The Man Who Once Played Catch with Nellie Fox »

At forty, Hank has decided he's through with baseball -- a routine popup fell on his head and he got the message. Trouble is, baseball is the one thing that's given any meaning to his life. Still, he tries to look on the bright side......

This, then, is the painfully funny story of a many who decides to get a life, but isn't sure how. It's about fathers and sons, heroes and whiners, the wheel of fortune (and Vanna White), baseball and the decline of Western civilization -- and why Nellie Fox always spat in his glove.

Baseball enthusiasts and lovers of good writing will find Nellie Fox a warmly satisfying read, combining humor and poignancy in a novel which strongly captures one of man's uniquely American angst about baseball as a Way of Life.

Publishers Weekly

After chasing his dreams around the minor leagues for years, Hank Lingerman, the aptly named, 40-year-old Chicagoan hero of this winsome, workaday novel, has wound up working in the Sunoco Station his father once owned and living on canned soup and tuna. He also plays for a grocery store-sponsored adult league team. Baseball, for Hank, is the only thing that defines him, but not in the philosophical or mystical sense. Rather, it is playing the game that he loves, actually being part of something that he always aspired to master. When a pop-up comes down and bops him on the head, Hank admits that his life has gone into a slump from which he may never recover. Taking up with Mary, a nose-ringed, teenage disco pick-up, Hank dumps his goodhearted, longtime girlfriend, gets into a fight at his favorite saloon, blows a big game and comes home to discover that Mary has stolen his TV and his Nellie Fox autograph. Things go downhill from there. This rambling account of the middle-aged crazies rarely rises above the mundane. Hank's menopausal angstwhich centers on his recollection of one moment of greatness, the day he met and had a brief catch with Foxhangs over the entire novel like a low-pressure system. Yet even these faults and a predictable ending can't detract from what, like the hapless Chicago Cubs, Manderino's (Sam and His Brother Len) characters possess: miles and miles of heart. (May)