Out in the Stands

By Shae Connor

I’ll admit up front: I’m not particularly a softball fan. I mean, I have nothing against softball, and I’ve watched games here and there, but my attention’s mostly focused in a slightly different direction. I’m a huge baseball fan. And I got it from my mother.

My mom grew up in south Georgia in the middle of the last century. At the time, the South had not one single major league professional sports team: no football, basketball, hockey, or baseball. The closest Major League Baseball team to Georgia was the Cincinnati Reds—“close” being a relative term, in the days before hourly commercial flights and the interstate highway system.

The biggest baseball market back in those days was New York City, something that hasn’t changed to this day. With the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants heading to California and the Mets yet to be born, that left the Yankees as the team with the most national media coverage. Television was still a relative rarity in the rural South of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, but everyone had a radio. And so, my mother became a Yankees fan.

She attributes her interest mostly to her favorite player, Mickey Mantle. (He was certainly cute back in the day!) She also has a slightly younger brother who was a Dodgers fan, so of course she had to pick a rival team just to irritate him.

Her biggest baseball memory from those days is a story she’s told me so many times that I can picture it as if I were there. She was at school in the fall of 1960, her senior year, while the Yankees were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates in a World Series for which the Yankees were heavy favorites. In fact, they ended up outscoring the Pirates 55–27, but the Pirates fought hard, making it all the way to Game 7 at old Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, and a tied game at 9–9 going to the bottom of the ninth inning.

Then Bill Mazeroski came to the plate. Anyone who’s been a longtime baseball fan knows what’s coming next.

Mom and her friends were huddled around the transistor radio one of the boys had smuggled in to school, holding their breath. Mazeroski wasn’t considered a home run threat; he hit only 138 in his entire career. But he sure picked the perfect time for this one: he hit the second pitch over the left field fence, instantly making his name a dirty word for Yankees fans.

Thankfully for me, by the time I came into the world in 1968, the Braves had moved to Atlanta, so I wasn’t stuck being a Yankees fan. Still, it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that Ted Turner bought them and started broadcasting the games on what would become his “Super-Station.” Suddenly, we had baseball on TV nearly every day. I learned the game quickly, with Mom as my tutor. Naturally, because they were right there, the Braves were my team.

I never gave up on them, not even when they were the worst team in baseball through most of the 1980s. And I’ve been rewarded for my loyalty. Over the past 30 years, they’ve become one of the top franchises in all of professional sports. They had a few lean years there for a while, but they’ve made a comeback recently, and right now, I’m watching them play the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, leading the series 2-1 and the game 5-2.

This year has also been different because my dad has suddenly starting watching the Braves. He’s never had much interest in baseball, thought he’s always indulged us, but now he’s right there with us, cheering on our team. (I think maybe he decided to give in out of self-preservation. He and my mom live with me, and my sister and her husband, who live nearby, are also big fans. He’d be greatly outnumbered if he didn’t join the party!)

Annie Clark, the main character in HARD DRIVE, is a lot like me—more of a baseball fan than a softball fan. But she’s drawn to the latter because of her crush on Eve Frederick, one of their college’s star players. Once Annie and Eve start dating, though, Annie’s focus shifts, and she starts following softball much more closely than before. She even gets a batting lesson from Eve—although it doesn’t last long, because they’d rather focus their attention on each other. And no softball or baseball can compete with that!

To celebrate baseball, softball, and the release of HARD DRIVE, I’m giving away an ebook from my backlist and a collection of swag including a HARD DRIVE bookmark and a set of my HUG ME and NO HUGS buttons! Just comment below for a chance to win.