BOOK REVIEW : Past and Future Meld in a Tale of 1869 Ballists : IF I NEVER GET BACK <i> by Darryl Brock</i> , Crown $18.95, 432 pages

There was a time before men earned millions of dollars a year playing a child’s game, traveled to luxury hotels via chartered jets and debated the merits of revenue sharing and salary arbitration with wealthy team owners.

In his debut novel, Darryl Brock writes of a time when the grass was real and the game was green. The year was 1869, when men called ballists played the high-scoring game of base-ball without gloves, catcher’s masks or chest protectors, and the bunt was a strategic maneuver of the future.

It is the melding of the future with the past that lies at the core of Brock’s imaginative tale, which starts innocently enough.

Sam Fowler, a modern-day journalist from San Francisco, is on his own personal losing streak. His wife leaves him for a TV anchorman, and his emotionally violent response limits his child-visitation rights. Fowler hits the bottle in misguided compensation, and just when it looks as though things couldn’t get any worse, his father dies. In an effort to find himself, Fowler travels to Cleveland to arrange for cremation.

Rather than find himself, the journalist loses himself--in 1869.

His troubles have just begun.

Brock never satisfactorily explains exactly how the time travel transpires. Indeed, it’s a phenomenon that keeps Fowler himself guessing. Accepting it merely as a mysterious act of faith that’s inexplicably tied to the hero’s destiny enables the journey to pay dividends. The author’s reliance on symbolic imagery is intriguing, though somewhat distracting.

Fowler immediately hooks up with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, America’s first professional baseball team. He becomes a “change” ballist, or substitute player, and relearns the national pastime before pitchers threw overhand and the rule book was standardized.

The detailed descriptions of early contests might try the patience of those not appreciative of the finer points of the game. Nevertheless, Brock offers an engaging view of baseball in its infancy and the colorful characters who took the game’s first steps.

Along the way, the protagonist falls in love with a Victorian beauty, befriends humorist Mark Twain, gets involved with nefarious gamblers and encounters a plot by the forerunners of the Irish Republican Army to invade Canada. He also invents the hot dog and ice cream soda, the bunt and the song “Happy Birthday to You,” among others.

“Ain’t Sam a dinger,” teammate Andy Leonard grows accustomed to saying.

The language barrier between the generations becomes a commentary on the evolution of American slang as well as a running gag. In the bygone era, commodes are called “joes” instead of “johns” and have nothing whatsoever to do with bathrooms. At one point, Fowler calls an early sportswriter covering the Red Stockings’ unprecedented national tour a “jerk.”

“Just what does ‘be a jerk’ mean?” His glasses flashed at me. “You’re not exactly the cheese, Fowler.”

Best of all are Brock’s evocative descriptions of such cities as Washington; Ogden, Utah; San Francisco; Cincinnati, and others in the mid-19th Century. The author, who has taught history and English in the San Francisco area for nearly 20 years, makes the cities come alive in a way that displays his considerable research without making it sound like a course lecture.

That’s not all that rings true. Each of the 1869 Red Stockings, whose divergent personalities grace the pages of Brock’s richly engaging novel, was a bona fide member of that undefeated barnstorming team. A check of the Baseball Encyclopedia briefly recounts the exploits of the game’s true pioneers: Harry and George Wright, Asa Brainard, Fred Waterman, Charlie Sweasy, Doug Allison, Andy Leonard, Cal McVey and Dick Hurley. Seeing their names listed in baseball’s bible lends authenticity to the wildest and most satisfying yarn since W. P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe,” which was made into a motion picture and renamed “Field of Dreams.”

Next: Elaine Kendall reviews “Starting With Serge” by Laurie Stone (Doubleday).