0 
It’s 11:00 p.m. and I’m watching a baseball game between my beloved Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. This is my 41st season as a Red Sox fan (see prior blog posts for my current age), and this is by far the most dismal season they’ve turned in during that span. 2012, the 100th birthday of Fenway Park, has been a year Red Sox fans will forget just as soon as they can.
While the Sox and the Yanks are tied 3-3 in the 12th inning as I write this, the game is only commanding part of my attention. It’s got me thinking about sports as they appear in fiction, particularly speculative fiction. Speculative fiction, by nature, places its focus on the future, not the present day (urban fantasy being a possible exception.) Consequently, I can only think of a handful of spec fic books or series with a sports setting:
- Scott Sigler’s Galactic Football League series: The Rookie, The Starter, The All-Pro and The MVP.
- Tee Morris’s The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery.
- J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the first six of which had terrific scenes featuring the sport of quidditch. The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, showcased the Quidditch World Cup.
Those are the only ones I can think of at the moment. Why not any stories with soccer, hockey, hoops or lacrosse? Tennis or golf? Surely our descendants will be as masochistic as we are and will continue to play golf. Or what about the 25th century version of the Olympics?
I love sports and have always been a total spaz at them. Nevertheless, I have an urge to write some sports-centered spec fic stories or even a novel. I’ll get back to you on how that goes.
In the mean time, can any of you add to my list? What titles have I not thought of?
PS The Yankees just won the game in the bottom of the 12th. GROWL.
Well, I’m not sure this counts, but you know that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had quite a few baseball themes on the show, but there was one book of fiction that mentioned it, though I can’t remember it off the top of my head. That’s about the best I have right now. lol
I’d forgotten about the baseball talk in Deep Space Nine.