Description

For many American men, baseball is the game of boyhood. Memories of days spent at the park, fast friendships with teammates, and the culture of competition are the essential fabric that gives so many of these childhood memories their texture. But there comes a day for everyone when the game catches up with them, and they need to call it quits.

In Short Relief, Ben Shahon (A COLLECTION FOR NO ONE TO READ) asks the question of what happens when men are not yet ready to give up that boys’ game, the national pastime. In nine stories (including ones collected from Free Library of the Internet Void and Flash Boulevard), he traces the stories of a Minor League pitcher holding onto his last shred of hope for promotion to The Show, Little Leaguers’ formative experiences, and a host of men and boys in between.

Ben Shahon is the author of one previous chapbook, A Collection for No One to Read. His work has appeared in journals such as Ghost Parachute, BULL, and Flash Boulevard, and he serves as the founding EIC of JAKE. Ben lives and writes on the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties in California, where he bemoans the Angels’ decade-plus-long playoff drought.

PRAISE FOR SHORT RELIEF

“From Little League to line drives, Shahon’s Short Relief catalogues the beauty—and occasional heartbreak—between bases. Short Relief prods the tender heart of baseball and those drawn to it, following its cast from bloodied noses and mitts under pillows to broken dreams and batting cage rage. Shahon’s quiet meditation on masculinity more than steps up to the plate.”
— Kirsti MacKenzie, author of Better to Beg

“In Short Relief, Ben conjures feelings that are as old as the sport that holds each of these beautiful stories together. There’s something lost in the past, and each character – usually a minor league baseball player – yearns for it, even if they don’t know what it is anymore. In these stories, there is a life after love, after heartbreak, after breaking balls, after mediocrity, after winning, even after fastballs, where a man can no longer play the boys’ game. But that life can wait just a little longer.”
— Joshua Trent Brown, author of The Walls Are Closing In On Us, Malarkey Books, 2026