The Legend of League Park

For those of you who don’t know, I have achieved a dream and published a novel. The Legend of League Park is a story about two young women who dreamed of pursuing careers in professional baseball, one as a sportswriter and the other as a professional pitcher. This novel addresses some of the struggles both internally and externally it takes to get them there.

It is also a coming of age story. For Gioia, college means leaving behind the dreams she had always been taught to shoot for and for Audrey, dealing with the last days of her father’s terminal illness, college means it’s time to forge your own path.

(There’s also touch of paranormal ghostly assistance as a thinly veiled history lesson, but I write a bit on the Gothic side, that’s how I do.)

This book has been a long time coming in a variety of ways. It has existed in several different incarnations with wildly varying plots, but then something happened which inspired the final version.

I’ll tell you a story: When I was eleven, I loved baseball. I went with my parents to Cleveland games. I watched them at home when we couldn’t go. I played basketball and softball (I wasn’t good, but I had heart.) and listened with rapt attention as my school discussed the possibility of starting a girls’ soccer team at our middle school. I idolized the women of the WNBA . I had Jackie Mitchell’s name written in my dreams. Then I was twelve and things changed. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but peer pressure had a lot to do with it. I got picked on a lot throughout my elementary years and it progressed to full fledged bullying during middle school. I quit playing all sports. My confidence in everything about myself (not just my athletic abilities, but -everything-) diminished. It took far too long to get beyond that.

Flash forward almost 15 years and I have a four year old Goddaughter who loves baseball as much as I did at her age, if not more. Not to mention the fact that this girl has quite the arm on her. I told her one day “With an arm like that, you could be a pitcher when you grow up.”

She replied, point blank, “Girls don’t play baseball.”

I was floored, but then I remembered. You can’t be what you can’t see. It’s hard to imagine being something that you’ve never seen before, even for an imaginative and (okay, I’m biased, but) brilliant child. I’m not an athlete anymore; likely, I never would have been, but that attitude that forces interest away is wrong. So, I wrote about Gioia who broke through as best she could.

The same goes for sports media. A secondary plot in the book is Audrey’s quest to become a sportswriter. As I researched the history of women in sports media, I was floored by the amount of overt sexism and sexual violence perpetrated against women in that particular career path, merely because they took an interest in a traditionally male dominated area. Little was written on their accomplishments (except countless articles listing “Sexiest Female Sportscasters”) and many pioneering women in sports media didn’t even have Wikipedia entries. That which was written chronicled events of mistreatment that disturbed me to core. I would have to give significant trigger warnings if I went into any more detail.

The Legend of Park is my first published novel. It is a dream come true for the girl who wanted to write books even before she had the proper fine motor skills required to hold a pen (and besides, who am I kidding? People write with computers now.), but there is also something in here, I hope, for the young woman tired of hearing that sports are only for boys, or who just doesn’t know what’s going to happen to those dreams she holds dear in the face of the big bad world.

So, pick up a copy and in the mean time, check out this fabulous organization: Baseball For All

The Legend of League Park is available in print or a variety of ebook formats.

 

Women in Baseball History: Amanda Clement

In Legend of League Park Gioia’s father once dreamed of becoming a major league umpire. Today we will feature the first woman paid to umpire a baseball game: Amanda Clement.

Image courtesy of the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame

One story states that Amanda’s brother, Hank, was a baseball player. On that fateful day in 1904, she traveled to  Iowa to watch him play, but there was one small problem: the scheduled umpire did not show up for the game. Hank, however, had an idea. He suggested to his teammates that his sister could officiate since she was a decent ball player herself.

Other sources say that Amanda’s family lived in the same town as the game and she was approached by the manager.

Either way, this much is true: The rest of the semi-pro team was quite impressed. She was hired immediately and continued to officiate regularly. In a theme repeated among female baseball icons of the early 1900s, she was able to use her earnings to put herself through the University of Nebraska.

[Women in Baseball History is a weekly feature in honor of my book The Legend of League Park, which will be released in April.]

 

Women in Baseball History: Sophie Kurys

Every time she got on base, you might as well call it a double. If she would have been a man, she could have played second base for any major league team. – Racine resident Mike Corona, bat boy for the Belles

“It wasn’t so much her speed. Sophie read the pitchers and took advantage of their different deliveries, and she took advantage of every mistake they made.” – Madeline English, 1996.

Known as the Flint Flash and Tina Cobb, this Flint Michigan native played second base during the years of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.  Kurys was a member of the Racine Belles and played with them for eight years, during which time she became famous for her base stealing abilities, averaging 150 steals per season. In 1946 she had her career high season with 201 steals, a record that still stands in baseball today. Her overall record of 1,114 stolen bases was not beaten until Rickey Henderson in 1994.

Image courtesy of Racine Belles Facebook Page

*for more information there is a fascinating article on Sophie at Society for American Baseball Research

[Women in Baseball History is a weekly feature in honor of my book The Legend of League Park, which will be released in April.]

 

Women in Baseball History: Lizzie Arlington

[Apologies for the delay this week. I have been hard at work, laying out the pages for the book!]

Widely considered to be the first woman to play organized baseball, Elizabeth Stroud (The real name of Lizzie Arlington), began playing for the Reading Coal Heavers, a minor league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1898. The game was reported in the Reading Eagle, and this compromises much of what is known about her baseball career:

“The spectators beheld a plump young woman with an attractive face and rosy cheeks. She wore a gray uniform with skirt coming up to the knees, black stockings and a jaunty cap.”

and of course the sportwriter added:

“for a woman, she is a success.”

Lizzie, discovered by legend Ed Barrow, would ultimately serve as a closer, preserving a 5-0 lead to clinch the win for Reading.

[Women in Baseball History is a weekly feature in honor of my book The Legend of League Park, which will be released in April.]

 

Women in Baseball History: Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Today’s woman in baseball history is a little bit different, mainly because she is fictional. She might not be well known, but Katie Casey* [and in later versions Nelly Kelly]‘s infamous plea to her beau for a date that she would enjoy has become the anthem of baseball the world over.

This song was written in 1908 by Tin Pan Alley composers Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer and it proved to be huge hit on the Vaudeville circuit, with audiences excitedly singing along to the chorus’s plea.

It has since become one of the most well known American songs, sung at almost every baseball game; a song about one young woman’s great love for the sport of baseball.

*A story written later by Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford posits that Katie Casey is the daughter of The Mighty Casey from Casey At The Bat.

[Women in Baseball History is a weekly feature in honor of my book The Legend of League Park, which will be released in April.]

 

Women in Baseball History: Alta Weiss

“I found that you can’t play ball in skirts, I tried. I wore a skirt over my bloomer– and nearly broke my neck. Finally I was forced to discard it, and now I always wear bloomers.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t begin this series with one of the two major inspirations behind my novel Legend of League Park. [The other will follow later]

Image courtesy of Ball State University Library

Alta Weiss is one of the great claims to fame of the area in which I grew up. She was born in Berlin, Ohio and moved to Ragersville, Ohio in childhood. The fact that I didn’t learn much about her until I began research on this project is something I find unfortunate.

In 1907 at just 16 years of age, she was discovered by the Vermillion Independents, a semipro team in the Cleveland area and agreed to pitch for the then all-male team. Competitors, teammates, and spectators alike were in awe of the woman they and the press had dubbed the “Girl Wonder” and news of her spread quickly throughout Northeast Ohio.  When she made her League Park debut in the fall of 1907 against the Vacha All-Stars (also a Cleveland area team), the Independents won 7-6. Soon special trains were being run into the city whenever Alta was slated to play.

Alta’s baseball stardom, though never on a pro-team, helped paved the way for her to be a pioneer in other fields as well. The money that she made from playing baseball was used to finance her education at Starling College of Medicine, which would later become Ohio State University Medical College. She was the only women to graduate in the class of 1914 and proceeded to take over her father’s medical practice.

Though she played her last officially uniformed game in 1922, she truly stands out as a pioneer woman of baseball history.

Image courtesy of Cleveland State University

“Miss Alta Weiss can easily lay claim to being the only one who can handle the ball from the pitcher’s box in such style that some of the best semi-pros are made to fan the atmosphere. -The Loran Times Herald, 1907

[Women in Baseball History is a weekly feature in honor of my book The Legend of League Park, which will be released in April.]

 

The Legend of League Park: An announcement

Some of you may know this, but in April I will be officially launching my first published work: The Legend of League Park.

This is truly a dream come true. Not only has being a published author been my dream since I was a very young girl, but the themes in this novel are very close to my heart.

The work itself has gone through many incarnations since it’s initial inception. What was originally meant to be a book about a young baseball historian discovering the Cleveland Naps (a plot I may still use in the future) has morphed into a coming of age story about two young women  dedicated to achieving their dreams, despite the “boys’ club” mentality of the fields in which they wish to excel.

In honor of this (and, of course, to build some anticipation), I’ve decided that I will be blogging each week about an interesting woman from baseball history. I’m really excited to bring you this blog series. It will begin on Monday.

 

Oh hi there, blog. How have you been?

This year I am doing NaNoWriMo and one of the Detroit region pep talks for the week included these words:

Words have power. Your words can change the world. But before they can perform this feat, you have to write them. They do no good trapped inside of you, slowly driving you mad. Now is the time to give those voices and stories and world changing ideas the freedom to spill out onto a page and be preserved there for all of us to learn from.

Ever since I was small, I wanted to be a writer. I was always writing. Even before I knew how to read and write much or could really hold a pencil, I voiced the concern to my family that I would very much like to keep a journal. When the fine motor skills developed, I was off like a rocket.

Then…somewhere along the line. Something happened. I became afraid of my words.

For starters, I had this idea in my head for a long time that I was too young to write a lot of the ideas that I had. I wasn’t “good enough” yet. I had to spend more time practice my writing and learning about writing. This is rubbish. Not only are there plenty of talented young writers, but every writer spends a lifetime learning their craft. If I wait until I’m a “perfect writer” to get these thoughts down in print, it is extremely likely that I will never write them. In all honesty, I’ll probably forget the things that inspired me to write them in the first place. And, if they turn out to be absolutely shit, I can always try again later.

Second, at some point in my life, I grew afraid of having an opinion. I had always been a shy girl, but when social media started becoming more and more intrenched in the world around me, I suddenly became more and more terrified of my thoughts and words. I didn’t want to say something and start a fight. I didn’t want people who perhaps disagreed with me to think less of me. It wasn’t, necessarily, that I didn’t want to be disagreed with (I love to be engaged in good debates); it was more that I didn’t want people I cared for to write me off because I didn’t share their opinions. As someone who tries their best to research things, I was also very nervous that I would miss an important angle and others would judge me because of it. It wasn’t just political things. I didn’t want to say I was sad that day for fear of people taking it the wrong way. I kept most things to myself and that I did say, I agonized over for hours after it escaped to the world. Many stories and essays did not get written because of this fear. How horrifying is that?

I made a pact with myself in September to stop being so fearful when it comes to my thoughts and my writing. Also, I’m going to try to update this more. Blame nanowrimo.

Let’s see how that goes.

 

My First Friday Flash-Fiction

In order to keep the creativity from stagnating during the long editing process, I have decided to try participating in Friday Flash. Below is a bit of Andrew’s perspective on his incarceration. A bit of a side dish to the first novel in “The Black Guard Chronicles”.

It’s remarkable the amount of perspective being falsely accused of murder will give a man. A month ago, I was distressed by matka making cabbage for dinner. Today, well, I’m trying to prove my innocence in an open-shut case. Going out on the town smelling like cabbage suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.

I have admit. I know it looks bad. I mean, I know he was trying to woo my girl, and I can’t say how or why he was wearing my jacket, but I didn’t do it. There are people who can say I wasn’t there. Maybe they are biased witnesses, but they are witnesses.

I can still picture almost every second of that night. Dervila had just done her hair. It smelled faintly of tea when she did that. I don’t know if it was on purpose. Girls don’t wash their hair with tea, do they? Still, I love the smell on her.  She took my hand across the table and told me plainly and sincerely everything that had happened with that stupid boy. I might have been a little angry, but mostly I just thought about how her hands were that “I don’t have to work” kind of soft. I haven’t courted too many girls with hands like that. Seamstress hands, textile factory hands, have tiny callouses from needle pricks and thread running over fingers. Maid hands dry out from oversoaping. Dervila’s hands felt like she regularly soaked them in cream. Must be nice having a powerful father.

That was it. The matter was over and done with before it began. We cleared it up. We went back to the house where my family stays. My cousin made some line about Dervila being the kind of girl who stays out all night. She went home. It was probably because for all her effort to pretend otherwise, the fact that I’m poor disgusts her. Dosia could never offend her with a line like that. But then, I went to sleep. I didn’t leave the building again the whole night. A ton of people live there. They can tell you. They have mentioned it, but no one seems to care.

Everyone whispers as they walk past. “Bottle Alley Boys.” Like it’s something fearful. I don’t even know what that means.

Well, perhaps I do. You can’t live in my neighborhood and not hear about the gangs to some extent. It’s always whispered, like a low hum running through the buildings. Still, it would make me look awful guilty to not pretend, at least.

But what would a guy like me want with the Bottle Alley Boys? I’m saving my money. I’m keeping a few cents from every dollar and I’m going to get out of this squalid city. Not sure where I’m going yet, but I hear some good things about Montana: less crowded, more trees. I could take Dervila, if she wanted to go. Her hands would lose that softness, but I think she’d mind it less than me. She always wants to seem tougher.

Of course, now they’re telling me that I killed a man I’ve never even met, so I’m probably not going to Montana.

 

Digital Publishing, Victorian Style

I’ve been thinking a lot about the blog as a medium for writing. I know that I don’t post here often and this mainly because I am still trying to find this blog’s niche. The original plan was to be about my journey from writing my novels to their (hopefully) eventual publication. This quickly fell by the wayside. The world has so many writer’s blogs, do we really need another blog chronicling the publishing process? I’m sure you’ve read enough about query letters to last everyone a lifetime at this point.

I have a couple ideas for continuation. One is based around the whole “Daughter of Rock in the City of Soul” concept a little more closely as a place to do Detroit and Cleveland history posts. Another is a forum for posting of my poetry.

And then…there’s a third…and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it: A novel in blog form.

Now, wait, don’t run away, hear me out.

Webcomics made me think of it. Unlike many gag-a-day comics that I read in print, a lot of webcomic artists that I know actually have plots and story arcs that they intend to follow. In many ways, they seem to be graphic novels on the web. The wheels then began turning…how could I translate a novel to the internet? Maybe a blog, a blog with a chapter released weekly or monthly, like the Victorian authors once did with their serials in magazines?

I’m sure this has been done before. I’m just not sure how I feel about this as of yet. I am very much a devotee of the traditional publishing format (be that paper or ebook), but perhaps for some of my writing, this might be an interesting experiment, especially something less publishable. Not “lower quality” but more niche. I mean, I am rather comfortable with putting poetry into the blog, due to the unfortunate lack of poetry publication available in other formats and as the ebook slowly takes over, I often worry about niche publications’ ability to compete with “blockbuster” authors.

So…leave me your thoughts, and stay tuned.