Battle Creek

""Cigarettes and baseball. These are not unusual vices,"" thinks one of the middle American, late middle-aged characters in Lasser's powerful novel of thwarted lives. A bleak metaphor for middle-class dreams, the story imagines the defining effect one season of amateur baseball imposes upon the lives of a small group of players and their women. Now 60, Gil Davison gave up a promising baseball future three decades ago to placate his autocratic father, who considered his athletic achievements a waste of time. By way of vicarious engagement, and beginning with his own two sons, over the past 30 years Gil has become a coaching legend around the baseball fields of suburban Detroit. His star pitcher, 34-year-old stockbroker Ben Mercer, had two weeks in the big leagues with Baltimore. Nursing an arthritic elbow, the fastballing lady-killer has finally met a woman who is his match, and that's bad for his game. Vince Paklos, Gil's astute sidekick, had a meteoric month-long stint with a major league team. Chain-smoking his way through the final days of terminal emphysema, Vince needs money to keep his life insurance in force. Out on parole after serving five years for murder, at age 22 Luke James is a batting wonder who needs someone to find him a girl, pay his room and board and keep him out of jail. His team a perennial runner-up, idealistic Gil has always played by the rules in both life and ball, but he has never won the national championship held at Battle Creek. Luke's arrival comes at a critical time, and Gil's single-minded desire to earn the title becomes a matter of life or death when his 98-year-old father lies half-blind in a nursing home, sitting on money that's more than enough to make Gil's dream come true. First-time novelist Lasser's stark morality play is conveyed in undecorative prose. His language favors honesty over musicality but the narrative, with its poignant and disturbing insights into father-son relationships and its acceptance of the frailty of the human condition, is completely engrossing. Agent, Jennifer Walsh, Virginia Barber Agency. BOMC selection; film rights, Scott Rudin; author tour. (May)