Belle of the Ball

About the Book

Belle Fortman is a feisty, curious, intelligent woman who is determined to break into a traditional world controlled by men who will go to extremes to exclude her—professional baseball. Against all odds, she’s determined to become the first woman umpire in the Major Leagues. In this endeavor, she faces obstacles—from setbacks in umpiring school to travails in her life and on the field as she moves up the minor league system, from tank town sandlot games to Triple A, longing for an assignment in the Majors. Along the way, Belle falls in love and runs into characters readers get to know so well that they’ll feel they’ve actually met them. The author has the uncanny skill to make the strangest, most unlikely characters seem so compellingly real.

About the Author

In Belle of the Ball, we are taken into the intimate world of sports fiction by an author with a track record in the genre. Norman Keifetz is the author of The Sensation, a highly admired and successful baseball novel widely praised by book and sports editors around the country. The New York Times Book Review called it “a nimble and witty tour de force” and later included Keifetz’s work in a list of the best baseball fiction. A baseball-centered story of his appeared later in an issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. In Belle of the Ball, the reader is up-front at the trials and tribulations of the first woman umpire in the Major Leagues, observing her working life as it is being disrupted by those defending what they deem traditional values. Today, the most keen observers of the sport say a woman umpire in will soon be roaming the baseball field. Belle of Ball offers a look at just how difficult that pursuit may be. In the novel, the author says a lot of things about baseball for profit in America and the powerful pressure behind the scenes that fans rarely sense.