She's on First
Fun, energetic, jam-packed with love and knowledge of baseball — these are just a few of the terms used to describe this coming-of-age novel about the first woman to play major league baseball. Buy now.
In a well-wrought book . . . Gregorich educates us painlessly about women's pro baseball. . . . Gregorich shines as a baseball writer. She knows the game intimately, the slang and what players really say out on the field, as well as the camaraderie and the conflicts inevitable to teams of people who spend their lives together. And she brings it all vividly to life.
— Sara Paretsky, Chicago Tribune
I think [it's] the best book that's written on that idea of the first woman to play professional baseball. There's probably ten that have the same theme. But Barbara is a serious writer and did a very good job."
— Mike Wickham, "Five Baseball Books You Should Read," Old Time Family Baseball Blog
She's on First is a fun, energetic novel that is jam-packed with love and knowledge of baseball. It's also very thoughtful, delving into the ways in which Linda's task is similar to [Jackie] Robinson's (such as whether to be permitted to stay at the same hotel as the men) and others in which it's more difficult (such as questions of romance, violence and showers).
— Patrick T. Reardon, The Pump Don't Work Blog
Gregorich's baseball scenes . . . are the stuff of real baseball. Her treatment of the game is, in fact, unique from three distinct perspectives. Here is a woman, we sense, who intimately knows and loves the hardball game. No embarrassing technical errors here . . . no embarrassing female transmogrifications of ballplayers into fuzzy Greek statues or ephemeral literary symbols. Also, the baseball descriptions are true-to-life and almost always enthralling; few male authors and virtually no female writers have actually matched them. Numerous descriptions of Sunshine's mental adventures at the plate approximate the best baseball fiction writing. . . . Finally, with Gregorich all the previous stereotypes of the woman's dimwitted regard for baseball are rudely dispatched.
— Peter C. Bjarkman, SABR Review of Books
Unliberated baseball fans may well be won over by this appealing novel of the first woman in the big leagues; all baseball fans will appreciate Gregorich's sure feel for the game . . . the baseball scenes are crackerjack, and readers should end up wondering, "Why not?"
— Publishers Weekly
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