Good and balanced: stories about sports from the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction

Set on the field of play, or maybe just its memory, these stories of the sporting life range beyond the expected to include such pursuits as yoga, billiards, horse racing, cards, and boxing.

Here, even iconic sports like football, basketball, and baseball get a fresh take through stories that might feature a losing coach, a woman hoopster, or a groundskeeper (rather than a star player).

Whether front-and-center as a story's driving force or as a backdrop for other concerns, the skill, cunning, and aggression on display here are familiar to all of us - as players, willing or not, in all manner of contests.