Leon Carter, the greatest fastball pitcher in baseball fiction

William Brashler based this supporting character on Satchel Paige. Leon Carter is a 36-year old pitcher whose signature is his fastball. He's known for facing the leadoff hitter in a game with his fielders sit on the bench, or play cards behind the mound. He calls it his "invitation pitch". It was said that Satchel Paige was so confident in his pitching to have his fielders sit down while he faced a batter. And it's confidence that Carter possesses, as well. He is so consistent that he can throw his fastball over the plate multiple times without forcing the catcher to move his glove.

In The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings, Brashler's version of Paige has been pitching for the Louisville Ebony Aces for 13 years, and is touted as the "greatest fastball pitcher in the world." When asked by Bingo Long to be the featured player in his barnstorming team, we find that Carter is initially reluctant. He's content with his current situation. In fact, he's the highest paid player on the Aces, and has one of the larger houses in Louisville where he's settled in with his wife and kids. But every man has his price, and Long soon convinces Carter to join the team, for a guaranteed amount of money that's more than he's receiving from the Ace's owner.

Brashler doesn't dole out too much detail about Leon Carter's personal life. We learn he's a well-renowned veteran ballplayer, has been throwing a baseball for 25 years and has kids and a wife in Louisville. We can deduce that because he's one of the older players in the Negro Leagues, his motivation is more about getting as much money as possible out of his remaining playing days. But, I think, we can also determine that he's loyal to his friends. Otherwise, he could easily have negotiated a higher rate of pay from the Ace's owner once the rest of the team had left. Perhaps it was one more chance to be on the open road, on the barnstorming circuit; and a chance to mentor a few more young players, that really motivated Carter to join the All-Stars.

Being a long-time veteran of Negro League ball, barnstorming, and segregation-era society, his role is the father-figure on the team, and the voice of reason. Eventually, Bingo Long makes him the assistant promoter (his "Business Man") for the team. This role is, in fact, more like Long's conscience. When decisions are to be made, Long promises to go to Carter first for an opinion, but only if Leon keeps these thoughts between himself and Bingo. The riskier the decisions, the more Bingo leans on Carter. But he also uses Leon as a prop for making the un-popular choices, such as deciding to play as many small venues as possible, instead of relying only on larger payoffs in bigger stadiums (which would mean more rest for the team).

Bingo Long and Leon Carter are the classic "heart versus head". Bingo wants to go with his gut, most of the time, while Leon is more pragmatic. When players start to get hurt and can't play, Carter tells Long to send them home. "A traveling team's got to be light or it's not a travelling team no more." He advocates keeping the team "tired" in order to keep them motivated. Carter's character is necessary stable force in this story to counter the rashness that the other characters possess.

Character Studies

Henry Wiggen, Roy Hobbs, J. Henry Waugh, Jack Keefe, and Joe Boyd.^* I can’t think of any more recognizable figures in baseball fiction. They are the iconic characters of the genre, just as Hercule Perot and Sherlock Holmes are identified with mysteries, and Holden Caufield and Captain Ahab stand out in general literature. I've decided to add a regular feature to the blog: discussions of characters that appear in baseball fiction, from the better-known protagonists to the supporting figures. The goal will be to shed some new light on the familiar faces-- those who hold the prominent role in their respective stories. And also provide insight into those come off the bench (to keep with the theme, here), but are just as important to the development and progression of the plot. I look forward to putting these together, particularly because I'll need to go back to books I haven't read in years and re-acquaint myself with their stories and characters.


^* Henry Wiggen (Bang the Drum Slowly, et.al.), Roy Hobbs (The Natural), J. Henry Waugh (The Universal Baseball Association), Jack Keefe (You Know Me Al), and Joe Boyd (The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant).

The Shot Heard 'Round the World (but never seen, again)

Bobby Thomson passed away this week. A lifetime .270 hitter, Thomson played over half his career with the Giants. He hit over 260 home runs, but he is most remembered for the one he hit in the bottom of the ninth in the 1951 playoff series against the Dodgers. That home run climaxed an amazing comeback by the Giants, in which they made up a 13 1/2 game deficit during the last two months of the season.

While there have been numerous books written about that game, and countless re-tellings in others, I want to mention two: Pafko at the Wall, by Don DeLillo (Scribner:1997) and Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World, by Brian Biegael (Crown: 2009). While DeLillo's work is fiction and Biegal's is a semi-autobiographical tale, both center around what might have happened to the ball Thomson hit out of the Polo Grounds that day in October, 1951. That ball disappeared in the melee that occurred with the celebration and there has been disagreement as to what actually happened to the ball.

DeLillo's novella is taken from his larger Underworld. In the story, Cotter Martin is a black teenager from who sneaks into the game and ends up wrenching the ball away from the hands of a playing-hooky aquaintance, Bill Waterson - a white middle-aged businessman. Chased through the streets, Cotter is offered various amounts of money for the ball, but he wants to keep it, as a remembrance of the day. In the end, Martin escapes into the alleyways of Harlem, while his pursuer is forced to retreat back to familiar territory.

Brian Biegael's father always claimed that he was the one ended up with the home run ball, and would regale his family and friends as to how he came to obtain it. Grown up, and now a reporter, Biegael decided to determine whether the baseball his father had was the one Bobby Thomson hit and, if not, then the true story of its disappearance. His book reads like a detective story, in which he searches through documents, interviews people and players, and in the end arrives at an almost unimaginable ending. I won't spoil the ending, because the book is a well written page-turner but, like me, I'm sure you will wonder if Biegael's findings define the end of the story.

The Bobby Thomson home run is one of the great stories of baseball, along with Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak, Bill Buckner's error, and Willie Mays' over-the-shoulder catch. I'm sure most players dream of hitting a game-winning home run or pitching a perfect game, while others dream of just getting the chance to play in the Majors. Bobby Thomson certainly accomplished the dream of many. As for the ball he hit - who knows? Perhaps it's on a shelf somewhere, buried under odds and ends in a box, or rotting away in a landfill. In the end, whatever its fate, the mystery just makes for a good story.

Baseball and Stephen King

I remember years ago reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and finding it interesting that Stephen King - one of America's premier horror writers - was also a devoted Red Sox fan. And while Tom Gordon is not, strictly, a novel about baseball, the Game does feature prominently in the story. And, while the level of terror in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was not up to King's typical work, the novel will keep you reading until the end just wondering at each page turn whether something is lurking around the next tree or hill. And hoping something isn't.

It's been over 10 years since King penned The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and since then the Sox finally won the World Series and have contended for several others. That may have provided an impetus for another baseball-oriented story from King, but I don't know.

Unlike Tom Gordon, Blockade Billy (Simon & Schuster: 2010) is a novella about baseball, and specifically a catcher. Told from the point of view of a teammate, the story is about how Billy Blakely became starting catcher for the New Jersey Titans and eventually was erased from baseball records and memory.

I enjoyed the story from a baseball point of view - the descriptions of the game play, the atmosphere and surroundings, etc., were all done very well and aptly provided by the narrator, Granny Grantham. But, this being a Stephen King story, I was expecting more, some level of terror or horror that would darken the tale and provide at least an ending worthy of the book's publicity description ("Blockade Billy had a secret darker than any pill or injection that might cause a scandal in sports today. His secret was much, much worse...") I started reading the story thinking of stories such as "Naked to the Invisible Eye" (George Effinger, 1973) or even some type of monster tale, such as Brittle Innings, by Michael Bishop. But, instead, King crafted just a baseball story with a bit of a twist that most people could have deduced before the end of the book. Was Billy Blakely's secret so dark and terrible that major league baseball would erase all mention of him from the record books? I'm not convinced. And I think that the ending was put to rest a little too neatly and quickly.

Overall: Blockade Billy is a nice little baseball yarn. But know going in that you won't reach a level of unexpected, or terror, that you'd expect from Stephen King. If you want a little fear mixed in with some baseball, read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

Review: Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm (Houghton Mifflin: 1973)

Period novels have their own "feel" and "texture". There's almost a naive quality to them. John Alexander Graham wrote this story in the early 1970s, during the height of opposition against the Viet Nam War, the Watergate break-in, Munich, and the beginning of the end of the Reserve Clause in baseball. I look at this period in U.S. history as the end of America's innocence. Reality had arrived in the guise of economic downturn, military failure, and political corruption. In many ways Snowstorm is similar to other novels of the period (like Love Story, in its sentimentality and innocence and Watership Down, in its attempt at social commentary).

Graham's Snowstorm characterizes the end of naiveté. In the story, a successful businessman, Slezak, forms a baseball team for the pure love of the game. Slezak totes around a souvenir paperweight – a snow globe with the figure of the Bambino taking a home run swing – as a reminder of how pure and wonderful the game is to him. It’s no matter that he knows little of the rules or what is required to field a team; his aim is the original “build it and they will come” model. His Wichita Wraith will not be based in Wichita, but in a Boston suburb. The fans will not care what they are called, or where they play – they will simply come to watch, like him, because they love the game.

His players, epitomized by the team's catcher Petashne, are also not professionals. Very few of them, in fact, have any experience and their only qualification is their love of the game and belief they can play. Their innocence is characterized by their individuality; when sent to purchase their uniforms each picks out an outfit that may or may not be an actual baseball uniform, but include garish features (such as buttons, or holes, or multiple colors) that each player admires. But when they get on the field, there is magic. Their passion for baseball elevates their skill level, and they start to win.

The story is a metaphor for the changes affecting America during the 60s and 70s. The team is so successful that it makes the jump to the Major Leagues. But like America’s confidence in itself (such as a supreme belief in right versus wrong in Southeast Asia), it is only a matter of time before the team is overcome by the weight of its own success. The increased media attention, bureaucracy, and capitalism take their toll on the players and the game they love. In a meaningful moment toward the end, we see Petashne pick up the snow globe and observe that with all the snow circling about, it’s hard to see the figure of Babe Ruth. (“What in the world is he doing playing ball in the middle of a blizzard?”)And like the demonstrations against an unpopular war, tension finally erupts in a melee between fans, the players, and management.

I enjoyed Babe Ruth Caught in a Snowstorm, particularly when I got past the over-simplistic mindsets of the various characters and was able to read the story as the metaphor it is. This is not a piece of realism, nor a work of fantasy; Snowstorm is a work of social commentary and a tale of lost innocence. With a good bit of baseball thrown in.