Something 'magical' in writing a book?
Reflecting on "Last Time Out" and "Nashua" and "Diamond Duels"
So there I was, in Barnes & Noble the other day, walking past the sports section when, standing there contentedly on the top shelf, I spotted my first baseball book, “Last Time Out.” There was the great Ted Williams’ finishing his elegant swing and for an instant, I couldn’t tell if was staring out at some pitcher he was about to victimize or at me, the author.
If he ever saw the book, since he was on the cover, he would have figured that in this book of mine, I’d be telling a story about the moment when he seemed to bend the game to his will by whacking a parting shot into the bullpen on a raw and chilly otherwise empty September afternoon. He was asked about that swing a million times. It was something he never seemed to tire talking about.
Why not? It was one last triumph, an exclamation point on what surely would be a Hall of Fame career, a grand farewell.
And it made me think, do writers ever have moments like that?
The view from the Sports Section in Tallahassee’s Barnes & Noble.
I stood there looking at the cover, the nearby baseball book — Joe Posnanski’s “Why We Love Baseball,” a national best-seller standing by, wondering why my full cover was facing out and his only showed the side — I smiled and remembered the exact moment I had the idea. I was driving home after having a chance to chat briefly with the great John Updike.
Updike’s famous New Yorker story “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” really paved the way for a different, deeper style of baseball writing, most notably, creating what turned out to be a brilliant career path for author Roger Angell, a New Yorker staffer. Angell picked up where Updike left off, writing his way into Baseball’s Hall of Fame, just like Ted, when you come to think of it.
Was that MY moment? When I got home, I called Bill Guilfoile at the Baseball Hall of Fame, whom I’d met a couple weeks earlier and asked him if this idea I had, writing a book about the very last games in these great Hall of Famers’ careers, was a dumb one?
“No! That’s a great idea!,” he said, “Nobody’s done that book! Here, call this lady in Indiana, she works for Rowman and Littlefield. She’ll get you a book deal.” And it was done. Embarrassingly simple. Was I just following the hand of fate? So many people I’ve met and known have struggled and wondered how did you get published, like it was some magic trick. I mean, well, maybe it was.
After a summer’s worth of days in the FSU Strozier Library on the microfilm machine — the Internet was no help yet — a few months later, a big package arrived at the door on a chilly Christmas Eve.
My son, who was pictured on the inside book jacket with me, was all excited. When I held it in my hands, it almost didn’t seem real. Yeah, I remembered writing it, finding the stories, sending the whole thing in but when all of a sudden, you have a book, your book, in your hands, you wonder how it all happened.
Standing there in the bookstore the other day, looking at “Updated Edition” up to Ted’s left, it made me remember a phone conversation years and years after the first edition came out when, lo and behold, I get the very same editor who had worked with me on the first one on the telephone. “It’s time to update your book,” he said. Great idea. Why didn’t I think of that?
The creative process, at least inside my own goofy head, works mysteriously if it works at all. There are many people I’ve met, worked with, taught with, who have such wonderful ideas and profound insights. Occasionally, you’ll hear them talk about wanting to write a book, but they can’t find the time or the energy or whatever it is that makes someone find a way to actually do it. I hope I’m not getting too mystical here but there are times when it almost feels like you don’t have a choice.
My book “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump,” currently languishing on Amazon Kindle, was like that. Having worked at a Nashua, New Hampshire newspaper that sponsored an ill-fated debate for a 69-year-old Ronald Reagan and George Bush where Ronnie turned a 21-point poll deficit into a Republican Primary win in 1980, making the connection to what we’ve seen in the Republican Party ever since. Well, it was something I had to write, starting years ago. I couldn’t let it get away, tried all sorts of variations, bugged my friends, didn’t get anywhere with publishers, magazines so I turned to Amazon Kindle.
Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump is available on Amazon.
Ultimately, I got it published, managed to get 11 5-star reviews! — people loved it (or so they said.) Yet so far, nowhere, sales-wise. Then I turn on Morning Joe the other day and here are two jokers hawking their new book “From Ronald to Donald; How the Myth of Reagan became the Cult of Trump.” Hey, suckers, I was there first!
With another book due to come out in the spring — “Diamond Duels” a baseball book that came out of nowhere, you wonder how it’ll feel seeing that on the shelf.
As an author, sure, you feel a sense of accomplishment. When I was in Minneapolis this summer, I actually saw a guy pick up a copy of the book, read a little of it and buy it — with me standing there. He didn’t know I was the author, so of course I thanked him. But the whole idea of being a writer, an author, is to share something with your readers, an idea, a story, an observation, trying to establish a connection.
There are those writers who claim they’re writing for themselves. I’m not one of those. I do wish I’d kept a journal, just to see what was going through my head at a particular time. But maybe by not doing that, it let these ideas and books and stuff simmer so that when I started writing books — “Diamond Duels” will be No. 8 — I had something to offer, some words that would trickle out when I put my fingers on the keyboard.
“Diamond Duels” — which tumbled out of me finding a baseball statistical website called “Stathead” and making all sorts of — to me, at least — mind-bending historical observations about the game and the legends who played it — I think (and hope) it’s unlike any baseball book anybody’s ever read. I don’t say that to brag, though I guess it sounds that way. I wrote it that way because I had no choice.
In the six months that I’ve been writing this Substack — one friend of mine calls it a Smokestack — I’ve been constantly amazed, delighted and grateful for the responses and my ever-growing (it seems) list of subscribers, now at 182 after adding 22 new friends over the last 30 days. Cool!
Considering I’m just six months and 160 posts in, I feel lucky. And thanks for reading, everyone. The post I did on The Band’s songs being left out of the new Bob Dylan 431-track release drew some 1.24 thousand views. One I wrote about re-listening to my first Bob Dylan show, the afternoon show in Boston in 1974, drew 735. The post about the new Reagan movie, which left out MY own Nashua story, drew 457. The potential sequel to Todd Haynes’ Dylan movie “I’m Not There” drew 1.82 thousand views.
Aren’t these numbers amazing? My post on the Scottish band Big Country drew 635, a post on James Brown’s story in the New Yorker drew 752, one on Eric Clapton got 724, one on Bob Dylan’s outtake “Series Of Dreams” drew 1.66 thousand! My post on Dylan’s return to the Royal Albert Hall next month drew 1.2 thousand. views.
Many of these high numbers, of course, are aided by the kind help of my personal King of Norway, Karl-Erik Andersen, who runs the wonderful “Expecting Rain” site, a wonderful online gathering place for readers interested in Dylan and related matters. And you know, maybe that was a little magical, too. Who would ever think an old sportswriter/Dylan fan from Florida would make a connection with a Norwegian online whiz who in turn would open a door to a world of new readers?
So…if you ever wondered what it’s like seeing YOUR book on the shelf in the local bookstore and what it does to your dome… well, now you know. Thanks to all of you who drop by my Substack and poke around a little bit. Maybe some of you will start writing your own books.
Some years ago, I got to know the great Mitch Albom, who sent me an autographed copy of his landmark book, “Tuesday’s With Morrie.” I don’t think he’d mind me sharing…
“Thanks for the many hours of shared conversation and love of writing,” he wrote. “I hope this book shows you, as it did me, what magic we all have inside us.”
I think now I know what he means.
I discovered John McPhee because he did a fabulous book on Bill Bradley, "A Sense of Where You Are." Made me a McPhee fan and I've bought and read just about everything he's written ever sense. Angell had one of the most moving descriptions of the 1975 World Series, which I still think may be the best ever, but day to day, Peter Gammons, originally of the Boston Globe, was unmatched in his writing about the Red Sox. Baseball mainly has attracted some of the greatest writing, not just sports, but writing period!
Another super piece of writing, John. Content and style are major league. Never saw that when you were in Nashua. Maybe I just didn't look closely enough. No matter. You've got it in spades now. Congrats!