Saving Babe Ruth: A Novel Based on a True Story

Set in 2009, Swyers’s polemical tale of corporate greed and civic apathy pits David Thompson, an Indigo Valley, N.Y., lawyer, Civil War buff, and commissioner of the town’s Babe Ruth baseball program, against Rob Barkus, the promoter of the rival Elite Travel Baseball League. Barkus’s program has siphoned players from the Babe Ruth league to the point that Indigo Valley could lose the charter it has held since 1957. Thompson’s hole card is the league’s gem of a ball field, which he oversees and which Barkus wants for his players, who use two other inferior fields. Thompson must contend with thinly veiled threats and an email campaign waged by Barkus, as well as pressure from school officials, parents, and his own board members. Thompson’s allies include his wife and son, who’s an eighth-grade ballplayer. Readers should be prepared for frequent, often labored, Civil War analogies—and characters who are either really bad or really good. [em](BookLife) [/em]