Sports literature is saturated with religious allegories disguised as feel-good stories about "finding the perfect swing," "pitching a perfect game," or even just "rediscovering the true meaning of the sport." For two-thirds of Mark Friedman's debut novel Columbus Slaughters Braves, the author appears to have found a way to replace the soggy core of most ball-playing fictions with something tough and springy. Friedman's baseball novel is only tangentially about a Cubs third baseman named C.J. Columbus, who rockets out of UCLA and hometown Pasadena to win a starting spot for the hapless Chicago nationals and earn the Rookie Of The Year award. C.J.'s remarkable rise is related by his older brother Joe, a high-school science teacher who actively resents every success enjoyed by his charming younger sibling. Joe Columbus is, in fact, a bit of a bastard—emotionally distant, cool to his parents, compassionless toward his students, and unsupportive of his hard-working wife Beth, who pulls all-nighters as a junior attorney for a prestigious firm. Joe also has a caustic wit, sprung from his own awareness of how unlikable he seems. About Beth's loss of interest in reading, he says, "Thus, one more item had been erased from the once-burgeoning blackboard of things we had in common… Our marriage was like a restaurant running out of specials." When Friedman drops a medical-crisis plot twist into the final 50 pages, Columbus Slaughters Braves backs up to the wall of the maudlin, "Now I know what life's really about" message that provides the spine of too many Tuesdays With Morrie variants. But the narrator's curmudgeonliness never disappears, which adds gravity to his otherwise conventional observations about hospitals and tragedy. The novel ends with Joe Columbus having changed little, save for his new appreciation of his brother's graceful handling of a difficult game and the mantle of celebrity. Friedman's stubborn refusal to soften his protagonist's heart might be unsatisfying for those who crave a conversion to underscore the book's message, but closer examination reveals that the lack of conversion is the book's message. At the center of the story's climax is an out-of-left-field Christian metaphor that proves Friedman's intentions aren't limited to baseball and misanthropy. Columbus Slaughters Braves may actually be about the distance that remains between humankind and God, exemplified by the rift between a befogged common man and that comprehensible sliver of the divine that is the champion athlete.