that town has a baseball team we most likely will catch a game. I enjoy the games, but they're not the same as they used to be, at least not to me.As a skinny kid growing up, I was never very good at sports. Even from the small pool of kids in the neighborhood I was nearly always the last guy chosen for the afternoon baseball or football games. I was pretty good at wrestling and gymnastics at school, being light and wiry, but that didn't cut much ice in the neighborhood. Kids being among the cruelest animals ever placed on this good earth, I caught a lot of flack. It amuses me now to realize I've probably made more money writing about sports than they ever did playing them.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Mostly I turned to spectator sports. During my Junior High and High School days I lived in Bethesda, Maryland, outside of Washington D.C. My best friend's father's company always gave him tickets for opening day and he gave them to us. Griffith Stadium was a grand old place to watch baseball and it was cool to see the President throw out the first ball.
The beginning of the season was, and still is, I suppose, a time of hope. Every team started new again, the past year was over and done. The new year, starting as spring pushed the bleak winter into memory, held promise as golden as any carousel's brass ring. And like the brass ring, success was always out of reach for the Washington Senators. Usually by the second week in the season the only victories we were counting were moral ones. My beloved Senators would slide deeper and deeper into the cellar until Elimination Day, the day they were mathematically eliminated from the pennant. It seemed to come earlier every year. But still I hung in there for reasons that are probably incomprehensible to non-fans, but need no explanations to anyone who follows the game.
In later years, having moved to Baltimore and owning a house within walking distance of Memorial Stadium I rooted for the Orioles. One day George Effinger and I took an afternoon off from a writers' conference to watch a playoff game. There is something glorious about stolen, suspended time like that, lazy time under the sun, drinking beer, eating hotdogs and peanuts, watching from the bleachers as the ritualistic game slowly unfolds at its own good pace.
George and I have seen a good many games together over the years. If we are in the same town for a science fiction convention and that town has a baseball team we most likely will catch a game. I enjoy the games, but they're not the same as they used to be, at least not to me.
I guess I've lost the ability to blend into the illusion. Life does not begin anew every spring. You can change cities, partners, lifestyles but the minute the first ball of the new season heads for the plate it's still you holding the bat, and the past season and all the seasons before are not simply memories, but part and parcel of your soul. Odds are that the pitch will be a sinking curve, just out of reach.
Still, I guess it's hope that keeps us in the lineup.
I hate: domed stadiums, the designated hitter, aluminum bats, salary disputes between millionaire players and billionaire owners, World Series games in the snow, five dollar hotdogs.
In spite of all that, I still love the game. It's not the same as it was when I was a kid, but I'm not the same person either. I'd call that a wash.
Not only have I written a number of baseball stories, but my first science fiction sports story was a baseball one. There's a story behind this story (isn't there always?).
Toward the beginning of my writing career I was workshopping "Louisville Slugger," a short story told from the PoV of a journeyman ballplayer. It seems that the Arcturians are invading Earth and have challenged us to a baseball game, winners eat the losers. The Arcturians find us humans quite tasty. The Arcturians, with a bunch of extra arms, are great ballplayers. They win, and at the end of the story the people of Earth line up to become snack food for the Arcturians.
George Effinger read this story and loved it, as I knew he would. What I didn't know was that he had become part of the editorial staff for a new magazine, HAUNT OF HORROR, being started by those comic people at Marvel. They bought the story and slated it for the first issue. That was great. Being in the first issue of a new magazine is pretty neat.
As it turned out, the story got bumped from the first issue because a Harlan Ellison story came in. I was disappointed, but could understand their decision: Harlan was a big name and I was just starting out. The second issue would be fine. Well, it seems they misprinted Harlan's story in the first issue and reran the corrected version in the second issue. I was bumped to the third issue. There was no third issue. The magazine folded after the second one.
I tried to get the rights back. It took years of negotiation. At first they said they were going to make a comic book out of it, but that project died. Then they wanted to hold it in inventory; for what, I couldn't imagine. The story didn't seem to fit anything they were doing. Finally, they released the rights back to me. I suspect they got tired of my letters.
About that time another magazine was getting ready to start up. George Scithers was going to be the editor for ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE and he wrote me asking for a story. I sent him "Louisville Slugger." He liked it, bought it, and asked me if I could do s sequel. I allowed as how a story that ended with everybody lined up to be eaten didn't readily lend itself to a sequel. Dessert, maybe, but not a sequel. "You'll find a way," he said. I did, and wrote "Home Team Advantage," which is probably my most-reprinted story.
Then I wrote a science fiction football story called "The Thrill of Victory," which I knew had to be followed by "The Agony of Defeat." Four sports stories, and I was on a roll.
At the beginning most of my sports-themed sf appeared in IASF MAGAZINE. On rare occasions, a story would not be George's cup of tea and I'd sell it someplace else. He felt "To Race the Wind" was too depressing (I felt it was a story of hope -- go figure). Anyway, I sent it to Ben Bova and he bought it for OMNI. Not only was I paid about five times as much as George was able to pay, but, being in an early issue, it got lots of attention. I've also published sports science fiction stories in FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, AMAZING, TWILIGHT ZONE, along with other magazines and original anthologies.
It wasn't all baseball and football. As a kid I was fascinated early on by the Indy 500, Formula 1, land speed records and such. About the time I turned 16 I spent a lot of time at the Marlboro
Motor Raceway, watching stock cars, SCCA, sedan races and occasionally going around the track on a kart that was way too fast for my skill. Later on, as a participant, I settled into drag racing. Mostly I raced at the nearby tracks: 75-80 Dragway, York, PA and the dragstrip at Old Dominion
Speedway. In the stock classes, I usually ran my 64 Corvair convertible, which, with its rear engine and great low-end torque was a killer on the smaller 1/8 mile tracks. My nemesis in that class, especially on the 1/4 mile tracks, was a local guy with a '51 Olds V8. Having had one before (see my Cool Car Page) I knew how fast they were. His seemed to be a bit faster than I remembered. It was rumored that his engine wasn't exactly stock, but nothing came of that. It was good clean fun, and I enjoyed that time.
Occasionally I ran an assortment of modified cars, the most interesting of which was an Oldsmobile-powered Ford Anglia, which would do one of three things as the light turned green: die at the line, go real fast, or catch fire. It was a tossup as to which of these three options would happen on any given evening, which made for some exciting Friday nights.
The fact that I raced Friday nights had even more far-reaching effects on my life.
Around that time, my brother Joe was taking a summer class at the University of Maryland. One day he brought in a stack of large-sized ANALOG MAGAZINEs and the girl sitting next to him started talking about science fiction and fandom. Soon Joe and Gay (his girlfriend at the time) started going to meetings of the Washington Science Fiction Association, which had put on DISCON, the World Science Fiction Convention earlier that year. Joe, Gay and I had attended the convention and had a great time, but had not really connected with sf fandom.
Joe and Gay kept trying to get me to go to a WSFA meeting, but my Friday nights were for racing. One night it was raining, so I went with them. I met the girl from his class and we hit it off. I took her drag racing with me the next day and won my class. We got married a few months later and my life turned away from racing and toward science fiction. Eventually I was elected president of WSFA and served for seven years, putting on a series of regional conventions (Disclaves) and finally chairing the 32nd World Science Fiction Convention, Discon II in 1974. I also started writing in there, and, more importantly, selling. The marriage lasted 10 years. I'm still writing. I blame the large-sized ANALOGs for everything. I'm convinced that if they had stayed digest-sized, Alice would never have tripped over them and the face of science fiction would be considerably different.
In fairness, I should note that I believe my brother has a slightly different take on these series of events, but where does the truth of anything lie? Reality can be a slippery little bugger sometimes. Anyway, this is my Web site, so I'll tell it like I remember it.
I still follow racing, but as a spectator. I watch it on television, keep tabs on the news in papers, magazines and Web sites. I go to events when I can. Locally that means drag racing at the Gainesville Raceway, Daytona, Sebring, and local stock car tracks at Bronson and Marion County.
I'm also a stone Gator football fan and after having sat through all the home games the year we went 0-10-1, I felt entitled to crow a little when we won the National Championship. I admit this fan stuff has driven me to the point where I truly believe that orange and blue is a natural and proper color combination (as opposed to, say, garnet and gold, which are the colors of the dreaded Florida State Seminoles) and that while FSU's "Seminole Chop" is a childish and inappropriate display, the "Gator Chomp" is a magnificent display of school spirit and a tribute to our state's finest reptile.
The writer part of me realizes that this is all simply a game, but it really feels good to set logic aside for a Saturday afternoon and sit in the stands and root for the home team. And if a writer wants to see what it's like to dance on the edge, they should sit next to someone painted orange and blue in a roaring, packed stadium. It's all filed away, all grist for the mill.
I used to play tennis, but I haven't in a couple of years. I wasn't very good at it, but I enjoyed it. I enjoy white water rafting when I'm out west and going down
quiet Florida rivers by canoe, kayak or innertube. I play a mean game of Full Contact Basketball, usually the Old Farts against the Young Turks. There are only two rules. The first rule is that there are no rules. The second rule is the Old Farts keep the score. Bill and I also get together once in a while to toss a basketball for a game of AMOEBIC DYSTENTARY or SHISTOSOMIASIS, which is HORSE for the terminally warped.
So I guess it's natural that I use sports in my fiction, either as the central part of the story or as background. There are moments in sports of supreme achievement and bitter failure, of noble actions and hurtful deceit. It can be a matter of big business, nationalism or individual endeavor. In sort, a mirror for everything that we do.
I'm very fond of these kinds of mirrors.