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.
Brad is smart, idealistic, and unemployed, with a lifelong history of coming up short. He’s never quite in sync with the world around him. When he stumbles into an arrangement to coach the Marlins, a softball team of eleven- and twelve-year-old girls, he sets out to accomplish something.
But accomplish what? Girls’ little league softball, he’s told, is not about winning. Brad would just as soon win, but just teaching, he quickly realizes, will be hard enough. So Brad sets out to teach. To coax, cajole, and bribe his girls to run the bases aggressively, throw to the cutoffs, cover bases.
The season progresses. Through ups and downs, through tears and small triumphs, the Marlins improve. Brad comes to understand and care about his players. But as the playoffs approach, Brad becomes increasingly aware . . . of rival coaches bending rules; of parents jockeying to advance their ambitions for their daughters; of convoluted off-field politics. Brad struggles to keep his focus on what matters. For it’s all so familiar. The twisted, conflicting agendas that have troubled his paths through life and career: Here they are, once again, penetrating even this small world of girls’ softball.
This story about softball is also a story about people searching for meaning; it’s about sorting through the tangles, and learning a thing or two about a game.
Look Inside
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RevIEWS
Paik’s inspiring debut novel is an assured look at how and why it’s imperative to change traditional definitions of failure and success. The narrative centers on Brad, a former biotech researcher drifting after resigning from his job, where he refused to acquiesce to shady political maneuvers. His ex-wife Stephanie asks him to coach a softball team for 11 and 12-year-old girls as a favor, and despite initially being resistant, Brad eventually agrees. Bantering and battling with his frenemy Mike all while trying to prove something to himself, Brad adapts to his role quickly, teaching the team detailed drills and improving their performance.
As Brad deals with all sorts of outside interference, like intrusive parents and hypercompetitive opposing coaches, his team progresses and bonds with each other. When the season ends, every member takes something important from the experience—none more so than Brad and Mike. Without hammering it home too obviously, Paik makes restrained use of Brad’s gardening hobby as a metaphor for how he’s helping his players grow, and the politics he encounters as a coach tellingly resembles the nonsense he had to endure as a researcher. On the downside, Mike is slightly undercooked as a secondary protagonist: he’s not in the book long enough to be fully developed, but he still takes up a lot of space.
The girls are sometimes presented as a bit of a mystery that Brad has to crack, though Paik wisely focuses on how they relate to their coach and each other in the context of competitive gameplay and their developing chemistry during practices. The emotional payoff in the climax is well-earned, and Paik successfully makes readers feel invested in every character. The theme of taking a chance and getting out of one’s comfort zone is reinforced throughout the story, culminating in plot changes that come across as smooth and natural. This is a fascinating exercise in exploring camaraderie and hard work without a particular reward in mind.
Takeaway: This rich character study of a man dealing with a mid-life crisis through coaching is full of small, resonant details.
Great for fans of: Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs, Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance.
https://www.booklife.com/project/a-thing-or-two-about-the-game-71044
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
A Thing or Two About the Game is a novel about former executive Brad, who is charged with coaching a team of girls in softball. This unexpected endeavor has been foisted upon him by his ex-wife, who taps him to take her place.
He hadn’t expected to do his ex-wife’s boyfriend a favor, and even though he was successful at coaching boys’ hockey, dealing with a team of girls is something quite different.
His mission is not to put together a winning team, but to teach them how to work together and how to understand and work with the game’s aggressive, competitive demands…something young girls may not have been taught before.
As Brad oversees his team and watches them grow, he begins to struggle with outside forces and influences, from parents who see winning as being paramount above ethical behaviors, to coaches who bend the rules and special influencers who seek to change them.
These are the same conundrums he’s also faced in the business world.
As Brad comes to realize that growing his team reflects a microcosm of the greater world’s challenges, he too begins to grow and change along with them, in unexpected ways.
A Thing or Two About the Game is about much more than softball, coaching, or teaching girls to become proactive winners. It’s also about a coach’s evolving teaching strategy as he confronts his different players and the struggles they face both on and off the playing field of life.
“Whether we win games or not, let’s just try to improve and feel good about ourselves. And I’m telling you that it matters, because if it doesn’t matter, then pretty soon practice doesn’t matter, and then the next batter doesn’t matter, and then the next game doesn’t matter, and then Renni and Courtney and Colleen don’t matter and I don’t matter and you don’t matter and then what are we all going to do?”
A Thing or Two About the Game also imparts a thing or two about players, teamwork, individual influence and struggle, and the competing styles of different coaches all charged with creating a winning team.
Its ability to teach and inspire about life’s progression and challenges makes for an involving book that will appeal to a wide audience, from those who like stories of softball and coaching to females who seek tales of growth and teamwork. 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.
www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/may_22/htm#generalfiction
From rising new author Richard Paik comes his debut work, A Thing or Two About the Game. Paik’s novel follows Brad, a smart former biotech executive who has recently lost his job. Through an interesting turn of events, Brad finds himself as the head coach of a softball team for 11- and 12-year-old girls.
Brad, divorced and unemployed with no real prospects, gets a call from his ex-wife Stephanie, asking him for a favor. Her new boyfriend has signed up to coach a friend’s softball team, but his work schedule has suddenly filled up and he will be unable to fulfill the commitment. She asks Brad if he would be willing to fill in as the head coach. Brad’s initial reaction is that he has no desire to help his ex-wife, much less his ex-wife’s boyfriend. After some consideration about the current state of his life, he decides to give it a try, not for Stephanie or her boyfriend, but rather for himself. He thinks that perhaps something worthwhile will come out of the experience, so he’s willing to take the risk and step out of his comfort zone.
Brad begins his practices with the twelve girls assigned to his team, and soon discovers that he has signed up for much more than simply coaching a girls’ softball team. He stumbles upon friendships, rivalries, parental agendas and appalling off-field tactics from both coaches and parents alike. Brad undeniably pours everything he has into coaching the team to be the best it can be. It cannot be helped, however, that Brad simply does not have the highest level of talent with which to work. Some girls are noticeably better than others; others do not appear to be as committed as the rest and do not show up for every practice or game. By the end of the season, Brad, along with his team, have learned lessons about so much more than softball. They have learned how to persevere, how to be a part of something bigger than yourself, how to be accountable to others and how to prove their dependability for others. Of course, during the progression of the season, the girls have also learned a thing or two about the game of softball.
Paik’s debut novel, A Thing or Two About the Game, is an interesting merger between the corporate world that Brad previously worked in and still finds himself teetering on the edge of, and the domestic, familial world of kids’ youth sports. As a character, Brad is relatable to any readers who have ever fallen short of their dreams. Brad consistently feels as if he needs to dust himself off and pick up the shattered pieces of his dreams so he can keep putting one foot in front of the other. Readers will appreciate a genuine character like Brad, rather than someone who seemingly has it all put together.
Paik’s writing is succinct, easy to follow, and the pace of the book moves along perfectly, as it feels like it should. For a first-time novelist, these are often difficult objectives to achieve, yet Paik seemingly accomplished them effortlessly.
Quill says: 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.
A Thing or Two About the Game
In Paik’s literary debut, an aimless man’s life is changed when he coaches a softball team.
Brad doesn’t have a ton going on in his life since he quit his job in biotech, taking the fall for something he didn’t do. Now he mostly gardens and tries to figure out what the future holds. While raking leaves, he gets a call from his ex-wife, Stephanie, with a strange request: Her boyfriend backed out of a commitment to coach a Little League softball team, so can Brad do it? Brad’s coaching experience extends only to a single season of his nephew’s hockey team—and he was only the assistant coach. Yet for reasons he can’t explain, he says yes. As the new coach of the Marlins, he’s responsible for a dozen tween girls of various skill levels, each looking for something different from the season. He soon finds himself invested in their success, both on and off the field. He’s forced to contend with rival coaches—including his frenemy, Mike—helicopter parents, and volunteer assistant coach Diane, the mother of Kelli, one of the players.To help his players win, Brad will have to master something he’s never been very good at: playing ball. Paik’s prose is elegantly understated, succinctly capturing not only Brad’s point of view but those of the players, as well. Here, for example, young Meghan identifies what she likes about softball: “Nobody has been mean to her in softball. There are no bad grades. When she bats, she can hear other girls—even popular girls—yelling ‘you can do it, Meghan, let’s go Meghan, you can do it!’ ” The premise that kicks off the narrative is somewhat trite; however, the novel features rich character work, as well as the earnest questions about trivial pursuits that maybe aren’t so trivial, after all. The story also manages to be moving without delving too much into the sentimental, and as a result, readers may be forgiven if their first instinct after reading it is to volunteer for a local youth softball league.
An unpretentious story of community and finding one’s purpose.
A THING OR TWO ABOUT THE GAME | Kirkus Reviews
A Thing or Two About the Game is a sports drama novel written by Richard Paik. Talented biotech scientist Brad, currently unemployed, finds himself in a difficult position when his ex-wife Stephanie calls him seeking his help to coach a softball team of 11 to 12-year-old girls in the Softball Little League. Reluctant at first, Brad eventually decides to take up the coach’s position for the Marlins, one of the bottle table teams of the league. As he spends more time with the girls, Brad becomes more and more invested in the game while the Marlins slowly rise up the points table. Navigating overbearing parents and his own personal issues, Brad manages to secure a place in the playoffs for the Marlins. Along the way, he discovers himself.
If you’re a fan of inspirational sports dramas, you’ll have a great time with A Thing or Two About the Game. Richard Paik’s slice-of-life tale follows a gifted biotech scientist who finds purpose while coaching a Little League’s girls’ softball team. The narrative is paced well, and the fleshed-out character work and intriguing drama keep you immersed in the pages. Brad is a likable protagonist and easy to relate to. You find yourself rooting for him almost from the get-go, and his interactions with his friends and players form the core of the narrative. I particularly enjoyed his dynamic with Mike, his best friend and rival. Even if you’re not into softball, there’s plenty to enjoy about A Thing or Two About the Game for anyone who loves slice-of-life stories.
https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/a-thing-or-two-about-the-game
A fun and engaging sports novel about giving your all for the love of a team.
Brad is an out of work biotech scientist who, months after being fired/resigning from his big time job, who still can’t seem to plant his feet firmly on the ground. He’s still a little sore from his divorce from his ex (Stephanie) and an unfair forced resignation from a good job. Instead of job hunting or dating, he pours his energy into seemingly small tasks, like gardening around the house. But even relaxing leisure activities seem to remind him of his former life; he needs everything to be just perfect. His highly executed life takes a turn though, when Stephanie’s new boyfriend Connor drops out of his coaching job for their town’s preteen girl’s softball team. She wouldn’t normally ask, but since he played when he was younger, maybe it would be good for him. Going back and forth briefly in his mind, Brad takes the gig, only temporarily, until Connor can get back from his overseas business. Brad’s immediately thrust into the lives of “his girls” and the competitive world of 12 year old softball. Some of the girls have real skill, others are just there to have fun and maybe learn about the game. His perfectionism kicks in quickly, and while he’s calm and cool with the girls, he has to reel himself in and remember–it’s just a game. His team, the Marlins, aren’t good, and they aren’t really contenders for the championship. Slowly but surely, the girls improve and they start winning games, just in time for Connor to return. Brad convinces himself he’s glad to give it up: Dealing with pretentious coaches, angry parents and moody preteens isn’t his ideal time anyway. Buckling down and concentrating on the team has given him a new form of concentration, and he starts talks with other biotech scientists about starting up their own firm, one that will concentrate on results and not just the bottom line. When Connor’s business takes him out of town again, Brad’s thrown right back into the thick of girls’ softball. He’ll have to juggle this responsibility with his newly budding business, and together, he learns more about himself than he thought. I’d recommend this book to those interested in coming of age stories involving teamwork and growth. It has plenty of sports, but it focuses much more on Brad’s character development, with the help of a few friends, his ex wife’s perspective and of course his team.
In the beginning of the novel, we get the sense that Brad’s a little self-centered: he refused to have children with his wife, likes his routines, and has a rigid value system. None of that seems to matter when he starts teaching his team the ins and outs of softball, dealing with the emotions and pressures of young preteen girls and their families. It’s an enlightening wake-up call for Brad, and he realizes he has a lot to give. Throughout the season, his relationships, confidence and sense of self all improve, right along with the skills of the girls. A Thing or Two About the Game is a fun and quick read, a wholesome experience that follows an engaging softball storyline. As Brad gets more involved with his community, that’s when you’ll get to see what all this is really about.
Book Review: A Thing Or Two About the Game
Interviews
FQ: Can you describe your inspiration for the story behind A Thing or Two About the Game? Is it based on any personal coaching experience?
PAIK: I’ve spent five seasons coaching youth softball. I decided to coach because my daughter played, and I had some ideas about what could help these girls. I was shocked to find how much I cared, and how much I enjoyed it.
I do not recall ever thinking, “I’m going to write a book about this.” But I started jotting thoughts about drills and girls’ reactions; some of these became small vignettes. It was fun writing these down, and I gradually realized that I might make a bigger project of it.
FQ: As this is your first published work, can you share a bit about your professional background?
PAIK: The simplest answer is that I made my living as a City Planning consultant. Mostly helping – trying to help – municipalities revitalize. There’s not much of a link between that and this book, but the exercise in planning, to oversimplify, is largely an exercise in picking battles; in recognizing what you can potentially accomplish, and what you can’t. Maybe that’s a reach, but if there’s any connection between my professional life and this book, that’s it.
I spent my earlier years doing a lot of career-hopping; it took a long time before I started getting serious about life. Then, in more recent years, I’ve started—and failed—with a few of my own businesses. As I type here, I realize that those experiences may relate to the book.
FQ: What was the writing experience like for you as you wrote this story?
PAIK: There are probably five different answers to this question. There were periods when new ideas and new solutions popped up every day. That was a blast. Other times when I realized how, gradually, the story had shifted. Those were great discoveries. There were very few dead spots where it felt like drudgery.
I should say that, about four or five years ago, I’d gotten started on new writing projects and I let go of this book. Pretty much forgot about it. Then, sometime In 2020, I decided to submit the manuscript (just because it was “done” – or at least lying around) to Atmosphere Press. They accepted it about a year ago, in March, 2021. I was scared. I was invested in the new pieces I’d been writing. But I decided to move forward with this again.
One other thing: The book started out as a bunch of small softball-coaching vignettes about coaching moments and discoveries. Many of those got cut. Which was painful.
FQ: How did you develop the main character of Brad?
PAIK: Parts of Brad started with me: his ideas for drills, for how he wanted to conduct himself as a coach. After that, the cliché about characters taking over turned out to be true. Brad’s character evolved in response to the circumstances and the characters that emerged around him, including not only his players, but his friends – especially Mike, his childhood friend and rival.
FQ: What is the most important thing you hope readers will take away with them after reading A Thing or Two About the Game?
PAIK: I’m happy to say that this is a very difficult question. I say that because at times, as I was writing, I was afraid that it was getting too “theme-driven,” at the expense of the details of a scene, or the quirks of a character; that I was trying too hard to make sure everybody “gets it.” Theme can get clunky, like a 100-pound backpack.
So, to answer the question, I think I want readers to have a sense of shared journey. I like to think that every character—every player, in particular—has their own issue; their own reason to be involved, and their own take-away – their own journey, which is shared with her teammates. I hope readers feel the same way, and that they enjoy talking about it, about their favorite characters and moments.
FQ: Are any of the characters, especially the girls on the team, modeled after people you personally know in your life?
PAIK: To a degree. There were specific moments—not necessarily “big” moments—that I wanted to write about, and some of those moments became part of a character’s story, and then led to other character traits.
FQ: When you began writing, did you have the entire story already developed in your mind, or did it come to you gradually as you wrote?
PAIK: The latter. Earlier in my life I’d had writing aspirations, but was always foiled by plot. I was terrible at coming up with plot lines. For this book, plot was made easier by two factors. The first factor was simply that it would be set within the course of a season. The season provided an armature: things had to happen in that time frame, and it provided at least a minor tension in the curiosity of how things would turn out, whether the team would win. The second factor was just that I had vignette ideas for player characters, and their responses to the coach and his ideas. So, I could let characters’ responses and actions come out, which helped steer the plot.
FQ: When you were a youth, did you play on any sports teams and were any of your experiences written into A Thing or Two About the Game?
PAIK: Played plenty of sports. Still do. But no, I can’t think of any experiences from those endeavors that I wrote about in this book.
In Paik’s literary debut, an aimless man’s life is changed when he coaches a softball team.
Brad doesn’t have a ton going on in his life since he quit his job in biotech, taking the fall for something he didn’t do. Now he mostly gardens and tries to figure out what the future holds. While raking leaves, he gets a call from his ex-wife, Stephanie, with a strange request: Her boyfriend backed out of a commitment to coach a Little League softball team, so can Brad do it? Brad’s coaching experience extends only to a single season of his nephew’s hockey team—and he was only the assistant coach. Yet for reasons he can’t explain, he says yes. As the new coach of the Marlins, he’s responsible for a dozen tween girls of various skill levels, each looking for something different from the season. He soon finds himself invested in their success, both on and off the field. He’s forced to contend with rival coaches—including his frenemy, Mike—helicopter parents, and volunteer assistant coach Diane, the mother of Kelli, one of the players.To help his players win, Brad will have to master something he’s never been very good at: playing ball. Paik’s prose is elegantly understated, succinctly capturing not only Brad’s point of view but those of the players, as well. Here, for example, young Meghan identifies what she likes about softball: “Nobody has been mean to her in softball. There are no bad grades. When she bats, she can hear other girls—even popular girls—yelling ‘you can do it, Meghan, let’s go Meghan, you can do it!’ ” The premise that kicks off the narrative is somewhat trite; however, the novel features rich character work, as well as the earnest questions about trivial pursuits that maybe aren’t so trivial, after all. The story also manages to be moving without delving too much into the sentimental, and as a result, readers may be forgiven if their first instinct after reading it is to volunteer for a local youth softball league.
An unpretentious story of community and finding one’s purpose.
A THING OR TWO ABOUT THE GAME | Kirkus Reviews
In Paik’s literary debut, an aimless man’s life is changed when he coaches a softball team.
Brad doesn’t have a ton going on in his life since he quit his job in biotech, taking the fall for something he didn’t do. Now he mostly gardens and tries to figure out what the future holds. While raking leaves, he gets a call from his ex-wife, Stephanie, with a strange request: Her boyfriend backed out of a commitment to coach a Little League softball team, so can Brad do it? Brad’s coaching experience extends only to a single season of his nephew’s hockey team—and he was only the assistant coach. Yet for reasons he can’t explain, he says yes. As the new coach of the Marlins, he’s responsible for a dozen tween girls of various skill levels, each looking for something different from the season. He soon finds himself invested in their success, both on and off the field. He’s forced to contend with rival coaches—including his frenemy, Mike—helicopter parents, and volunteer assistant coach Diane, the mother of Kelli, one of the players.To help his players win, Brad will have to master something he’s never been very good at: playing ball. Paik’s prose is elegantly understated, succinctly capturing not only Brad’s point of view but those of the players, as well. Here, for example, young Meghan identifies what she likes about softball: “Nobody has been mean to her in softball. There are no bad grades. When she bats, she can hear other girls—even popular girls—yelling ‘you can do it, Meghan, let’s go Meghan, you can do it!’ ” The premise that kicks off the narrative is somewhat trite; however, the novel features rich character work, as well as the earnest questions about trivial pursuits that maybe aren’t so trivial, after all. The story also manages to be moving without delving too much into the sentimental, and as a result, readers may be forgiven if their first instinct after reading it is to volunteer for a local youth softball league.
An unpretentious story of community and finding one’s purpose.
A THING OR TWO ABOUT THE GAME | Kirkus Reviews