{"product_id":"2940012847867","title":"\"Almost Perfect\"","description":"“Almost Perfect” is a baseball story. It was written at the invitation of Otto Penzler, who wanted it for an anthology—but he didn’t get to publish it. Alice K. Turner, as incisive a reader as I’ve ever known, was Playboy’s Fiction Editor at the time, and I always gave her first look at anything I wrote. She snapped it up, and I had to choose between disappointing Otto and missing out on a sale to Playboy. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTalk about your no–brainers. The story appeared in Playboy, and in due course I tucked it into my omnibus collection, Enough Rope.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy own favorite baseball stories are all novels.  Bernard Malamud’s The Natural is a critical favorite, and justly so, but there are four other books  I like even better.  Three are by Mark Harris—The Southpaw and its two sequels, Bang the Drum Slowly and A Ticket For a Seamstitch. (Harris wrote a fourth novel about the same character toward the end of his life, and it can be charitably described as disappointing.) And Charles Einstein’s The Only Game in Town is a book I’ve reread several times, with undiminishing enjoyment.  Malamud’s novel’s in print; the others are not, but once can find them readily and reasonably in the aftermarket.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBack to Otto.  He was disheartened when he heard I wasn’t going to be able to give him a story after all.  “So write another story,” he said.  “There’s plenty of time. A baseball story, with a crime in it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut, I said, I didn’t have an idea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA pause. “Well,” he said gently, “that’s never stopped you in the past…”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo when his anthology, Murderer’s Row,  appeared, it contained a story of mine called “Keller’s Designated Hitter.” But that’s another story…","brand":"Lawrence Block","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47069617553648,"sku":"2940012847867","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012847867_p0.jpg?v=1763573375","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012847867","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}