Strike Four A Baseball Novel

Sports & Outdoors

synopsis

Synopsis

Major League Baseball has been crippled by yet another players’ strike, and the fans have had enough, tired of paying to see ballplayers with seven-figure egos but ten-cent work ethics. When baseball’s commissioner floats the idea of enlisting the minor leaguers to keep revenues flowing, Lew Pearson, the aging player-manager of the Triple-A Indianapolis Outlaws, sees his chance to fulfill a lifelong dream. Having never had more than a “cup of coffee” in the big league, Lew leaves his wife and two young kids behind to play in the bigs, even though he knows he and his teammates will just be the pawns of the owners. Baseball runs deep in his blood – his father’s own professional dreams were trampled on many years before – and despite the big asterisk that will accompany every game, it’s an opportunity that beckons him. But no one, including Lew, the owners and the striking Major Leaguers, could predict how fans would embrace these farmhands, who take the field every day not for their big paychecks but purely for the love of the game. At first the crowds are small, but as the fan frenzy takes root in ballparks across the country, both sides of the strike confront a new normal, and an audacious plan takes shape in board rooms to determine once and for all whether the Major Leaguers or the minor leaguers will get the privilege of remaining in “the show.”

bio

Author Biography

Gary Frisch is a long-time sports fan with a special place in his heart for hockey and baseball. A lifelong writer and former journalist, he has contributed many articles and columns to a variety of newspapers and magazines. He was inspired to write Strike Four as a result of multiple player strikes and lockouts that marred baseball in the 1980s and ‘90s, during which the media frequently speculated that owners might bring up minor league players to fill the rosters. Frisch works in the public relations field, and has owned his own PR agency since 2007. In 2015, he was named to Linkedin’s inaugural list of “Top Voices of the Year” for his contributions to the business networking site’s blog. He lives in Gloucester Township, New Jersey, with his wife and two children, and frequently writes under the watchful eye of his cat and two dogs.

website

Author Insight

This Isn't Your Grandfather's Baseball

The pure joy of sports has been diluted over the years, as the media has become as prone to cover salary negotiations, salary caps, labor disputes, and what players might be putting into their bodies as the action on the playing field. That's to be expected...the days where fans idolized players for their athletic prowess may be in the past. Fandom has become more distracted, and more attuned to the machinations behind what we see during games. This isn't necessarily worse or better than before. It's just a fact, fueled by the media, teams, and the leagues themselves, which breathlessly share even mundane information in order to stay top of mind among fans. And social media has been happily complicit. "Strike Four" is the first, and possibly only, sports novel that looks behind the curtain at the business of professional baseball.

Book Excerpt

Strike Four A Baseball Novel

It was an inescapable fact that over the last 20 years sports, law and chemistry had become permanently enmeshed in the sports pages. Players sued owners. Owners sued players. Dwight Gooden and others tested positive for cocaine use in the 80s, then there was the steroids scandal in the mid-2000’s. A decade ago Ferris himself was involved in a class action suit against the owners for collusion. Twenty-six owners collectively said "No thank you" to players seeking to sign contracts as free agents. The players union won that battle, and management has been trying to restore its credibility ever since. That’s one thing Ferris saw in his favor – the public tended to side with the players. But the public wasn’t allowed in the negotiating room.

Many of the owners, thought Ferris, had the mistaken belief that the game revolved around them. Not just in baseball, but in all sports. They had the attitude that players were just tools who did the dirty work, while raking in the money for the owners. And as a result of that thinking a strike might be forced. Sooner or later, he hoped, the owners would learn that’s not the case. They will learn that the players are the game. The game belonged to them. Until the owners recognized that, en masse, strikes would continue to occur. And the fans would continue to lose out. The thought aggravated him. He turned to the comics, without any knowledge that as he did so, the owners were already hammering out a contingency plan.

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Gary Frisch

Strike Four A Baseball Novel

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

This Isn't Your Grandfather's Baseball

Book Excerpt

Strike Four A Baseball Novel

Comment on this Bubble