[Ty Johnston]

I'm not going to post a link here because I don't want to spam, but I recently blogged comparing baseball and fantasy fiction, specifically more action-oriented fantasy, epic fantasy, S&S, heroic fantasy, whatever you want to call it ...

I'm wondering if it was just me, or if others see a lot of similarities.

So, what do you think?

 

[Ty Johnston]

Ha! That's one comparison. 

 

[Guest]

Do you mean that both fantasy fiction and baseball have prominent characters that obviously used steroids?

A potion of Bull's Strength is not the same thing as steroids.

 

[Hudson Owen]

I'd put it this way: Sports writers, in their columns and fiction--at least the older writers of yesteryear--bring the language of the epic into their writing.  They've read those books, you see.  It's good clean writing, aligning language and deed, placing the hero in the chariot on the ringing plains of Troy.  Until, as noted, the hero show his weak side and the praise of the gods peters out in a minor key.  It keeps a man young, longer than he has a right to be.  Baseball is a summer game, time to brush back a decade or two, step out onto that immortal sunny field and roll the ball around your fingers.  Curve or fastball?  Yeah.  I remember that.