It's 1963 in suburban Minneapolis, when 7-year-old George (later Wayne) Johnson meets Artie, who lets George fly his dog. Thus begins a decade-long, on-and-off friendship and coming-of-age odyssey that will shape both boys' futures and test their character, loyalty, humor, and wits. This is not, however, the land of June and Ward Cleaver, and we are drawn into a parallel world unimagined by the boys' mainstream parents and peers, a world sometimes hilarious (the "duel" between Artie's dog and a casserole), sometimes nostalgic (balsa-wood model planes and Playboy centerfolds), occasionally perilous, and often illegal (setting off a stash of illicit fireworks deep inside the Minneapolis Convention Center). On the surface there is little-league and scouting, romance and school, hobbies and jobs. But hidden from the adult world are the life-endangering stunts, the relentless torment of a pathological bully leading George to develop a series of home-made (and increasingly dangerous) defensive weapons, and the fleeting moral disdain for marijuana which soon gives way to an entrepreneurial and connoisseurial obsession when the plant is found growing in abundance nearby. In turns tender, humorous, hair-raising and heartwarming, Baseball Diaries is a bitter-sweet and fascinating look at a pivotal time in a young man's life and a magical time in America when baseball seemed simple and pure.
About the Author: Wayne Johnson is the author of five critically-acclaimed novels: The Snake Game (Knopf), Don't Think Twice (Crown/Harmony), Six Crooked Highways (Crown/Harmony), and The Devil You Know (Shaye Areheart Books). Under the pseudonym Albertine Strong, Johnson published Deluge (Crown/Harmony). Among Johnson's public accolades have been a listing as a London Times bestseller for The Snake Game; three Pulitzer nominations (for Deluge, Don't Think Twice, and The Devil You Know); New York Times Notable Book citations (for Deluge and Don't Think Twice); inclusion in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Series (for Deluge); recognition as a Minnesota Book Award Finalist (for Six Crooked Highways); recognition as a Great Lakes Book Association Finalist (for Deluge); and a Kansas City Star Book of the Year citation (for Six Crooked Highways). Johnson has garnered excellent reviews (in addition to those from NYT) from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post, ALA, Booklist, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, and other journals. He has been a Chesterfield Writers' Film Project Fellow in Hollywood and has received recognition from the Sundance Film Festival for his screenplays. His first non-fiction title, White Heat: the Extreme Skiing Life, was published by Atria in December 2007 and sold 10,000 copies in the first month. The paperback edition of White Heat was released in 2008, and the book has recently come out with Simon & Schuster UK and Pocket Books. Live to Ride, a non-fiction work on motorcycles, was published in hardback Simon & Schuster, June 2010, and in paperback 2011 to broad critical acclaim. Johnson grew up in the Twin Cities and studied microbiology at the University of Minnesota before discovering the pleasures of hang gliding near Bozeman, Montana, where he finished his undergraduate degrees in English and Philosophy. A Teaching-Writing Fellow of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Johnson lives and skis in Utah, where he does emergency outdoor medical rescue for the Park City Ski Patrol. He is a long-time faculty member of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City.