Show Me a Hero: Great Contemporary Stories about Sports

This collection is not so much about winning and losing, teamwork and competition in the sports arena as it is about facing these issues in the bigger game of life. Jonathan Baumbach's ``The Return of Service'' follows a session of father-and-son tennis in which the son views his parent's dual role as competitor and instructor. The troubles inherent in coming of age are a theme throughout: in Toni Cade Bambara's ``Raymond's Run,'' an inner-city girl who is ``serious about my running and don't care who knows it'' comes to a greater appreciation of the disabled brother entrusted to her care. Through truly witty dialogue, Ann Packer traces a teenager's attempt at making the cheerleading squad and the mechanisms of her inevitable failure in ``Horse.'' There are plenty of well-known writers here-Garrison Keillor, Susan Straight, John Sayles, Mark Helprin, Ellen Gilchrist, Ethan Canin and John Edgar Wideman, to name a few. Although each writer's voice is distinctive, editor Schinto grouped pieces by both theme and writing style, resulting in a collection in which stories read as cohesively as the chapters of a novel. (Aug.)