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I’m writing from the tee ball field at M.J. Hickey Park.
Though it’s the same field I played on as a boy, not much has changed. The dugouts are still chain link rectangles. The infield is still some sort of finely ground gray rock. Crusher dust, maybe? But why? Because it’s easier to read a ground ball or easier upkeep?
Both, probably.
My son’s team, the “White Sox,” is composed of 3-and 4-year-old girls and boys. I’m the assistant coach. I didn’t want to be the assistant, or any “coach” at all. I’d done enough of that already. I just wanted to be “Dad” like my dad had been with his five-gallon bucket of balls, always willing to play catch but still not the coach. Deep down, I think I was afraid I’d take tee ball too seriously.
I signed up anyway, and before long we had our first practice, complete with three simple stations: hitting, catching, and throwing. Simple, but not simple enough. What really took place that first day was swinging, slapping, and slinging.
The White Sox have come a long way since then.
We’re five games into the season, and I’m proud to say all nine of our players can hit the ball off the tee. Some can even throw it now. Fielding a grounder is a different story, the only story, actually. Nobody hits pop ups. We’re lucky if anybody hits it out of the gray dust and into the grass.
The White Sox really love that gray dust. They draw pictures in it and build little mounds. When it’s time to head back to the dugout, the opposing team’s players run for the mounds adorned with crudely rendered smiley faces. They add moats and ears and big buck teeth.
Then, whack, here comes the ball.
The crack of the bat’s enough to get the kids to leave their creations. They run straight into each other. They butt heads and bang noses. As the scuffle ensues, the batter scurries for first base, or, sometimes, third, or, one time, a 3-year-old sprinted all the way back to the dugout to retrieve a rainbow-colored unicorn before starting down the base path again.
There are no outs. No runs. Everybody bats, every kid scores, then we trade places and do it all over again. The games last two, maybe three innings, a forty-five-minute ordeal.
After that, we shake hands and pass out snacks. As the kids suck down Capri-Suns and gnaw on orange slices, I help pack up their gear.
My son’s bat is tiny, a crimson club barely bigger than a tire thumper.
Before the season started, I wrote his name on the barrel, three silver letters in all caps, the same letters — same name — as my father, the man who taught me how to hit and throw on this very same field thirty-some-odd years ago.
FIN.
Books authored by Eli Cranor |
Broiler
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The troubles of two desperate families—one white, one Mexican American—converge rest in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant in this new thriller from the award-winning author of DON’T KNOW TOUGH.
Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw away from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.
When the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers—and to show the higher-ups that he’s ready for a major promotion—Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.
From the nationally bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs comes another edge-of-your-seat noir thriller that exposes the dark, bloody heart of life on the margins in the American South and the bleak underside of a bygone American Dream. |
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
Previous columns: |
• Writing from: My Office
• Writing from the shadow of a total eclipse
• Writing From Columbus, Ohio
• Writing from a Dusty Floored Gym
• Writing From: My office with an icepack on my lap
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• Writing from: Two-years into this "author" gig
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• Writing from: A land of dripping noses and all-night coughs
• Writing from: Another Dimension
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• Writing from My daughter’s basketball game
• Writing from My thirty sixth year
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• Writing from a Plane
• Writing from Home
• My second novel’s publication
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• Writing to you on Halloween Eve
• Writing from my bed on a Saturday morning
• Writing from my office with two darts clenched in my left hand
• Writing from the shade of my favorite tree
• Writing from my desk on a Tuesday morning
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• Writing from the airport
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