"Mickey Mantle?" he says. "That can't be real. Your name is Mickey Mantle?"

We made it. The 2013 Major League Baseball season is right there in front of us, a vast expanse of fastballs and line drives, diving stops and crisp throws, attaboys and errors, beers and hot dogs.

She can hear the crowd humming through the speakers. The announcer is the same announcer she's heard all these years out west. She can never remember his name. In the mirror in front of her is her

            after A.E. Stallings

That his fingernails are immaculate, shaped
into thin arches of moon. That he files them
in the locker room before games, between innings in the

— Sunday, October 13th, 1974 –Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, CA

In the dugout, waiting to run.

The whole game memorizing the pale swirls in the concrete floor of the Dodgers’s visiting

Derek Cianfrance’s intense crime drama A Place Beyond The Pines affected me in a way that a movie hasn’t in a long time. Just like his previous film, Blue Valentine, I couldn’t stop thinking about

The thought of home was more than he could bear. The sunk-in feeling of his recliner, the smell of Linda’s pot roast, the weight of her body pressed up against his in the bedroom doorway -- all of

For the last couple of years, we've asked some of our favorite writers and contributors and known baseball fans to "predict the season," a kind of Hobart version to an expert's panel of predictions

Houston Astros: Chia-Jen Lo, P

Dang, it’s weird putting “Houston Astros” under “AL WEST.” That poor team. At least they got to face the Cubs all the time last year; now they have to play

I’ve resolved this baseball season to watch every game played by my favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies, and to send periodic dispatches to our faithful editors here at Hobart.

This

To me, he was just Casey. The math teacher at the local high school. I went to school and played ball with his son, Patrick, since grade school. Even went to their house every May for a birthday

Jose Canseco was listening to a county music song on his portable cassette player. It was ninety-seven degrees on the public golf course. He took out a cigarette. The country music song inside his

McNamara wanted off the island, a phrase he loved because it was stolen. Dominicans always said you couldn’t walk off the island; you had to hit. And even though McNamara grew up a pitcher in

For the last couple of years, we've asked some of our favorite writers and contributors and known baseball fans to "predict the season," a kind of Hobart version to an expert's panel of predictions

Chicago White Sox: Jared Mitchell, OF

Jared, who was drafted by the Twins out of high school and turned them down to play baseball and football at LSU, was a backup wide receiver on the

Richard Arndt was working grounds at the ballpark when he caught the great Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’s last home run, number 755. This was in Atlanta.

Right away he told the men sure, of course he’d

If you were really as good at baseball as you remember, why do you keep having that dream where you’re in right field and the ball is flying toward your face and you’re trying to put on your glove

Baltimore Orioles: Dylan Bundy, P

Dylan takes his diet seriously. He ate grilled chicken, rice, and green beans every day of the offseason. The first purchase he made with his $4 million

For the last couple of years, we've asked some of our favorite writers and contributors and known baseball fans to "predict the season," a kind of Hobart version to an expert's panel of predictions

For the last couple of years, we've asked some of our favorite writers and contributors and known baseball fans to "predict the season," a kind of Hobart version to an expert's panel of predictions

In a roadside gas station along Highway 21, in the Missouri Ozarks, I scan the beer cooler. Less than 100 miles south of St. Louis, AB-InBev products dominate my view. The red and white

How're you gonna live, she said, if you don't immerse?

Barb Johnson worked as a carpenter in New Orleans for more than 20 years before entering the MFA program at the University of New Orleans. While in the writing program, she won a grant from the

Inside, in the unforeseen, where the sounds of dust susurrus, we glimpse rainbowed light above the shadows. Will we ever reach there, we ask?

Wonders I. Wonders we.

Will and I decided to make "Y" shaped slingshot frames and drape an earthworm between the two of them.

Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is like every good girl’s fantasy of being bad turned on its head and twisted into her biggest nightmare. Faith (Selena Gomez) has been friends with Candy (Vanessa