I did enjoy reading it. I felt the ending was far too unrealistic and pure wish-fulfilment for the author but it was a reasonable read, even for someone who knows nothing about baseball (although who now knows a great deal more!) Whether this book lives up to the hype on its cover, "you won't read a better novel about baseball. Ever." is debatable, whether its portrayal of the game is accurate and realistic has been challenged, but it's still a reasonable read.