More than a Game »

During one magical summer three dreams come together and baseball becomes More Than a Game. Brian McBride leads the league in stolen bases and the Hens to a pennant stretch drive, but he cannot run away from the lingering image of his grandfather on his deathbed. More Than a Game is a story of family, a young man's struggle to find his destiny, and the bond baseball spins betweens fathers and sons.

—l;Toledo Blade Toledo Alumni Magazine-Fall 2004 - Dennis Bova

Vision. In sports, it's said the great ones have it. The hockey player who can see plays forming. The quarterback who can see what the defense is planning. The batter who can see the seams of a baseball as it approaches at 90-plus miles an hour.

            The baseball example is at the heart of More Than a Game (Swan Creek Press) by UT alum Terence O'Leary (A/S '72). The story is set in present-day Toledo, but as the title suggests, at issue is more than baseball. It's cancer. And the vision is more than seeing a baseball. It's a vision of how to use technology to fight the disease. In this case, the vision, both of baseball and medicine, belongs to Brian McBride, a graduating senior who is the star of his high school team. He is torn between playing baseball professionally and going to a university to study nanotechnology. Pulling him are his father, Kevin, a failed minor-leaguer who lives through his son, and his mother, Karen, who was denied college and also lives that dream through Brian.

            The focus of their attention, through, is Marty, Brian's grandfather, who is dying of cancer. The reader meets Marty in the prologue, set at the battle of the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War. Amid the carnage, Marty finds solace in a baseball mitt because it reminds him of home.

            In an unlikely turn, Brian jumps right from high school to a top minor-league team modeled after the Toledo Mud Hens. He has decided on college, but in a concession to his father, agrees to play baseball over the summer. As the summer unfolds, events pull him back and forth from his decision.

            O'Leary develops these and secondary characters so well that the reader cares about what happens to them. The crisp writing style, the story development, the richness of the characters and the outcome combine to make the reader feel good, that the time spent reading the novel was worthwhile. In that sense, More Than a Game is more than a book.