An attempt at a baseball RPF fandom overview.

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Hi, my name is Alex and I'm driving the van this month for baseball RPF fandom. The previous baseball RPF reccer said I'm afraid the fandom is such that an overview is functionally impossible, and she's pretty much right. I'll do my best though.

Major League Baseball (the MLB) has thirty teams that are split into two leagues: the American and the National. Within those leagues are divisions, which are divvied up by geographic location. Each Major League franchise maintains a 25-man roster and a 40-man roster. Players on the 25-man roster are eligible to play in games throughout the 162-game season. The 40-man roster includes the 25 players on the 25-man roster as well as players on the 15-day and 60-day disabled list, and players in the minor leagues. Players must be on the 25-man roster as of August 31 to be eligible for the postseason.

Anyway, what this all means is since there are thirty teams, each with 25 players on the roster and players on the disabled list or in the minors, it's near impossible to do a comprehensive "cast" list, so I won't even make an attempt. Instead I'm going to talk about the fandom. My focus will be on Major League Baseball. Hypothetically someone could write fic about players from Nippon Professional Baseball, or the Cuban National baseball system (Ariel Pestano and Yulieski Gonzalez anyone?) or the Frontier League, for example, but as far as I know, there hasn't been any yet. When I refer to baseball henceforth, I mean Major League Baseball.

Baseball, as an RPF fandom, has built in conflict. The sport itself features a central conflict: one team must win and the other must lose.

Baseball RPF often features: homophobia, clandestine relationships, religion/religious angst, loneliness, groupie culture, drinking, and drugs (sometimes), to name a few. It's not all heavy drama all the time, though. You get your fair share of PWPs and light, funny fics as well. The sport itself also plays a large roll in the fiction as well; baseball RPF often features games and intricate game details.

The sport is based on strategy, attention to detail, precision, and power. These "themes" also sometimes show up in fiction.

Baseball as an RPF fandom got its start on the sportsslash Yahoo!Group and in the (late lamented) sports section on fanfiction.net. The Oakland A's and Atlanta Braves were popular, and fic often featured the pairings of Barry Zito/Mark Mulder and Tom Glavine/Greg Maddux.

As the writers left Yahoo!Groups and FFN and began migrating to Livejournal, the fandom did as well. Fandom set up shop at sportsslash, and an archive was put up (it no longer exists).

Eventually a baseball-centric RPF community was started at theboysofsummer during the 2003 World Series, and the rest is history. theboysofsummer is one of two baseball RPF communities around; there's also baseball_slash but it's not as frequently updated.

I'm going to be reccing some of the more popular pieces of fiction in this fandom (benchmarks of the fandom, if you will), as well as a couple hidden gems. I may also include crossover fic (with another sports RPF fandom) and at least one AU.

The previous reccer already got to The Rest of Your Life by candle_beck, so I won't rec that one, but it definitely would have been my number one pick.

Hold onto your hats and (hopefully) enjoy the ride!

Anyway, I hope this is a good starting point for baseball RPF (this is actually my second attempt at this. My first attempt was one big hot mess). Here are some of the more popular hangouts in this fandom:

On LJ
theboysofsummer
sports_slash (RIP)
sportsslash
yankeeslash
highandtight
A pictorial history of the Oakland A's by candle_beck

Non-LJ
SportsSlash on Yahoo!Groups
Baseball Fanficion Archive

Comments

[solookup.livejournal.com]

 

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

I read your intro sentence and thought "Gimmi some popcorn, this should be good!"

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Was it totally disappointing? haha. :D

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Needed more "girly" flailing and bad diagrams. Hm. right. Personally what I think baseball needs is something like this ==> http://french-rugby-team.com/

WARNING: This poster has been up for over 24 hours and is realizing that she is entering the EXTREMELY SILLY ZONE. Where everything is kind of funny to her, but might not be funny to everyone else.

So no more net for me, time to go to bed.

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Haha. Somehow, I don't see that happening, but I don't disagree.

[onigaminanashi.livejournal.com]

I saw Barry Zito and Mark Mulder and died a little bit inside. Barry's living with Brian Wilson now in a shiny apartment full of hot man loving. And baseball players. I am TOTALLY off to check out these comms :D

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Hope you find something you like! :D

[ravensgurl211.livejournal.com]

*claps!*

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Haha, thanks. *bows*

[ex-uniquewo.livejournal.com]

So the fandom is restricted to American leagues/players/etc.?

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

The fandom isn't restricted to only the MLB or only American-born players; several "characters" hail from other countries. Authors are free to write about the teams and/or players of their choice, though they do tend to stick with guys who play in the MLB. I haven't seen fic involving players from, say, Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, or the Cuban National baseball system, for example, but that's not to say it's not allowed. I think the reason there isn't any fic involving other countries' teams is that the majority of the fandom's writers are based in the U.S. and write about the players from their favorite MLB teams.

[ex-uniquewo.livejournal.com]

Sorry. Sentences like "The sport of baseball has thirty teams that are split into two leagues" had me confused since, imo, it seems to imply that baseball is only played in American leagues and that's why I thought the fandom was restricted to them.

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Nope. That was just a poorly written sentence. I'll go edit that.

[twigged.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

[jainamac.livejournal.com]

This is fantastic! I've been looking for some communities to browse through! It looks like it's a lot of Yankees and Red Sox fic *boos* ;)
Any chance of you recommending some Phillies stories, or where I could find them?

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

There are some Phillies fics here (http://community.livejournal.com/theboysofsummer/tag/team:+philadelphia+phillies)!