Learn about the game
“This is supposed to be a fun league. Teach the basics of the game, help the girls learn, let them have fun. It’s not about winning.”
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About Richard Paik
Richard Paik’s debut novel, A Thing or Two About the Game is about the shared journeys, tangled challenges, and unexpected rewards that a reluctant coach and a group of girls’ little
league softball players experience over the course of one season.
His short stories have appeared in Potomac Review, descant, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Kestrel. He is currently at work on a collection of linked stories exploring themes of identity
amid the festive backdrop of the holiday season.
Mr. Paik grew up in Massachusetts. After earning a Bachelors’ degree from Brown University in 1982, he has (over some relatively recent decades) travelled and lived in widely varying parts of the U.S., married, raised a daughter, and doggedly accumulated additional degrees, career paths, failed entrepreneurial enterprises, and hobbies.
He lives in Marblehead, MA with his wife, Barbara.
A Thing or Two About the Game
Brad is smart, idealistic, and unemployed, with a lifelong history of coming up short. When he stumbles into an arrangement to coach a softball team of eleven- and twelve-year-old girls, he is surprised to find himself having fun: getting out in the spring sunshine, teaching the game, coming to know and care about his players. Through a season of tears and cringe-worthy errors, of new skills and confidence gained, of off-field distractions and new understandings, a man and a group of girls learn a thing or two about a game.
The Story
You’ve been fair all season. In the playoffs, though, you play to win . . .
Brad resumes his position in the coach’s box, not sure why he’s no longer having her bunt. Clearly she can bunt. Bunting is the correct strategy, if they want to maximize their chances of winning. . . . At this point, though, Brad understands that it’s about winning now, but it’s not completely about winning. It’s also—still—about Lori having fun hitting, trying to do what she thinks she can do. It’s sort of partly about how this might affect Lori if she thinks her coach didn’t let her try to hit because he didn’t believe in her. Nothing’s completely or purely about anything, and the motivations are all jumbled, but he’s told her to swing away and they’ll all just have to see what happens.
Purchase the Novel
“Knowing you, you’ll have a bunch of clever ideas and creative drills. But these kids won’t get it, they won’t care, and you won’t know how to deal with that.”
What people say
Paik's writing is succinct, easy to follow, and the pace of the book moves along perfectly. . . . On the surface, A Thing or Two About the Game appears to be about girls’ softball, but the story encompasses so much more than simply that. It incorporates friendships, rivalries, sportsmanship, teamwork, kindness, competitiveness, and perhaps most importantly, the ultimate, deep-rooted human desire to find meaning in the mundane.
An involving book that will appeal to a wide audience. . . . Anyone looking for a read that is ultimately about a quest for purpose, meaning, and achievement will love A Thing or Two About the Game.
Paik's inspiring debut novel is an assured look at how and why it's imperative to change traditional definitions of failure and success. . . . Paik successfully makes readers feel invested in every character. . . . This rich character study of a man dealing with a mid-life crisis through coaching is full of small, resonant details.
