Upon occasion, you come across a novel that—if you’ll pardon the cliché—hits it out of the park. You crack open the first page, and by page two, you know you’re in trouble. The kind of trouble that keeps you up past midnight, ignoring text messages, blowing off obligations, and contemplating how much sleep you really need before work the next morning. The story grabs you by the (insert your favorite anatomical reference here) and refuses to let go.

The Fireballer, written by former journalist and veteran novelist Mark Stevens, is one such novel.

Set against the backdrop of Major League Baseball, the book immediately transported me back to a world I once held dear. As a kid, I followed the game religiously. But as an adult, I drifted away—disillusioned by the rise of free agency in the early 1980s, when it seemed that players hopped from team to team like free radicals. What used to feel like a lifelong bond between athlete and city began to resemble a rotating-door business contract. Keeping up with who played for whom became a full-time job in itself. Throw in the designated hitter rule—don’t get me started!—and I all but checked out of the game entirely.

But The Fireballer might just woo me back.

The story follows Frank Ryder, a once-in-a-generation pitching phenom out of Denver’s Thomas Jefferson High School who signs with the Baltimore Orioles. Frank possesses an almost mythic gift: a 110-mile-an-hour fastball that is, quite literally, unhittable. His ability on the mound is both awe-inspiring and dangerous, threatening to upend the sport’s fragile equilibrium. But while the novel might sound like a classic sports underdog story on the surface, calling it “a baseball book” hardly does it justice.

At its heart, The Fireballer is a powerful character study. It’s about what it means to be human in a system that often demands setting your humanity aside. Frank is not just a pitcher—he’s a thoughtful, wounded, deeply principled young man navigating a game, and a life, where morality and ambition don’t always align. I cannot remember the last time I felt such admiration and such ache for a fictional character. Frank Ryder isn’t just well-drawn; he’s unforgettable.

Mark Stevens is a masterful writer. His prose is elegant without being showy, innovative without being overwrought. There’s a rhythm to his writing that mirrors the tempo of the game itself—deliberate, precise, unhurried but filled with tension. I found myself reading slowly on purpose, lingering over certain passages, re-reading others, not wanting the book to end. His world-building is airtight, his research unobtrusively embedded in the fabric of the narrative.

As any writer knows, credibility matters. Get one small detail wrong, and the illusion can break. But Stevens is in full command of his material. He pulls off the literary equivalent of a perfect game.

The Fireballer is an astonishing achievement. It would make a great movie. Whether or not you love baseball, I promise, you’ll love this book.