Tag Archive for Little League

Writing Process: Six Innings

I’ve never had a particularly good memory. Most of the details are lost, but essences remain. As a writer, those essential feelings are what feed my books.

However, when it comes to baseball, I do have startlingly vivid recollections. Here’s one of my favorites:

When I was little, I used to throw a rubber Spalding ball against the back of my house for hours at a time. I filled notebooks with imaginary lineups and kept score. I pitched against all the legends of the game, past and present. One week my grandparents came to watch over the horde (remember, I was the youngest of seven) while my parents were away. Now let it be known that Grandpa needed his afternoon naps. But whap, whap, whap, there was little Jimmy throwing that ball all day long.

Instead of getting mad, or forbidding me from doing what I loved, Grandpa went out and shocked me by buying a brand-new pitchback. It was the most beautiful, unexpected gift I ever received. Sploing, sploing, sploing — now I hurled hard baseballs, real baseballs, almost soundlessly against the net. While Grandpa napped contentedly.

Like many boys, I played out fictional games in my imagination. And I talked to myself in a half-whispered mumble, announcing the action: “Jerry Koosman into the windup . . . it’s a hard smash back to the box . . . Koosman snares the line drive . . . inning over . . . the Mets win!”

Reflecting back, I realize those were the first stories I ever told, the beginnings of my life as a writer, working through a fictional narrative, juggling a variety of characters, with the game itself neatly providing its own beginning, middle, and end.

In Six Innings, I gave that experience to a minor character, Max Young, who finds himself on the mound during a crucial spot in the 6th inning:

The relief pitcher, Max Young, is not nervous. He has been in spots like this hundreds of times before . . . with one important difference. It was never the real thing.

For years, Max stepped into his backyard, walked off the proper distance from his pitchback, and entered the limitless realm of his imagination. He played fantasy games in his very own field of dreams. And all the while, Max talked to himself, taking on the voice of the radio sportscaster. Somehow the words made it real. In a barely audible whisper he’d murmur: “Leading off for the Legends team, it’s Tyrus Raymond Cobb. The Georgia Peach . . . .

I’m convinced that hundreds of thousands of boys have done and still do the same thing. I see them on driveways everywhere, bouncing a basketball, looking up at the net, their lips moving, the hushed words bringing a story to life.

Later in the book, with everything on the line, there’s Max again, with a touch more poetry:

One last time, Max is alone in his daydreams, throwing against an imaginary hitter in a game of his own invention. He is the author and the instrument, the pitcher and the ball, the beginning and the end.

Max rocks back into his windup, he drives forward, the ball leaves his fingertips, comes in high and hard and true.

Angel Tatis hits nothing but air. Swing and a miss.

Fan Mail Wednesday #11

Wednesday again? My God, where do they come from?! It’s like the savage hordes coming over the hill, but instead of sword-wielding huns it’s, um, hump days. Well, let’s see what’s in the old mailbox, shall we?

Full disclosure, this is an abbreviated, slightly edited version of an email I received today:

I have been a Little League President for the past eight years. My son and I read your book, Six Innings, together for summer reading . He actually read without my nagging! He loved it! He so related to Colin’s and the benchwarmer’s feelings. In fact, at a league meeting last night I encouraged all the managers to read along with their boys. Thank you again for putting in words the experiences that are so meaningful to all players.

I replied:

I appreciate the kind words. Like you, I’ve been very involved with Little League for the past ten years or so (I’m currently BURIED with “Fall Ball” details). You know, I remember the first signing I did for this book. I assumed that I’d be seeing all sorts of baseball-crazy boys — the star athletes — and it surprised me at first when a lot of the boys looking for signatures were clearly not star players. They were, of course, the readers. Or, as I thought to myself, they were the boys who maybe loved the game, even if the game didn’t love them back. I think it’s so important to remember those kids. The ones who struggle to catch a ball or make a hit. We tend to focus too much on All-Stars and the so-called best players. That’s why I focused on a typical team, rather than a team of All-Stars in, say, the Little League World Series. I wanted all types. I’m glad that I had Patrick Wong on that team, the boy who wasn’t a star, full of doubt and worry; and glad, too, that when he made a play it was a simple one. He didn’t suddenly hit a grand slam. He hit a foul ball. He worked out a walk. He caught a grounder (and, yes, struck out twice and made an error, too). But he contributed in his way.

My best,
James Preller

Baseball, This Invisible Thread

I love baseball. It’s kind of ridiculous, I know. But it’s not like I had a choice.

As the youngest of seven children, I remember lying sprawled on the tiles of our playroom floor, the television turned to a ballgame, my mother moving from the washing machine to the dryer, bending, lifting, hauling, then over to the ironing board, then back, again and again.

At one point in her life, before I came along, before preschool was in vogue – this was the 1950s, deep in the post-war suburban dream – my mother had five children below the age of seven. It kept her busy. She was busy still in the 1960s, back when I was a pup.

So there she was, that white-haired mother of mine, rooting for her “Metsies.” I learned their names – Cleon Jones, Tom Terrific, Cool Koos and Eddie Kranepool. My mother, a good Irishwoman, showed a decided preference for Wayne “Red” Garrett, the young third baseman who was an average player on his best days, but handsome in that freckled, honest, Irish way. (It was only in later years, as baseball changed, when her crushes shifted to undersized Spanish-speaking shortstops like “little” Jose Oquendo and Raphael Santana.)

I also learned the names of the players on the other side, those Mets-killers who broke our hearts. Their names were Shannon and Perez, Clemente and McCovey, Banks and Aaron.

Today I still repeat my mother’s line, inherited and ingrained, whenever a tough batter steps to the plate: “Uh-oh, he’s trouble.”

In my heart, my mother is linked to the New York Mets, and there are times when I don’t know if my love for one is a confusion for the other; or if, in my affection for the Mets, I am only expressing that childlike love I once carried – and still carry – for my mother, the soft lap I once rested my head upon, her hand in my hair. There she is at the end of the couch, a glass of crushed ice on the table, from which she constantly bites and chews. And the game is on the screen, the announcers’ voices in my ears. I am content, I am at home: the game is on and I’m with my mom.

She taught me how to catch, my mother, how to play. That wasn’t Dad’s department. Blithely indifferent, or just otherwise occupied, he didn’t care about sports. We never played catch, or hardly ever. That’s okay, because Mom did. And I liked Mom, plenty. She had a good arm and soft hands.

I remember as a Little Leaguer asking, “Mom, am I graceful?”

She liked grace, my mother, the smoothness that certain outfielders had when they drifted back to the warning track, glove stretched out, eyes in the clouds, finally cradling that ball to the dull, soft slap of leather.

“Yes,” she’d answer. “Very graceful.”

And today, like her, like then, I still snap off the television in despair when the Mets play poorly. “I can’t watch anymore!” we’ll both exclaim across the years and miles, attached by an invisible thread.

Ten minutes later, both of us will again reach for the clicker, filled with the unquenchable hope that is at the heart of every game.

Now I can see that same sweet dynamic in my own children, particularly the two boys. They follow the game, just as they once obsessed over dinosaurs and super heroes, books and guitars. Now it’s baseball. All mixed up and confused with their love for me, I know.

After all, I should, I helped sew the blanket of baseball that wraps around us.

Sometimes I even hear them say it, when certain sluggers step to the plate, Chipper Jones perhaps, or the redoubtable Albert Pujols:

“Uh-oh, he’s trouble.”

Coach Lapinski

Coach Lapinski

Here’s a piece of art by Matthew Cordell from our upcoming picture book, Mighty Casey (March, Feiwel & Friends). It’s a rhyming story inspired by Ernest Thayer’s “Casey At the Bat,” borrowing the classic poem’s rhythm and cadence, but relocated to a pee-wee Little League team that can’t do anything right. Matthew’s comic illustrations make it all work. In my opinion, he’s a huge talent — with a great sensibility — just beginning to tap into his potential. If he were available on the New York Stock Exchange, I’d be all in. Ah, to be young and so full of promise.

I wanted to share this piece because I identify with the somewhat bedraggled Coach Lapinski. I’ve spent much of the past three weeks coaching thirteen boys on an eight-year-old All-Star team. We played nine games in two tournaments; over a stretch of twenty-four days, we practiced or played games on eighteen days. During the open days, it rained . . . or I tried to cut my lawn . . . or tried to reacquaint myself with my enduring wife, Lisa. But still: A great time was had by all. And yes, I’m glad it’s over.

Back to Matthew: He’s got a cool blog — such a friendly tone to it, with openness, wit, and charm. Actually, come to think of it, I’m afraid I have a Man Crush on the guy!

Oh, yeah: I love the sound effects that Matthew drew into the illustration. Tock! Fop! Ting! It reminds me of a childhod favorite from Mad Magazine, the singular Don Martin. His illustrations always had the greatest sounds. Frak! Boimp!

A Child With Cancer

I think when you’ve had a child with cancer, as I have, certain things always make you cry. Forever after, you are prone to bouts of blubbering. Memories, little acts that touched you, stick into your heart and remain stuck there, like a forgetful accupuncturist’s needle. Time passes and something unbidden triggers a memory; the needle vibrates again, the heart goes atwitter, and the eyes well up. It’s just one of those life events that, if you think about it at all, well, it’s good to have Kleenex around. Though I prefer the back of my sleeve.

My oldest son, Nick, relapsed with leukemia in 4th grade, after having already gone through it, ages two to four. All totaled up, he’s gone through five years of chemotherapy. Imagine that. I scarcely can, and our family lived through it. Nick’s good friend since 1st grade was (and still is) a boy named Sam. I watched in awe and admiration as Nick and Sam’s friendship weathered this illness. Though Nick was bald and weary, and not a whole lot of fun to be around, their friendship endured. Even more, it thrived. I was privileged to witness the goodness in Sam, his fundamental kindness, the way he treated his sick friend, my son. I won’t describe the specifics, because already I feel as if I’m a trespasser, like I’m on someone else’s property. It’s theirs, not mine. But what I saw, I will say, was genuine love. The friendship, the loyalty, the steadfastness of two boys. And it went both ways; they both gave, and they both received.

More than anything, that experience fueled the core of Six Innings, gave the book it’s heart. It’s what inspired me when I wrote those fictional scenes between two made-up characters, Sam Reiser and Mike Tyree.

It’s a book about a Little League baseball game and, I hope, not just that. The game is the structure that allowed me to enter the lives of some of these boys that I’ve seen, and known, and imagined. I’ve changed all the details — Nick is Sam and Sam is Mike; the form of cancer is different; the characters are more “inspired by” rather than “based upon” — but the core experience remains. Friendship under duress. At the same time, I think you can still read it as a baseball book, with hits and heroics, fears and failures. It’s one specific and yet metaphorical place where real boys live, out on the diamond, on green fields, under clear skies, the purity and relative peace of boys at play, that big yellow sun shining down.

Nick completed 9th grade yesterday. Good grades, too. This morning he announced that he did twenty-five pull-ups. “Good,” I say. “Keep it up, Nick. Keep it up.”