If I Never Get Back

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If I Never Get Back is Darryl Brock’s 1990 debut novel. A modern-day San Francisco journalist named Sam Fowler steps off an Amtrak train and ends up in Cincinnati in 1869. He joins the Cincinnati Red Stockings, meets Mark Twain, and falls in love with a woman of the time. The title comes from a line in the baseball song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The New York Times praised its charm, and the Los Angeles Times called it the wildest and most satisfying yarn since Shoeless Joe. The book’s detailed look at 19th-century baseball rules helped inspire many Vintage Base Ball clubs across the United States. Brock says these clubs invite him to conventions because his book makes people feel like they can go back in time. A sequel, Two in the Field, was published in 2002, with Sam Fowler traveling back again to 1875.