Jimmying Square Pegs Into Round Holes

his week Spring Training ended and managers and general managers around baseball had to decide who to keep with the big club, who to send down and who to "designate for assignment", baseball's euphemism for getting canned.

The Yankees' Justin Maxwell, 28, hit .310 this spring, but because of the number of outfielders the Yanks already have, he got cut. Francisco Cervelli, 26, the Yankees' backup catcher the last few years got sent down to AAA after the club traded for another catcher who's older, has less experience and isn't as familiar with the club (probably as an insurance policy against the smattering of concussions that Cervelli's had the last few years). And then the Washington Nationals sent down John Lannan to AAA after being their Opening Day starter the last two years and having a good spring. Who knows what that was all about?

One of the hardest parts about writing is tossing out material. Last summer I outlined 10-12 pieces for a collection of baseball short stories. Each story had its own angle and its own cast of characters.  I liked all of it. Now that I've decided to make the collection of short stories into The Boston Squeeze, the brief history of a team, I have to admit that some of the stories and their characters won't make the cut.

I've been racking my brain how to make them all fit, but it just ends up being like jimmying square pegs into round holes. Sure, I could break out some sandpaper or a chisel, but they'll still wobble. They're not a good fit.

But like Cervelli, I know where to reach them when I need them. And hopefully they'll be back with the club soon.

Baseball's Afterlife

n 1997 the expansion Florida Marlins (established 1993) beat the Cleveland Indians (established 1901) to claim their first World Series title. Baseball purists scoffed at their victory. They hadn't paid their dues. They hadn't been around long enough. Wah wah wah.

The Marlins then disbanded the team and lost 108 games in 1998, the worst finish by a defending World Series champ ever. Since 1999 (including their 2003 World Series title year; average attendance 16,089), they have never finished better than 15th in attendance (2000), only better than 26th that one year.  Hoo-rah.

In baseball more than perhaps any other sport, this is justice. No one should play 162 games a year and win it all by mistake goes the thinking. Stretch this thinking out and no one should have one great year and make the Hall of Famer. No one should do one great thing and be awarded keys to the Pearly Gates. The highest honors - immortality, never to be forgotten, remembered for eternity - come with time. That's tradition. Tradition is built over time.

A number of religions offer versions of the afterlife and baseball is no different. Baseball, the religion of Bull Durham's Annie Savoy, offers its players, executives and broadcasters a whole slew of options: Cooperstown; retired numbers; days at the stadium in one's honor; fans booing new players who try to wear your old number; and for those lucky enough to play for the Yankees, Old-Timers' Day.

With the days of gold watches upon retirement and pensions going the way of the Expos, the tradition of Old-Timers' Day becomes a bit more precious. While I find it hard to believe the Yankees are the only team that has retired players that their fans are willing to come out and see again, I have no idea why only one out of Major League Baseball's 30 teams celebrates their retired players every year. But as they say, the less of something there is the more precious it is.

The same can be said for induction into the Hall of Fame or having one's number retired; the odds of such achievements make Mario Mendoza look like a Sunday beer league batting champ. Assumption into baseball's afterlife depends on performance (either wonderful or wacky) over a long period of time.  That's tradition.

At the end of the day, whether you're let in by St Peter or the Baseball Writers Association of America, you gain immortality. In other words, you are not forgotten. You are remembered for eternity.

What is unique about what the Yankees have done by making Old-Timers' Day an annual event is that they have made heaven a living tradition; whether you were an all-star or not. You wore the pinstripes, you did us proud. Put the uniform back on. Play in the sun. Tip your cap when the crowd cheers your name. Thank you.

As the '97 Marlins learned, it's possible to be great and to be forgotten by one's fans. Had the long-suffering Indians won the '97 Series members of that team would be heroes in Cleveland forever because the Indians have tradition. The team has existed longer than most of their fans. In other words, by existing longer than the lives of their fans there is a foreverness about them. The Marlins, with the newfound celebrity of a lotto winner, could not claim that.

To write about an expansion team in The Boston Squeeze is to write about those on the short end of immortality; those who lay the foundations of the tradition, a foundation that can eventually support immortality, a foundation similar to the ones we build with our lives, our families, our communities and so forth.

The Squeeze Is On

n recent years it has become de rigueur for authors - rookies in particular - to handle their own marketing. At first the idea grated on me, especially when it made the marketing folks of publishing companies look redundant which didn't stop them from taking their cut. Now with groups such as Kickstarter, I like the idea of putting together my own marketing campaign (probably because I'm not paying some clown to watch me work).

I mention this because as you may have noticed my posts recently now bounce back and forth between the business end of getting Hooey Savvy off the ground and writing the next book. So for Hooey, I'm working on how to present my project on Kickstarter and acting as project manager.

The next project, a collection of baseball short stories I'm tentatively calling The Boston Squeeze, is coming along. I originally wrote it as 10-12 independent short stories, but now I'm working them together under the umbrella of the Squeeze, Boston's fictional National League expansion squad. That idea alone has me tickled, but I'm also excited about the new process I've developed to write this one which I'll discuss next week.

I Like Byron, I Give Him a 42...

This past summer I fumbled along as a pastry cook to my chef's irritation. In an attempt to improve my production, he asked me what the greatest American invention was. A rhetorical question, I allowed him to answer: The assembly line. "Set up your assembly line and let it work for you," he told me. I did it because if I didn't I was gone. With time I learned that it took the thinking out of cooking and whenever you can take thinking out of anything you gain in speed.

My last novel, Any Color You Want, took at least nine drafts and a few years. But, that's the way novel writing goes, right? It takes drafts, it takes years. It's not cooking. It's not something that comes out of the oven the same day ready. Right?

Or is it? In Michael Eldridge's screenwriting course he made us fill out character questionnaires. These questionnaires forced us to think long and hard about each character, major or minor, to the point where these characters themselves could have entire screenplays written about them.

In preparation for The Boston Squeeze, a book of baseball short stories that I started writing last summer, I dug up the seven questions Eldridge asked us to consider for each character. I then tweaked what he gave us and built my own assembly line.

But perhaps "assembly line" is not the appropriate phrase. It has a physical, orderly connotation to it. Let's call it mapping. I'll map out each character, story and location three times each because I find my first attempt typically errs on the side of cliché. It takes another two to break through that wall of stereotypes to find the individual.

Once these are ready I won't have to think about each character, story or location. I can just write.

For some, the idea of a literary assembly line is apostasy. Writing should flow, they argue. It should come from inspiration. I do not believe there is one approach to writing. I have yet to attend a reading where an attendee didn't ask the author about their "process" during the question and answer session. I have also yet to attend a reading where an author gave a good answer. By good, I mean a detailed, useful answer. Like Mr Keating in Dead Poets Society, I have no desire to Moneyball writing. But I believe that there are detailed processes available for writers that, if followed, will not only separate them from amateurs, but streamline the writing process.

Another benefit of this system, hopefully, is more consistency. A good writer will retain command over his characters from start to finish; a poor writer loses track of his characters' characteristics. This leads to the characters either saying or doing things you'd wouldn't expect them to or you get the feeling that they aren't characters at all, but rather personifications of whatever clever thought or idea the author just had and can't help but share the story (and character) be damned. Oh have I done that before.

I won't know the results of this experiment till the Squeeze is through, but I'm hopeful.

Progress Update: Sent in Hooey Savvy to the copyright office. Yeehaw.