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.
To learn more about the book, which published on October 6 - and to order in audio, Kindle or paper formats - visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
I close my eyes and I can see the sun setting over Fenway,
can feel my hand inside my glove, a Wilson that Mom gave me for my ninth
birthday. I hear Dad, happy for the first time since Mom took sick, explaining
with uncharacteristic enthusiasm why the bleachers are the statistically proven
best place to catch a Tony Conigliaro home run because of how he pulls the
ball—nothing, of course, about how the bleachers are all we can afford. I
didn’t come to that realization until much later.
“Today’s the day, Mark,” he said, “I feel it.”
I said: “Does He feel it, too?”
And Dad saying impishly: “Who—the Big Guy?”
This was Dad at his wickedest—you knew he’d be good for an extra
Coke, a day like this.
“Yeah, the Big Guy,” I said.
“Oh, yes, He feels it, too,” Dad said. “I can tell, because
we’ve been doing a lot of talking lately.”
Talk was what Dad called prayer, when explaining it to
little kids.
Even if you’re only marginally into baseball, you know where
this one goes.
Jack Hamilton was pitching for the California Angels when
Tony C. came to bat. I had Dad’s binoculars and I followed Conigliaro as he
left the warmup circle. The first ball was a strike. Conigliaro fouled the
second off behind first base. The next pitch, a fast ball, caught Conigliaro in
the left cheekbone. I heard it—I swear I did, three hundred and seventy-nine
feet away—a sound like a hammer on wood.
Tony C. fell.
 |
| Fenway Park on August 18, 1967. |
The crowd went silent, and Fenway Park suddenly seemed frighteningly huge, and then the woman next to me began to cry.
She was a woman like Lisa: pretty, ponytailed, dressed in
cut-offs and a tee shirt with Tony C.’s number. I remember having stared at her
breasts when she wasn’t looking—how I saw Dad sneaking a look, too. I remember
her telling me how she went every weekend to the club where Tony C. hung out. I
remember the smell of the baby oil she rubbed onto her arms and legs, tanned to
bronze, like Bridget Bardot, whose picture I’d secretly cut from a Look
magazine from the library. I was a boy, discovering, awkwardly like all of us,
sexuality.
I remembered all that and could not but wonder, sitting
there at Fenway now with my own son more than thirty years later, where she was
now and did she still feel good enough about herself to tan or did she heed the
emerging warnings about skin cancer, and was she a grandmother—and did she have
even the faintest memory of the boy sitting next to her that day.
I didn’t cry, at first.
I knew that any second, Tony C. would get up, brush himself
off and take first base, and the next time he faced Hamilton, he would send his
darn beanball all the way to Kenmore Square. Yaz would knock one out, too, and
maybe George Scott also for good measure, and that would teach the Angels a
thing or two about messing with the man.
But Tony C. didn’t get up.
He lay in the dirt, motionless, as men in white rushed out
with a stretcher.
I started to cry then. Dad talked soothingly and held my hand,
and when I didn’t stop, he led me out to Landsdowne Street. I didn’t know, of
course, that he’d already decided I would never play baseball again, or that
the tumor inside Mom would kill her before New Year’s Day.
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 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.
READ THE EXCERPT:
http://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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