SQUEEZE PLAY

Baseball is back in Washington--at least, it is fictionally--in Leavy's uproarious and surprisingly touching novel about the Senators' resurrection as a Major League--sort of--club. In their woeful inaugural season of 1989, they are covered by Ariandne Bloom (A.B.) Berkowitz, a young sportswriter who, in the course of a summer, tries to square her idyllic childhood illusions about baseball with the clownish, raunchy, unheroic version she confronts in real life. Anna Fields voices a sassy, plucky heroine full of moxie and good intentions. Fields is also mainly--though not universally--convincing with the cavalcade of oddballs, lowlifes, and boobs who occupy both locker room and the newsroom in Leavy's rollicking satire. M.O. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 04]