Ron Collins is a bestselling Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy author who writes across the spectrum of speculative fiction. With his daughter, Brigid, he edited the anthology Face the Strange.

His short fiction has received a Writers of the Future prize. His short story "The White Game" was nominated for the Short Mystery Fiction Society's 2016 Derringer Award. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and has worked to develop avionics systems, electronics, and information technology before chucking it all to write full-time.

For the Heart of the Game by Ron Collins

For the Heart of the Game

An Epic Baseball Battle Through Space and Time

Thread-worn sportswriter Casey Neal has seen things that would make a quantum physicist reach for the whiskey bottle. He's crossed timelines, faced down crime lords, and saved baseball more times than his therapist will ever know. But when his old friend Don-o drags him through a wormhole into a world where baseball's stats are disappearing and managers are vanishing without a trace, Casey finds himself chasing something bigger than any story he's ever written.

Someone is stealing the heart of the game itself.

From neon-lit sports bars of 2061 to the ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field in 1961, Casey, Don-o, and Denise, the sharp-witted waitress, must unravel a conspiracy that threatens not just one league, but every version of baseball across space and time.

Because without the game, nothing else matters.

CURATOR'S NOTE

I ask you: What is a time travel StoryBundle without a book about baseball. Insufficient, that's what. America's national pastime has a timelessness to it that makes it ripe for time travel and alternate history tales. Ron's love of the game shines here, as does his scientific mind and comes up with a baseball battle for the ages. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "Ron Collins is one of our best hard science fiction writers"

    – Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Author of QUANTUM NIGHT
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Top of the First

6:13 PM, March 26, 2031

North Kenyon High School

My fingers twitched in their familiar way, but came up empty. I glanced around, hoping no one had seen me clicking a recorder that wasn't there. Six weeks in, and I was already finding it hard to watch a game without recording anything.

I was in the clear, though.

No one looked my way except maybe the lady on the bleacher, a soft toss below mine, who I fully admit was attractive enough I'd already scoped she wasn't wearing a ring. I'd caught her glancing my way earlier, which was nice. She was about my age. Maybe thirty-five. From exclamations she'd given earlier, her kid played shortstop for North Kenyon—the home club. Otherwise, the bleachers were a quarter full at best, mostly families and friends of kids on the field, every one of them pretty much ignoring me.

"Idiot," I grumbled about myself.

It is my lot to be self-centered, even when no one cares.

Or especially when no one cares, as pretty much every woman I've dated over the past decade or so would say, anyway.

They aren't wrong.

I'm Casey Neal, after all. Intrepid baseball hack. Man without a home.

I've seen things, as the guy in the rain says on the grainy vids.

I was sitting on the home bleachers along the first base line. The plank was solid and clean, probably painted before the season began. The night was warm for March, even in Boca Raton. Maybe eighty degrees.

Staying incognito, I'd ditched my professionals and was wearing a pair of worn jeans and my oldest Duluth Warriors T-shirt, which had only one slightly obvious hole and was still mostly green. It was my favorite shirt even after all these years. The shoes were scuffed loafers, professional enough for spring training but comfy enough to play casual. I didn't want anyone clocking the Baseball Now, Inc. logo on my jacket, so I'd folded it over the bench.

Covering spring training always sounded more romantic in January than it turned out to be in March, you know? There are only so many ways to quote a dumbass player who rambles on about how, "I'm here to do my best for my teammates," and that "you can never tell what's going to happen. We just need to have fun and let the season play out."

That's the freaking job, though.

Insert saucy quip about making sausage here.

It beats a few other things I could be doing. I mean, I could always pimp-out on the networks. At least I'd get paid for the travel.

I'd rather vomit battery acid than be a network hack, though.

Being a writer means there's only so much work to go around, though. So, I've always done what I needed to do, written what I needed to write to keep food on my table, and worked on my own stuff on the side. Writing for the corporate grinder is bad for the soul, though. So, it's constant travel, weird diets, and too much to drink for me. It sucks to be alone, but that's the gig. You make your choices and take the damage.

So, six straight weeks of mainlining platitudes about the struggle of multimillionaire baseball players had me considering using the melon ballers at the hotel's evening buffet to gauge my brain out. Needing something better than what I'd been stewing in, something to recharge the batteries, as it were, I'd come to this slice of Florida to watch high schoolers play the game.

Because I do love baseball.

The game itself, I mean.

I love the whole point of it. The challenge in it.

I love the way baseball builds tension slowly and almost without effort, until there's this thing that happens and you just go crazy. I love it. Everything about it. Thinking about it, watching it, reporting on it. I love sitting in the stands and feeling the crowd. The dances between innings. Betting a beer with Don-o on which LED bull is going to win the jumbotron race in the middle of the third.

I drew a breath at the image of Don-o that flashed through my mind.

I'd been busy, so it had been a while since I'd thought of him. The big lug.

I saw him sitting in the passenger seat of the rusted-out Impala we'd dubbed "Annie" after the greatest baseball woman in the movies. Don-o was a true friend. A big blunderbuss when it came to most social situations. Bearded, Hawaiian-shirted, perpetually three days past a shave, but special in ways beyond most people's ability to understand.

Those were the days.

Baseball is the thing that's made me who I am. Better or worse.

Don-o is the guy I shared it with.

Tonight, though, the cash-driven world of professional sports had me down. My entire being yearned for something pure.