The Comebacker

Lionel Vratimos is a beat reporter covering the San Francisco Giants -- an enviable job if not for the soggy fries, and the so-so weather, and the Giants’ losing record, and the shoe Lionel paid a Romanian shoemaker re-sole but which now squeaks with every footfall. His colleagues are even more dissatisfied, mired in statistics and myopia and complaints about a certain elevator that is really too slow. One day, though, a new pitcher, Nathan Couture, is brought up from the minor leagues; he’s tall and lanky and talks like no one they’ve ever covered. Even more startling is Nathan’s actual interest in the words Lionel writes, and his rare, even unprecedented, ability to see the beauty in the game he’s paid to play. This short story, the fourth in The Forgetters series, finds Eggers at his most comic and lyrical.

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including The Every, The Circle, Museum of Rain, The Monk of Mokha, and the National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King, as well as numerous books for young readers, including Her Right Foot, Faraway Things, and The Lifters. He is the founder of the independent publishing company McSweeney’s and the college-access nonprofit ScholarMatch, and the co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired dozens of other centers worldwide. He is the winner of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.