Finding his dreams of playing professional baseball on the rocks, the author of The Shattered Slugger and Other Stories switched course from playing to writing about baseball. Chen Shang-Chi’s eight baseball-themed stories in this book touch on the beauty and warmth that thrive both despite and because of life’s imperfections.

Chen Shang-Chi’s dream since childhood of a career in major league baseball is scuttled by an onset of the yips and injuries suffered while at university. Hoping to turn lemons into lemonade, he explores other career opportunities that will still keep him “in the game”. The short story collection The Shattered Slugger and Other Stories, Chen’s maiden literary effort, revolves around the joys, sorrows, discouragements, and hope wrapped up in this sport off the diamond.

Protagonists in the five short stories set in Taiwan include a retired ball player who in his retirement handmakes furniture from broken baseball bats; a cash-strapped trainer who dreams of training kids to play ball; a man who in dedicating his life to the game loses his mother, wife and child in the process; two Americans who leave their minor league careers for better money as pro ball players in Taiwan; and the last remaining employee of a Taiwan-based baseball glove manufacturer. Of the three stories set outside of Taiwan, one narrates the experiences of a Taiwanese serving in the Japanese Army during the Pacific War, one follows the spiritual journey of the son of a professional MLB player, and the last weaves a sad tale centered around a Taiwanese who left home and country for the United States, where he ends up playing the mascot for an MLB team. These stories and their characters shed light on the game of baseball beyond the floodlights and on the everyday lives and turmoils of those in baseball’s orbit.

None who have played the game have not tasted the bitter flavors of defeat. In the playing fields conjured up in The Shattered Slugger and Other Stories, Chen, rather than explaining his protagonists’ regrets away, shows how they have learned to accept and coexist with them. This, after all, may be this former-ball-player-turned-author’s greatest gift to his readers.