I’m pleased to announce the release of my first ever baseball story. I’ve been in love with baseball since I was nine years old, and I’ve been wanting to write a baseball story for a long time. I finally have, and now it’s available for only $0.99!
In fact, this is just the beginning of a complete work of fiction I plan on writing which will be a historical fiction work about a fictitious minor league independent league team. But it’s more than just about baseball. I’ll admit it. I have definitely been influenced by W.P. Kinsella in this regard and will certainly focus on the mystical elements and lore of the game as well as the human emotional part of our national pastime.
So this story is just a teaser of where I’m going with it, and I can’t wait to keep writing on this project. Soon!
In the meantime, here is the story’s blurb. I’ll post a excerpt later in the week. Please share this with all the baseball-loving folks in your family.
Thanks!
THE HUNDRED PITCH AT BAT – BLURB:
August 1949. Rochelle Stadium. Town of Winosook. Deep in the Alleghenies.
This is the story of how I became a doctor. I give all the credit to Archie Showalter, a ballplayer on the independent league team the Winosook Iron Horses. I was there that day when he had his historic at bat—an impossible one-hundred pitches. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes … but I did. I was sitting right behind the crafty reporter Pepe Weiss from the Winosook Watcher as he came to sit next to Archie Showalter’s wife down the third baseline in order to ascertain the meaning of the improbable at bat. As her husband kept fouling off pitches, she started crying, and I eventually understood why.
It didn’t matter what was thrown: high and tight, way outside, ten feet high, or right down the middle. Showalter fouled off every one with a determination and whimsical flare that bordered on the miraculous. But when Iron Horses owner Raymond Blythe announced over the loudspeaker that each additional foul ball would earn Showalter a bonus, Archie did something that no one had ever seen, or will ever see again. Because he wasn’t hitting for his team. He wasn’t playing out his contract. He was on a deeply personal mission, and his courage changed the course of my life.
This is the story of the hundred pitch at bat, and why I went back to medical school.
Author Mark W Sasse 