Teaching Down in the South Side of Chicago

Your first thought is you are going to get shot.  Could GPS really have screwed up? No way. Turn around. But you don't you keep driving and looking for the school. And there it is between some run down homes and you park in the gated lot with razor wire along the top and go on in and face the room full of Latino men and women who have come to learn. And you are the only one who doesn't speak Spanish

So you trot out all your writer tricks. You have used them before with other students at more affluent schools and they worked but here not so much. The stakes are much higher and no one has time to lose. Everyone has children and everyone works several jobs. And it is a rough area and many live in even rougher areas. So you plow through looking for an alley to walk down where you can meet on neutral ground.

And they realize that you are not like the others. That you too are on the outside and the stories come out and the guards come down and they turn into students like any other students. And then they read their essays and you understand the odds. So you try harder and then it is over and you are driving back to the suburbs

Your wife asks you what it was like and you try and say how it was...but for once, words fail you.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Baseball Fields in the Dusk

Had to go over and drop off some stuff before the signing on Saturday at the Kane County Cougars Stadium. I found the office and dropped off the sign and some cards and then was walking back to my car when I saw the open gate. Yeah. I had to do it. The sun was slanting down and there was no one there. What the hell. So I walked in and up to the edge of the ball field.

And I just stared at the empty field with the breeze blowing over it. Minor League Feeder Team For The Cubs. But how many guys make it? How many dreams go on and never come back. And while I'm standing there a guy walks up behind me. Yeah. I do it too he says. I stare at him. I mean stare at the field when no one is around. I mean its my job to keep the skunks out. You know the animals. But when no one is here. I go out there and sometimes I stand on the mound you know. And I wind up and just pitch.

He laughs. I cant do it very well. I had bone cancer and they put cement in my back but what the hell I can stand there and see what they see you know. He looks at me then. What do you do? I tell him and he smiles. So you wrote that book...wow thats' great. I guess you love the game about as much as I do. And then we just stand there not talking and staring at the field.  He shakes his head.

All those dreams huh?
Yeah. All those dreams.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Summer is Not Passing

But the corn is already high. I am way out in the country on my bike and a field just two weeks before was short nubby green rows has now become corn higher than my waist. And it gets me thinking. Is the summer really passing? No. The summer is not passing. Then why do I notice the light changing already? What is that weird cool snap at night.

Ok. Cool Summer. We are not having a hot one so far. This is all just after Fourth of July jitters. There is still baseball. There is still the pool. The kids are still home. Nothing has changed yet. Fall is not close. We are at mid summer and there are many days of biking left. Still there is that nagging feeling that something is slipping away.  And you want to grab it before the water slips through your fingers like those old stone fountains you used to drink from at the playgrounds.

So I ride on and it is deep summer again. The slowed time is there. Summer is not passing. Still...the corn is high.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher on .99 Cent Kindle Download

The Real End to The Natural

Just finished The Natural again. And there was that ending again. The Bernard Malamud ending that is not like Hollywood. The exact opposite in fact. Roy Hobbs takes the payoff and misses the final pitch and strikes out. He does tell the judge and Memo and the bookie to go where the sun doesn't shine but he is a broken man in the end with no future...just another drifter in Depression era America.

And the book is different in that it is really a treatment of baseball during The Great Depression. The Natural with Robert Redford is a much more upbeat tale of a pitcher who gets knocked off by a woman who shoots him early in his career. Years later he comes up but he is much older with only a few good seasons in him.

But the real difference lies in the ending. In the novel the natural does not pull it out. He simply cant get his mojo back and when he strikes out he is accused of being in on the fix and there are people who want to ban him from baseball. But Roy Hobbs has banned himself as he becomes just another person in Depression era America.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

The Writers Vacation

Writers don't really take vacations they just change where they work. But saying that a vacation is about the only place you give yourself permission to do the kind of work you like. Reading is work. Writing is work. Yet during the normal days you give yourself over to the work of making money. A different focus altogether. But on a vacation it is actually ok to read and write and think.

And you would think well this is what a writer does. But only a writer who is not under pressure and I don't know many of those. Pressure makes you constantly re evaluate what you are doing. Is this going to make a difference? Is this going to sell books? I should be doing more. Is this marketable? What am I not doing?

And these thoughts do not give you the permission to sit down and read a book for enjoyment. Or to write something that may not end up between two covers. You just don't. But on a vacation you are able to go back to when you first started and pick up a book that you really wanted to read or to write something that just hits you.

I guess that is why they call them vacations.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


 

Summer in Wrigleyville

It comes like that. Bang. Eighty five degrees and humid. And there is a game tonight and nobody has geared up for it yet. There is just that slowed time of the summer in the city. And you run across the street and its hard to believe there will be thousands of people in just a few hours. But right now it is just you and the old ball park and the workers and the people who hang around. Do you have a buck...no I don't.

And it isn't summer but it has dipped in for an early reminder after such a winter. That vacant feeling is already here and you are thinking about baseball and just goofing off for the day. But there is work to be done so you do it and now you are sweating like crazy. Too hot already? Not after this winter. Bring it on. But you are sweating. And so into the cool darkness of a coffee house.

And the cops are there. And some of the workers from the ball park. They are relaxing before it all begins. Wrigleyville is mostly just cold and empty during the winter. The bars and stores and the park have to make it during the season. Everything is focused around the game. The one event that gives everyone a purpose.

And then it's time. The slowed time is gone and soon there will be that singular cry...Play Ball! The season has begun again.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

The Fantasy of Max Perkins

I have been reading Scott Berg's Biography of Max Perkins and it is really just unbelievable. This man was something of a Saint and after that he was Santa Claus. And after that he was brilliant. It really is a world Gone with The Wind. Take the financing of F Scott Fitzgerald after The Great Gatsby tanked in sales (unbelievable right) and he was broke again. Perkins would then gin up a collection of short stories and front him the money. Or he would front him the money against a possible movie sale on the novel he was working on or on serialization rights. Or he would just loan him the money.

Or how about discovering Ernest Hemingway and going to bat for words he could not bare to utter himself. Perkins could not stand profanity yet he went against the owner of Charles Scribner's and Sons to pull for Hemingway's right to include such words. Or how about discovering a young Fitzgerald and sending back the novel three times (This Side of Paradise) for rewrites and then going against the powers that be at Scribners and threatening to resign if they didn't publish him. And he had just started there!

Or how about taking Tom Wolfe's novel Look Homeward Angel and editing it from a the rambling mess to a cohesive book and then doing it again for his second novel that was more than a million words. And taking the author into his house while he did the editing and enduring his  verbal drunken abuse all the while he did him the biggest favor anybody would ever do for him by publishing what would have been an unintelligible mess.

These stories of go on and on. I have a great editor and I have no complaints,  but Max Perkins belongs to a different world when writers were Gods and editors were angels of mercy. Pure fantasy in the year 2013.

www.williamhazegrove.com
The PItcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have

When Fiction Meets Reality

The high school is old. It smells of those old trade schools that put students into jobs. Why shouldn't it? The school was built in 1901 on the edge of Chicago. A monster taking up a full city block with all those immigrant voices still echoing in the halls. And you go in there into the other world that is very far from the white suburban life. There are real lives here that are really just hanging on and you have come to sign their books.

And the school  bought them with Federal Funds. They would not have the books otherwise. The librarian tells you before you speak that they come from unspeakable problems. They deal with things that you have no idea of. Some of the kids are homeless. And your book is about that. A Mexican American kid with nothing. A sick mom. An abusive dad. A one in a million dream and a broken down pitcher who cant stop drinking. And it is fiction and you created it in your very safe world but now you cant turn off your laptop.

Because here it is. They don't have anything. They do have abusive fathers. They are raised by single mothers. They do have one in a million dreams. So you give your speech and you sign their books and you tell them to never give up on their dreams. And you hope you made a difference. You hope your book  helped them along. 

But you know when you get in your car that you are leaving and they have to stay. And you go back to your white suburb. Its only fiction after all.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Piticher...sometimes a dream is all you have

Review of Scott Berg's WILSON: A Man Who Put Country First

You cannot help but be moved by Scott Bergs 743 page biography of Woodrow Wilson. His fight for what was right is almost unbelievable by today's standards. The man never did one thing for himself that did not put the country first. Even when he was out of office when most people cash in on their position Wilson walked from millions of dollars because they smacked of using his office for personal benefit. And Woodrow Wilson was not a rich man during a time when there was no Presidential pension. In fact he considered going back to work because he needed the money.

But the heroism of Wilson will break your heart as he led the nation to victory in World War I then watched his dream of The League of Nations be destroyed by a recalcitrant congress led by Henry Cabot Lodge. Imagine going over to France for six months to hack out the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I and fighting for a A League of Nations so a war like this would never occur again and then coming home to have your own government refuse to sign the treaty and worse to make it their mission to destroy the League of Nations. Sadly, we can relate.

And this did kill Wilson in the end. He was literally fighting for the League of Nations when he had the stroke on a whistle stop tour that made him into a semi-invalid in the White House. And yet he never gave up. He never compromised. He stayed true to his vision of peace and justice for the war ravaged world. He knew the danger of another World War and it broke his heart when he saw his treaty destroyed because of partisan politics. Again. We know the feeling.

And in the end Wilson was vindicated sadly. The Treaty had no vehicle to stop German aggression and of course war did come. But looking back on this man of ideals through over very jaded prism of 2014 we can only sigh and hope that this type of man has not vanished with his time. This is a biography well worth your time

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have


 

Sad Day For Baseball and A Sadder Day for A-Rod

If you have a lot of money then you can get your way in America. Most of the time. But A-Rod might have hit the proverbial wall as he tries to overturn the ruling by the arbitrator  to lift his season suspension. His lawyers marched in but the problem is the judges aren't buying anymore. A-Rod was busted and now everyone knows he used the drugs and now it is really just about watching him try and get all the money that is on his contract. He will probably never play again.

And yeah it is another sad day for baseball. The standard comeback to the pro A Rod forces is "everyone does it. He just caught." Ok. Lets take that it's logical conclusion. Someone robs a bank and gets caught. Everyone does it we just got caught. Ok. Some people may do it and not get caught so does that mean the people who get caught should be let off? How about this one...how great would A-Rod have been without the drugs?

We will never know. He is a man with an immense amount of money and money is power and so the drama will spin out but A-Rod is permanently damaged. Baseball has been damaged but not as much as the man. Baseball will continue and the A-Rod era will be over and people will talk about him and then they wont talk about him at all.

That will be his ultimate punishment.

The Pitcher...Sometimes a Dream is all you have


www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Components of a Bestseller

Bestseller. It has a ring to it. But what are the components to a book that make it take off when another book sputters. First. It has to be good. And maybe that lets out a lot of books. Good is defined by the reader who tells another reader who tells another. Bestsellers are a word of mouth phenomenon when it is all said and done. Even today with the Internet the word is still passed on from trusted source to trusted source.

This is why the people who buy  two hundred five starred reviews get little traction. The reader is missing in that scenario. And yes bait and switch is alive and well. We will still download a book that looks great from the Amazon reviews only to find we have been had. The reviewers were friends or family or they were bought and paid for. This sadly happens.

But the book that is honestly reviewed by someone who really loves it is a double edged sword. Not only will that person review the book they will then tell someone about it. It happens more than you think. I get asked a lot what I am reading and I will rattle my brain and say...well this is a great book that I read a while ago. I even helped sell a copy of Wilson's biography when a man picked it up and stared at it and I spouted out and said, 'That's a good book." We talked and then he bought it.

Yes of course you have to market. Yes you have to do all those thousand and one things to get people to notice your book. But really the real test is is your book good enough to have someone in a Barnes and Noble blare to someone else "hey I read that book! It's good." That is the acid test of any potential bestseller.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

Baseball is Over...bummer

With the Boston Red Sox winning the Series that ends the season. And it was sort of anti climatic even though it was the first win in Fenway since 1918 and that says something. But I don't know. Watching the guys all have the victory pile in the field you just couldn't feel like wow so that is it. That is the end of the season and it just made you want to get a few more in and wonder if the summer and baseball had slipped by one more time.

Because baseball is associated with summer and summer is associated with being a kid and lazy days and swimming pools and not going to school. Maybe it is just associated with leisure. And those guys in their uniforms and their hats look so much different than the football gladiators. Football players are beginning to look like people from another planet. They are so big and the equipment is so massive and they hit so hard you just aren't sure anymore who is really behind those facemasks. But baseball you know who the guys are.

They are the same guys you played with in some sandlot or in some street or in some yard. And even though they play the game at the very top it is still just baseball. And baseball is something every kid in American learns to play at an early age and then learns to watch as an adult. And both activites take you back to something you just cant get your arms around..

Time. And it does slip away.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher

The World Series in the Modern Age

Ok. So the World Series begins. Here in Chicago it is cold. It snowed yesterday. And we are clearly in an early winter mode though it might break again. But the fact that baseball is being played still is nothing short of amazing. Baseball belongs to warm days and a slow summer pace. The ball game playing somewhere on a radio is part of the summer. Time does slow down in summer and we look to our National Past Time to take the measure of the hot months.

In Chicago it is Wrigley Field that takes you back to a time when baseball was the sport. It is an old ivy covered stadium that is now finally going to be retrofitted. But it still has that old tang  of summer hot dogs, beer, peanuts. The game simply cant be played when it is cold out and we don't have that association. When I was researching for The Pitcher I was stuck by how many players were farm kids and how many players hated winters. The off season was just hell then.

But now we have the series and football is in full swing. The two sports are in two different universes. Football is a gladiator sport played under any condition. Baseball seems almost quaint in comparison. Of course it is not quaint. It is a hard fought battle that will be played out over the next two weeks. With football under siege now because so many players are getting their brains scrambled baseball might be the sport we are left with.

I guess that would be one way to make sure The World Series is the only game in town.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Parent Sports

Maybe it is the hope we will never get old or die. But for some reason parents go into this regression back to when they were twelve. It happens when their kids play sports. Suddenly the cares of the day which centered around making a buck take a back seat to winning a game nobody cared about before. Suddenly a  baseball game played by twelve year olds in some dusty field in the middle of nowhere has the import of a life or death struggle for the parents.

And then parents go back to being twelve. They scream. They yell. They argue. The son or daughter now has an advocate they never wanted.  They will see imaginary sleights and grand conspiracies directed against their progeny. They see scholarships and pro careers in the offing as a travel league uniform and a self important coach are the signal flares that something beyond league ball beckons and this moment could be the bellwether between obscurity and fame.

I kid you not. Listen to any parent who has a son who is about ten years old and have demonstrated some talent. There is no longer any humor in their voice as they discuss the league choices and the coaches who "want" their son. It is hilarious when you are on the other side because you have been there. You rode the train of this could really lead to something right up to the day high school ball implodes and your son says he doesn't want to play anymore.

And the parent sports end right there. No longer. No more games. All that sublimated rage goes back to the gym or overeating or the good old standby of drinking like a fish. And the worst thing is the parents realize they are no longer twelve. They are old and their sports progeny is now in college and they wonder distantly what all that was about.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

 

Why Our National Past Time Just Isn't The Same

The NY Times had a recent article about our National Past Time becoming less releavant. Seems people  just don't watch baseball anymore like they used to. They go to the games but they don't watch on television as much. Something is up in Mudville. Could it be the doping scandals where one big hitter falls after another. Or as the Times speculates is there something else going on. Could it be we are changing.

Baseball used to a sport of action back in the nineteenth century. It was considered a very exciting sport. One that rivaled the American spirit for settling the country. But now it is our past time. Our kickback sport. Problem is we as a people don't really  kick back anymore. Football is our sport now. Something violent. Something dangerous. Something unpredicatable. Baseball is none of these things. Baseball is a conservative sport played by conservative men. A long drawn out game of chess that flares up and then goes back to sleep.

But we are not a sleepy people. We just don't have the time to kick back and watch men bat a ball around and trot around bases. We want to see gladiators who knock each other senseless. We want to see men literally try and knock each other out. And we crave more. We may have outgrown our own national sport. Our life moves at nanosecond speed now and we have not a moment to lose. We literally don't have time to eat anymore much less watch a slow game of baseball.

So to take a day and sit back and have a beer and watch men in the summer knock a ball around. I don't know. Sounds pretty nineteenth century to me....sounds pretty nice.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Publishers Weekly Review of The Pitcher

                                                              

While ostensibly a contemporary baseball story, Hazelgrove’s expansive fifth novel also tackles issues of class, immigration law, and inequity. Thirteen-year-old Ricky Hernandez has a 75 mph pitch and dreams of making the freshman baseball team in Jacksonville, Fla., as the first step toward a professional career. He’s dyslexic, of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, and is ceaselessly taunted by his peers, led by a kid named Eric with an inside track to making the team.

While most of Ricky’s teammates can afford sports camp and private lessons, he and his mother are broke due to his abusive father’s lack of financial support and his mother’s mounting medical bills. Despite her deteriorating health, she has loads of attitude, brains, and charm. She singlehandedly persuades their neighbor, “The Pitcher,” who played in the World Series, to set aside his beer, leave his garage, and coach Ricky. 

Hazelgrove (Rocket Man) measures out a generous sprinkling of American idealism while weaving in legitimate threads of sorrow, employing the oft-used baseball metaphor to fresh and moving effect. Adult characters are particularly well-crafted, giving the book crossover potential.

 

 

The Best Years

They go fast. One day you are putting the ball on the T and then the next you are driving home from a high school game that is your sons last. In between are a million games played in dusty hot fields with your son while you as the assistant coach get to go along for the ride. And you don't know that much about baseball but nine years later you know it all. Because you have been there all along as your son learns the game and then became good and then became talented and then finds out that talent has limits too.

And you have gone to McDonald's a hundred times. You have gone to Dairy Queen a hundred times but that is all over now. No longer do you savor the games won and lament the games lost. No longer do you discuss the game with the other dad coaches and replay the dramas as you coach first or second or you call the game from the dugout. No longer are you discussing the game driving home in the twilight or better still finding yourself still there in the parking lot with your son talking it over as the sun rims the trees.

Because he has grown up and college is not far away and baseball games are no longer. You no longer have bats and balls and hats and gloves in the back of your car. You no longer have field dust on your shoes and all over your seats. That now belongs to memories. And occasionally you find yourself driving past the old ball fields. They are empty now and it is getting toward winter. And you slow just a little and feel the old tug.

And you know then...those were the best years.

The Pitcher


 

Interview with Seattle Intelligencer on The Pitcher

William Hazelgrove's earlier-released novel, Rocket Man, was a seriocomic look at the angst of suburban life. His new novel, The Pitcher, has just been released.
Your earlier novel Rocket Man was a harshly cynical look at life in suburbia. What made you decide to write about that?
When I moved to the suburbs from the city, I looked around and saw no one was really making it. In fact, people were not even keeping up, and houses were falling into foreclosure. This led me to question the whole concept of the American Dream and how only a few can attain it. So I took this character Dale Hammer and made him an everyman for each person who goes for it with the house and the kids and the dogs. And of course, he cannot keep up, but he does find a resolution at the end.
Rocket Man reminded me of the works of Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day. Ford has resisted efforts to compare him with other great writers by stating, "You can't write. on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself." Do you agree?

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Yes. You have to write with your own vision, but I must say I was influenced by Ford and Russo. Both men take a hard look at the American landscape and see its dips and crevices and all the pitfalls built into our middleclass culture. When you sit down to write though it is only you and your voice.
Rocket Man started out as quite humorous but then turned more serious as it went along. Was this intended, or did the story simply play itself out in this fashion?
It began as a lark and the voice was just rolling but then the book took on bigger themes. I didn't really intend that to happen but I just follow where the story takes me and that is what happens to Dale. Ultimately he has to decide if his life is authentic and if it is not, what he is he willing to do about it.
Would you provide us with a brief synopsis of The Pitcher?
A boy with a golden arm but no money for lessons. A mother who wants to give her son his dream before she dies. A broken down World Series pitcher who cannot go on after the death of his wife. These are the elements of The Pitcher. A story of a man at the end of his dream and a boy whose dream is to make his high school baseball team. In the tradition of The Natural and Field of Dreams, this is a mythic story about how a man and a boy meet in the crossroads of their lives and find a way to go on.
You are not Hispanic, so how is it that you decided to make the protagonist of The Pitcher a Mexican-American teenager?
I am not Hispanic, but I have gone through hard times and I know what it is to hang by your fingertips where everything can fall apart at a moment's notice and the odds are stacked against you. That is really the character of Ricky. Also, I have written novels about African Americans in the South, and it is the same thing. Once you have the voice you have the story.
Have you had experience with playing sports in general or baseball in particular?
I participated in football, wrestling and track in high school. The baseball knowledge came from coaching my son who was a pitcher.
Do you concur with the notion that one's essential nature is demonstrated while playing sports?
Yes. I think you are tested on the field in ways that squeeze out every emotion you have. And certainly the person you are comes through.
Ricky and his mother are discriminated against in their community because of their ethnicity and poverty. Did you draw on personal experiences in writing about this?
I used the racism I see and read about in everyday life. It is not hard to imagine being a minority in this country because every day we see what happens to people who are discriminated against.
In the novel, the protagonist Ricky states that, ".we are equipped to handle all the bad (stuff), you know. But good things are a little trickier." This reminded me of Truman Capote's view that more lives may have been ruined by answered dreams than unanswered ones. Could this be true?
Yes. I think when you are struggling you go one day at a time. When suddenly you can breathe, you look around and evaluate where you are. In a way the struggle keeps you protected.
In The Pitcher, a former pro baseball hero decides to help Ricky, whose dream is a relatively humble one. You novel seems to affirm that a personal dream or goal is essential. But is there a danger when people, young or otherwise, attach themselves to goals that will not come to fruition?
The tragedy is if you don't dream big. Failure is inevitable for everyone, but for you that doesn't mean you should not dream or go for it. Just strap on your backpack and run as fast as you can. You never want to say you did not try.
View the original article on blogcritics.org

What Mothers Wont Do For Their Sons

I wrote a baseball novel but it is a different type of baseball novel. It is about a mother who has a dream for her son to make the baseball team and she does this by becoming his coach. And then when she cant coach him any further she gets a broken down World Series Pitcher to help him. And she does all this with Lupus. And she never gives up .Ever.

And I based it on my own wife and other mothers I had seen where they will do anything for their sons. Anything. And it was confirmed with the reviews that have come in from mothers. I originally thought this would be testosterone novel with boys and men as the primary audience. But it is not really men that are reading this book as much as women. The reviews are mostly by women and they respond to the Maria character and what she wont do for her son Ricky.

All good fiction deals in universals and this must be one of them. A mothers love that knows no bounds when it comes to her son. A mother who becomes a coach and then gets a reluctant old grouchy pitcher to come out of his garage and quit drinking beer and coach her son. It is an amazing testatment to will. The will of a mother.

Review of The Pitcher

Where did the Summer Go?

You start out in early June telling yourself that summer is long. That you are just in the beginning of June and there will be unending days of sunshine and heat. And you feel good that the warm sunny days are just the beginning. And even when the fourth of July rolls around you still feel like there is lots of summer left. Why there is all of July and August! Lots of time to do all those things you do in summer. Like vacations. Swimming. Playing with the kids. Lots of time.

And then somewhere in July when the days turn weirdly cool you have a premonition. You think for the first time that the summer is half over and you better start getting your time in because it is going. So you go to that ballgame. You go on that vacation. You go to the pool. And then just like that it is August 1 and somebody has mentioned school and the summer camps are over and those weird cool nights are coming back already. Still it is only August.

So you roll along. You still believe there is plenty of summer left even though the grass is burned out and the trees look funny. The leaves are curling. Now there are a few more of those cool days and you realize the heat of the summer is behind you. Still. It is only August. But then comes the nuclear bomb of summer. About August 15 your wife or husband mention school is starting next week. What??????????

And that is it. School begins next Wednesday and the summer will end. Because everyone knows summer is over when the school year begins. It has always been that way. So now you are down to less than a week. And you realize, you have missed summer once again.

The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have