The Boys of Summer

[Alerak]

Preface

When I first decided to write this story, I had no idea what I would be getting myself into. The Newport Gulls invited me to spend their inaugural season in the clubhouse, mixing with the players, coaches, and team officials, to tell the tale of an independent league in a sport dominated by Major League Baseball. I accepted their offer, imagining that I would get a quirky story I could write several blog posts about and use to drum up some interest in my other writing from a new fanbase. What I got, instead, was something I could never have dreamed up.

To tell the truth, I had never been very interested in baseball. I was a local, growing up just on the outskirts of the cities in northern Rhode Island, and the game was a part of the town culture. Sure, I had played some Little League when I was much younger, but my interest in the sport had never blossomed. I tuned in and out of the goings-on of the Boston Red Sox like any good New Englander, acting as though I had supported the team all along during the 2004 and 2007 World Series runs. But to me, baseball was little more than a side-interest, a good way to spend a couple of hours having drinks with some close friends.

So when the Gulls reached out, I was rather surprised. Why me? I had a small but devoted following of my personal blog and had managed to publish two books to that point (one of which I still remain fairly certain no one but my mother has read), but I was, and am, still small-time. Why the local boy from Coventry? Surely the team could afford to bring in someone who more than a couple of hundred people knew.

Well, as I would come to find out over the course of the 2016 baseball season, the Newport Gulls and I had more in common than either of us thought. A small-time writer was the perfect fit for a small-time team. The struggles the Gulls faced were more human than anything I could have possibly imagined, and their victories were made all the sweeter by the fact that I got to know these men in a way that many a fan never will.

I’ve decided to tell this story in the only way I could do it justice. Long gone is my idea of a short series of blog posts. The Newport Gulls deserve to have their story told, and I can only hope that my pen is capable of treating it with the respect it deserves.

This is more than just a baseball story. It features the great American pastime at its core, but to call it just another sports tale is to do it an injustice. The experiences of these men, young and old alike, shape so much more than what happens on the diamond.

The boys of summer have taken the field, and I am lucky enough to watch their legacy unfold.

((Author's Note: The following dynasty is an attempt at a narrative-driven tale based on the happenings of OotP. I'm looking forward to telling the story of the Newport Gulls and the New England Baseball Association. The important things you should note about my world are as follows:

• The NEBA is a fictional independent league that exists alongside Major League Baseball, the Nippon Professional League, Serie Nacional, and the real American independent leagues.
• Former MLB players on the tail end of their careers and minor league players that never cracked the majors are heavily present in NEBA. That being said, my main focus is going to be on those fictional players generated by the game.
• I am not managing any team, merely following the Newport Gulls for the 2016 season (and maybe beyond).
• The author of this story is a journalist who has joined the Gulls clubhouse for the course of the season.

There might be more that come up that I need to specify in here, but until then, I'm looking forward to writing this! Hopefully I'll bring a few of you on board as readers.))

[Alerak]

Chapter One: Spring


“When you think of baseball, what comes to mind?” Really, it’s an easy question to answer. I blink for a moment, looking at Jose Munoz, the general manager of the Newport Gulls, searching for any indication that there’s more coming. He nods back at me, his eyes betraying that he already knows what I’m going to say. “Well?”

Fine. Easy enough. “Home runs. Balls and strikes. Rounding the bases.” This last suggestion elicits a small smirk from Hunter Kinney, the assistant general manager who practically looks as though he’s fresh out of high school. Not for the first time, I wonder where Jose found Kinney and what on Earth could have made this young kid qualified for the job. “The World Series,” I add, stretching the limit of my admittedly small amount of knowledge about the sport.

Munoz sighs, looking at me with a neutral face. The Massachusetts native has been in the game a long time, bouncing around various front office positions with both failed and successful independent league teams. Most recently, he oversaw the financials of the Cascade League, a small independent league in Washington and Oregon. Or, rather, he would have had the Cascade League not folded before a single game could be played.

“Right. That’s what most people tend to think of.” He lists off a few more, including several names of Major League players that I’ve heard of only in passing. “Really, it’s this sort of stuff that dominates the game as far as the general public is concerned. Home runs are sexy. Going to the ballpark on a hot summer day, having a couple of beers, watching Trout or Stanton or Ortiz blasting home runs left and right, that’s what people think of when they think of baseball.” I can tell he’s reaching the point of his rant as he flows through the crescendo.

“You know what nobody thinks of when they think of baseball? Playing in the damned spring in New England.” Kinney laughs at the sudden abrasiveness in his boss’s voice, and I find myself slightly taken aback. Munoz, however, looks nothing but serious. “Did nobody think of this? I swear this place never gets warmer than 40 degrees in the spring.”

I can’t say that I blame Munoz for his annoyance. Major League Baseball, as it turns out, plays all of their spring training games in either Florida or Arizona, retreating south to the warmer climates so teams like Boston and Minnesota won’t have to play their practice games in the snow. The New England Baseball Association, however, doesn’t have this luxury. At this point, Munoz knows much more about the finances of the league than I do, but that does nothing to abate his frustrations. As we speak, the radar warns of snow heading in the direction of Newport.

“What are we supposed to do?” He asks, the question pointed at no one in the room. “They didn’t even put a dome on the stadium!’

This wasn’t my first interaction with Munoz and Kinney, but it was the first time either of them had seemed comfortable enough with my presence to open up about their opinion on anything beyond the players they had in camp. Both had reacted almost exactly the way I thought they would when the team’s owner, a millionaire by the name of Richard Weller, had invited me to spend the season with the Gulls: less than thrilled to have a journalist permanently stuck around their every operation.

“Well, maybe it won’t be that bad,” I offer.

Munoz looks at me. “You’re from Coventry, right? You should know how this works. They say it’ll be 1-3 inches, and next thing you know you’re waist deep in snow.”

I’m spared from any further colorful comments by the sudden appearance of team manager Allen Richards at the office door. Richards is relatively young for a manager by baseball standards, and at 38 is barely older than several of the players he’s responsible for. He greets me with a casual nod and shrug of his shoulders, and looks straight to Munoz. “I’ve talked with the umps. We’ll play until it looks like a real mess out there. If things get bad, we’re calling the game.”

Munoz sighs, something he seems to do quite often. “Alright, fine. Better than trying to find a white ball in the middle of Narnia.” Then, to my surprise, the general manager points at me. “Take him with you. Teach him a thing or two about the game.”

Allen eyes me up and down. “Fine. Come on.”

[JaBurns]

Good luck! One of my favorite books is "Boys of Summer" about the Brooklyn Dodgers.

[shipfb21]

love the premise of this story. good luck. ill def b following