This week we asked our writers to name their favorite fictional baseball player(s).
Here are their answers:
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Ed Botti - I Gotta go with Crash Davis of the Durham Bulls played by Kevin Costner. He was a veteran, smart and savvy catcher in the minor league. He was a terrific mentor for his younger teammates, especially pitchers.
The film succeeds at finding a way to capture both the optimism of a brilliant future and the reality and struggles of years in a team's minor league system.
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Paul Semendinger - If I can only pick one player, it would have to be Roy Hobbs. The Natural is one of my favorite movies of all-time. (It's not quite Rocky, but nothing is.)
Honorable mention goes to Charlie Brown and Sylvester Coddmyer from the wonderful book The Kid Who Only Hit Homers by Matt Christopher.
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Ethan Semendinger - Kazuo Uzuki. I know you never heard of him. This is a player pictured on a 2008 Topps baseball card that was part of a hoax.
You can read the story here: REMEMBER THE TIME TOPPS DID A LONG-PLAY APRIL FOOLS’ JOKE WITH KAZUO UZUKI?
Honorable Mention goes to Pablo Sanchez and Pete Wheeler of Backyard Baseball.
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Cary Greene - Mine would have to be Casey from Ernest Thayer's classic "Casey at the Bat." I remember reading it for the first time as a little kid and it always stuck with me but it just gets better with time.
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Honorable mention to Jack Keefe and Frank X. Farrell ("Alibi Ike"), creations of Ring Lardner Sr. nearly 110 years ago. I think Lardner's stories are among the first time baseball turned up in popular fiction.
And Paul, I hope you have read or will read The Natural. It's a very different book from the film, and a much more profound story.
Big Dottie Hinson
Sidd Finch