Terence O'Leary

Originally posted on Read Handed.

More Than a Game by Terence O'Leary is about an eighteen year old named Brian struggling to choose between his two passions: baseball and nanotechnology. His father, Kevin, wants nothing more (or less) for his son than to become a professional baseball player. Kevin scouts the scouts and assumes Brian will attend college on a baseball scholarship. Brian, on the other hand, wants to study nanotechnology at UW, the school with the best program, undergraduate and graduate, in the field. UW awards him a full scholarship, but Brian doesn't want to disappoint his father. Brian loves baseball, but it is "just a game" and he aspires to more: a career developing nanotechnology that can be applied in medicine to save the lives of people, like his grandfather, with cancer.

Brian ends up choosing UW, and Kevin is furious. In an effort to tip the scales back in his favor, Kevin talks to the manager of "the Hens", a local minor league baseball team that just so happens to need a second baseman. Brian is a very good baseball player. He can

"see the the stitches on the ball spinning... If you can see the rotations, you'll know where the ball will go, whether it's going to curve, or slide or drop... I know where the ball is going... that's why I can hit it" (pg. 23).

He also routinely steals bases and jumps impressively high to make unbelievable catches. The Hens are immediately impressed. They offer him a starting slot, and Brian takes it as a "summer job" and a chance to play more baseball. Kevin, of course, hopes that the position will lead to a call-up and entice Brian to stay with baseball instead of going to college.

The summer brings challenges, adventure, heartache, and love to Brian and his family. The story has a lot of heart, but the novel is clearly the effort of an amateur writer. Though officially fiction, the book had me wondering whether the story was based on true events. O'Leary includes details that I found unnecessary to the storyline, but that someone remembering the events might deem personally significant: vague descriptions of Brian's rendezvous in the woods with his girlfriend, the story of Brian's uncle who was killed while driving drunk on the way home from an Ohio State football game, a has-been major leaguer whose nefarious plans to discredit Brian never come to fruition.

And then there are the editorial mistakes. If only I had had a red pen by my side as I read this book! I often had to read sentences several times to understand what they were saying. For example:

"One of the biggest players on the team, Will went running after a ball that scooted past his mitt, and slipped sending him feet first into a mud slick" (pg. 103).

And it's not just commas. A lot of the sentences are awkwardly constructed. The narration moves from third person omniscient to the first person thoughts of a specific character without any supporting punctuation:

"As Kevin stood by Mitch and surveyed the baseball field he couldn't help think, how many times have I stood in this dugout in this same situation?" (pg. 144).

And yelling is in all caps:

"'They're the best team St. Pat's ever fielded. It can't end like this.' Kevin slammed his hand down on the seat. 'IT'S NOT RIGHT!!'" (pg. 51).

"He screamed, 'YESSSSS! YESSSSS!' He punched the air with his fist. 'BRIAN!'" (pg. 266).

O'Leary shared that a writer he knew "read an early draft of More Than a Game and convinced [him] that [he] didn’t have a novel but the seeds of one". Personally, I think it's still just seeds. Maybe a few more drafts with the help of a skilled editor would have helped.

More Than a Game is a quick read. The story is uplifting. It would make a good Disney made-for-TV movie (as was the author's original intent, apparently). Especially since on the screen, the audience wouldn't have to deal with sub-par writing and sloppy editing. But as a book, I just can't recommend it.… (mere)