All the world's a baseball field

I like sports. I played them as I kid. I tried to play them as an adult. I watch them now. I like everything from the competition on the field to the spectacles in the stands. Sports events, whether Little League games or Super Bowls, are among the world's greatest stages.

For that reason, I have used them as settings in my books. Those who have read The Mine may remember that Chapter 34 is set at a minor-league baseball game in Seattle in 1941. In this chapter, the longest and arguably the most entertaining in the Northwest Passage series, protagonist Joel Smith tries to win over a reluctant Grace Vandenberg with humor and bravado and eventually succeeds.

Baseball, in fact, is a recurring theme in my works. In Mercer Street, three time-traveling women, long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans from 2016, watch the Cubs play in a rare World Series game in 1938. Later in the novel, they go to Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, and listen to Lou Gehrig declare that he is "the luckiest man on the face of the earth." In Chapter 64 of Hannah's Moon, history teachers David Baker and Margaret Doyle discover a mutual love of the national pastime at a minor-league game in Chattanooga in 1945.

Two books feature chapters set at college football games. In The Mine, Joel Smith tries to start a "wave" forty years before it becomes a stadium staple. In Mercer Street, Amanda Peterson makes a new friend at the Yale-Princeton clash on November 12, 1938.

In other novels, characters make social inroads at a bowling event (The Journey), a tennis match (Class of '59), and the Indianapolis 500 (Indiana Belle). Other characters in other books sail (The Mirror), roller-skate (River Rising), ride horses (The Fire, River Rising), or pedal a bicycle-built-for-two (September Sky). Only in The Show do the main characters refrain from sports events and recreational activities. And even then, Joel and Grace dream of going snow skiing.

Will I do more sports settings? Without a doubt. When people go to Pamplona, they run with the bulls. When they travel to Chicago, they check out Wrigley Field. Few devices in fiction writing lend themselves more to humor AND drama than sports and recreation.

College football will make another appearance in the second Carson Chronicles book, set for a summer 2018 release. After that, I will have to conjure more possibilities. Perhaps bobsledding. Stay tuned.