Bliss, Blasphemy & Bizarre Nights at the Ballpark

A barefoot pitcher, a chimpanzee chasing players around the diamond, a missing mascot head and much, much more.

Minor league baseball really does have it all and Tim Hagerty knows that better than most people.

We chat with the author of “Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational & Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball” about some of the connections in his book to Alberta.

Kinsella at the Bat

Long before author William Patrick Kinsella ever dreamt about baseball in Iowa cornfields, he was a stimulus-starved child growing up in rural Alberta. What he lacked in local events and community activities as a homeschooled farm kid near Darwell – 75 kilometres northwest of Edmonton – Kinsella made up for using his imagination.

That creativity served him well as a writer, as William Steele notes in his new biography, Going the Distance: The Life and Works of W.P. Kinsella. The book provides a comprehensive look at the man made famous for his 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, which was the basis of the seminal baseball movie Field of Dreams.

Here is an excerpt from Going the Distance …