For purposes of full disclosure, I want advise list members
that that I read the messages in the archives about this book
before posting this comment. Because of my interest in sports
mysteries/fiction, I picked this book up not long after it
came out. Most reviews/blurbs mentioned that Hank Thompson
was an ex- ballplayer who now was tending bar in NYC. Finally
last night I took it off the shelf and was turned off by page
7.
First of all, the extent of Thompson's ballplaying was high
school. Here's the first bit that turned me off. Huston has
Thompson remembering his high school career.
"You're a four-tool player: bat, glove, arm and legs. You
play center field. You lead the team in homers, ERA, RBI,
stolen bases and have no errors."
Anyone who knows baseball knows that ERA is not a batting
statistic, but a pitching statistic that stands for earned
run average. Maybe Huston meant BA for batting average.
Here's the next paragraph.
"In the regional championship game you are caught stealing
third. You slide hard into the bag as the third baseman leaps
to snare a high throw from the plate. Your cleats dig into
the bottom of the base and as you pop up out of your slide,
the third baseman is coming down with the ball. He lands on
the ankle of your caught foot and as you continue up, he
falls down with his full weight on your lower leg."
Caught stealing, I don't think so. Clearly, Thompson was
safe, not out, so he had a stolen base and was not caught
stealing. I assume that the title, Caught Stealing, refers to
more than this incident, but I'll never know. With those
errors, Huston (and his editor) lost me as a reader for this
book and the others in the series.
Am I the only person who can be turned off this quickly by
mistakes of this type?
Kent Morgan
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