
It could be because of love, a favorite sports team, or even a hobby you’re passionate about. Or all three of them.
Co-authors Marc Peter Reyna and James Harmon Brown blend those elements together nicely in a novel that is a tender love story, a nostalgic look back at childhood and a sobering but hopeful view of the present.
Diamond Stars: A Novel of the 1934 All-Star Baseball Game (Dog Ear Publishing; paperback; $12.99; 222 pages), is a work that bookends a pair of major league baseball all-star games as a historical backdrop. The authors switch back and forth between 1934 and 1984 to tell the story of Solomon “Solly” Manus and his family.
July 10 held a special place for Solly. As an 11-year-old baseball-mad fan in 1934, he and his friends rode a train from Brooklyn to Manhattan and sneaked into the All-Star Game, where they saw Carl Hubbell strike out five future Hall of Famers in a row. That same day at the Polo Grounds in New York, Solly also connected with a neighborhood girl, Abby Sellers, who was equally obsessed with baseball and her favorite player, Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Van Lingle Mungo. Solly and Abby, after awkward beginnings, would marry years later — on July 10.
Fast forward to 1984. Abby has been in a coma for six weeks after an automobile accident. Solly will be attending the 1984 All-Star Game in San Francisco — on July 10 — which would serve as a reunion of the players from that 1934 classic. Solly dug through his old baseball card collection and found the card with Mungo, hoping to get an autograph to show his wife, hoping the old connection would break the coma.

“Tom had never known two people more curiously well suited than Abby and Solly,” the authors write. “They were soul mates, best friends and had baseball between them like no other couple he’d ever known in the game.”
The book’s focus bounces from one game to the next, with accurate play-by-play accounts of both games sprinkling the narrative. The authors use the play-by-play from both games, drawn from Retrosheet.org, and include it in an appendix.
That’s not surprising. Not only is Reyna a baseball fan, he also is a devoted baseball card collector and belongs to internet trading clubs (in the interest of transparency for this review, I belong to the same club, Old Baseball Cards). His Dodgers collection is extensive, going as far back as the gold-bordered T-205 cards from 1911. Reyna, 65, collected baseball cards from 1962 to 1964 and then put them away. In 1988 he found an old shoebox full of Topps cards from 1957 to 1965 and became hooked again. The ideas that are incorporated in Diamond Stars were ignited when Reyna discovered that long-lost box of cards.
He also has a special affinity for Mungo and is currently performing in a one-act play he co-wrote, “Mungo!” In his 1975 autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last, Leo Durocher wrote that Mungo “had been considered as fast as (Dizzy) Dean, maybe as good but nowhere near as funny.”
Harmon, 69, was a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 1983 but was noted for his writing partnership with Barbara Esensten on soap operas and dramas such as Dynasty, All My Children, Days of Our Lives, One Life to Live, Guiding Light and Port Charles. The pair were nominated for five Emmy Awards and won for their writing in Guiding Light.
There is drama in Diamond Stars. Manus grew up to become an infielder who excelled at the Triple-A level for 16 years and even made it briefly to the major leagues — twice. He worked as a scout for the Giants before being phased out. But Haller, who is one of the heroes of this book, finds another spot in the scouting department and brings Solly back into the fold.
What makes this novel work is the dialogue. It is fast-paced and jaunty, and characters’ personalities are introduced quickly and effectively. There is a memorable conversation between Solly and Joe DiMaggio at the 1984 game, and the banter between Solly and his childhood friends while at the 1934 game keep the action bouncing along. Even though baseball fans know the outcome of both games, the dialogue sustains the plot.
Solly’s meeting with Mungo at the 1984 game is less than what he expected, but the old pitcher famous for his fastball manages to throw a curve at the end of the novel to neatly tie everything together.
Heinie Majeski, Johnny Gee
Eddie Joost, Johnny Pesky, Thornton Lee
Danny Gardella
Van Lingle Mungo
The last surviving player from Frishberg’s list is Eddie Basinski, who is 95. Frishberg turned 85 in March.
That’s just an interlude. Diamond Stars does not need a song to sustain itself. It is a sweet love story that is timeless — just like a baseball fan’s love of the game.