Baseball is a central theme of my new novel, "Blue Hill," a departure from my other fiction, which has been solidly in the mystery, horror and sci-fi genres. To learn more about the book, which publishes on October 6 - and to preorder in audio, Kindle or paper formats - visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
I never could visit Fenway without thinking of my father.
I would never have admitted it to him, of course, because it
would have plunged us into issues I never intended to revisit, but it was true.
Just seeing the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square set me off.
Dad was an Episcopal priest until his retirement a few years
back, and my guess is when he gets to the pearly gates, Saint Peter will wave him
straight through.
And not only for the collar he’d worn.
Dad believed in social justice, believed that principle
mattered more than ascending the Episcopal hierarchy, even though principle had
cost him a bishopric. He believed life was about more than desiring things, and
my mother, who’d been raised in a house without plumbing, agreed. Dad went
stratospheric over war. He’d been a conscientious objector during the Second
World War, not exactly the launchpad for a Great American Hero, and his sermons
on Veterans Day and Memorial Day were thundering tirades against the
military-industrial complex. It was scary, watching the guy who read me
Thornton Burgess starting before I could walk transformed into Cotton Mather of
the nuclear age. And when I was too old to be scared, I was pissed.
Lest you imagine him as all fire and ice, it must be noted
that Dad had two—exactly two—earthly indulgences.
One was Sunday dinner, which he always cooked to give Mom a
day off.
The other was the Boston Red Sox.
Dad had played ball as a kid, well enough to be invited to
tryouts the year he graduated from high school. He idolized Foxx and Williams,
and he was at Fenway with my grandfather the day in 1946 that the Sox clinched
their first pennant in three decades. Once a year, in August, we drove down to
Dorchester, where my mother’s brother lived in a triple-decker. It was our
vacation, all we ever took—me and Dad at Fenway while Mom bought school clothes
at Filene’s Basement, where goods after three weeks were automatically marked
down 75 percent.
If I had one certainty in my young
life, it was that I was going to play for the Sox when I grew up. I was going
to have my face on Wheaties boxes and drive a red Corvette with a 427 V-8 and
when I pulled into Fenway, I was going to be mobbed by fans seeking autographs.
In other words, I was going to be just like Tony Conigliaro, youngest player in
history to hit 100 home runs.
I still had my Little League scrapbook and sometimes, for no
reason at all, I flipped through it. “Gray Hits Third Grand Slam of Season,” is
one of the headlines from the Bangor Daily News. “Gray Leads Blue Hill to Maine
Title,” is another, from the June 21, 1967, edition. I was ten that year. Ten!
No other starter was so young. We went to Hartford for the regionals, and it
was there that I faced the best fastball pitcher in all of New England.
I remember watching him warming up and thinking with a fear
worse than going to the dentist: The ball’s a blur! I’ll never be able to
hit it!
His first pitch to me was a ball, his second a strike. I
didn’t see his third until it was too late to duck: It hit me in the left
temple and I fell, unconscious.
When I came to, I was in an emergency room, an ice pack on
my head.
“You were very lucky, son,” the doctor said. “I’ve seen kids
in comas from less.”
And I can still see it—the knowing nod he and my father
exchanged.
Mom got sick right after that.
“I don’t feel myself, is all,” she started to say, and
pretty soon, she was spending most of every day on the couch.
That part of that summer is a blur—no matter how I’ve tried to
bring it into focus, all I come up with is Mom under an Afghan and the TV on
without the sound. She didn’t make the trip with us to Boston that summer, but
she insisted Dad and I did. We stayed with Uncle Bob, and on August 18, the day
everything changed, we were at Fenway Park.
More "Blue Hill: posts:
-- Reviews for “Blue Hill” are coming in and they are favorable! The reviews for my latest book, "Blue Hill," a novel that is a profound departure from my other (mostly horror, mystery and sci-fi) fiction are looking good! I will post more as they arrived.
READ REVIEWS:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/reviews-for-blue-hill-are-coming-in-and.html
-- On a return to a hometown, a reunion with a first love.
On the run from the law and deep into his
journey into the past, Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill,"
returns to his home town, where he meets Sally Martin, his high-school
girlfriend and first love. A long-buried secret will soon be revealed.
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/we-both-cracked-up-at-that-and-laughter.html
-- Fenway Park on August 18, 1967: Tony Conigliaro struck by pitch.
Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," is a young Red Sox fan when slugger Tony Conigliaro is beaned by a pitch during the Sox "Dream Team" of 1967. The pitch changed the real-life Tony C. -- and had a profound impact on the fictional protagonist of my new novel.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/fenway-park-on-august-18-1967-tony.html
-- The possibility of reconciliation, and an outrageous climb in a Maine Nor'easter.
Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," is the son of a now-retired Episcopal priest and '60s social activist. Their relationship has been difficult since Gray's childhood, but there is always the possibility of reconciliation. Maybe it will occur when Gray, now one of America's Most Wanted criminals, visits his elderly father, who lives in Blue Hill, Gray's hometown, and proposes an outrageous climb of a favorite mountain... in a raging Nor'easter. Read the excerpt here.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/mark-gray-protagonist-of-blue-hill-is.html
-- Quite a cast of characters.
Along with several fictional characters, starting with the narrator, "Blue Hill" features some real-life people -- Jack Nicholson, for example, albeit in fictionalized form.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/quite-cast-of-characters-another.html
-- Fenway Park.
Baseball is a central theme of my new novel, "Blue Hill," a departure from my other fiction, which has been solidly in the mystery, horror and sci-fi genres.
READ THE EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/blue-hill-excerpt-from-chapter-four.html
-- Listen to the books!
Listen to a clip from the audio version of “Blue Hill” Blue Hill and also some of my other books, including “Thunder Rise,” King of Hearts,” and “The Work of Human Hands.”
LISTEN:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/09/listen-to-books.html
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