Back when I was a senior in high school a character popped into my head.
He was Polish naturally, and large and devilishly handsome like his creator.
One teensy difference between us: he made Babe Ruth and Willie Mays look like chumps on the baseball diamond, and I throw like a girl.
In time - and we’re talking more than a decade here - a whole roster of players came to surround him. I knew who his teammates were, where they were born, their career stats, and how they eventually made their way to the Great Diamond in the Sky.
About three years ago I decided it had simmered enough. It was time to get it on paper and out of my head.
The problem, as I saw it, was simple: it had all been done before.
All baseball stories boil down to two simple scenarios: The Bad News Bears, where a down and out team of limited ability sucks it up and wins it all: and the Crafty Veteran, where an old, battered player with a reverence for the game must pass the torch to a talented youngster ignorant of the game's beauty.
Some stories use these plots but craft a wonderful tale atop them, and I knew I’d resort to a bit of it along the way.
But my lead character wasn’t old and decrepit, he was in his prime and a force of nature. And the team wasn’t horrible, it was a recent World Champion with a roster that inspired awe in its fans.
So I had another idea. What if you said “screw this” and went 180 degrees from the norm?
What if you had a team that not only won, but won big?
A team that not only won the Championship, but every game along the way - all 162.
Impossible, of course. No team has ever won more than 116, and anyone that cracks the century mark will be the odds on favorite to win the World Series.
But this was fiction, and what better way to give a Bronx cheer to the established formula?
Besides, the team in the story is my hometown Milwaukee Brewers. I have fond memories of ‘Team Streak’, the 1987 version that won 13 in a row and also featured Paul Molitor’s incredible hitting streak. If any team should play host to the streak of all streaks, it should be my Brewers.
Going down that road was risky. Not only did it strain the believability of the story, it risked alienating readers who had no inclination to root for Goliath as he crushed David.
Making it work meant relying on a whole new set of rules, including the needfor strong personal conflicts between some of the main characters.
But that’s a story for another day.
Work on the actual text of the novel began on July 23, 2003, with a targeted completion date of December 1st.
With the exception of two weeks where work interfered, I progressed pretty steadily through September.
By the 28th of that month I had 61,406 words on paper.
And then nothing.
I hit a snag where I felt like I’d lost my focus, throwing down every thought in my head rather than catering to the demands of a reader.
Remember, these folks were in my head a long time. I could fill a phone book with what I know about a single character. I was overwhelming the plot with useless little details.
Then the 2004 election, a move, my wife’s pregnancy, and personal issues delayed me even more.
I also failed because - primarily - I lacked the discipline to finish the gig.
In November of ’04 I created Slapinions, and the rigors of having to come up with 600 words every few days - words that were good enough to be read by strangers - helped restore my confidence.
Time to try again.
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