The Warsaw Sparks: A Memoir

In 1987 noted poet and author Gary Gildner went to Poland on a Fulbright scholarship to teach at the University of Warsaw. One January day, a Warsaw sportswriter came knocking on Gildner’s classroom door with a problem and a request. The professional baseball team he had organized the year before could not win; would the professor—who he had heard was a baseball player—come help?

Told with gripping lyric simplicity, The Warsaw Sparks is about an American’s experience coaching a baseball team in Poland and about hope and memory and the education of a poet. Prepare to meet an unlikely cast of characters, including Stan Musial, Lech Walesa, Dariusz the Organizer, and such Sparks as Froggy, Pizza Hut, the Cubans, and little Jerzy Bin the catcher: “Call me George, Coach. Like George Herman Babe Ruth.”