Thumbs-Up from Pop Matters

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/155627-summer-of-68-by-tim-wendel/

Guest on Richard Gazala's blog

Richard asked some intriguing questions about writing and the SUMMER OF '68. Here are my replies.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Wendel:    On the fiction side, I'd choose In the Skin of A Lion, by Michael Ondaatje. That's one of the titles I pull down and reread every year or so, along with The Great Gatsby and several Hemingway short stories. (See, I had to find a way to get past that single-choice criteria.) Ondaatje is better known for The English Patient, but I really enjoy Lion. The novel is set in Toronto, back at the turn of the last century. In many ways, Toronto was the city of my youth -- a glittering skyline that I saw from the opposite side of the Lake Ontario, where my family lived during the summers. This novel swirls and moves, almost like a fever dream, around several memorable characters. Nonfiction? I'd have to go with Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces, which details and emphasizes the importance of myth -- those old stories that may be a part of our very DNA. Anybody who writes has to at least acknowledge these tales of yesteryear, their structure, and how they can still reach out to us today.

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping true story of baseball and cultural history, called Summer of '68. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Summer of '68, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.
 

Wendel:    The year 1968 rocked our world and we're still dealing with the aftershocks. Culture wars? Political discord? A divisive presidential campaign? Things were far worse when it came to all those elements in 1968. Of course, the year has been written about in terms of cultural, political, even musical events. What I did in Summer of '68 was move sports to the forefront and write about a great collection of teams and personalities. Two of the most racially integrated organizations in the country -- the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers -- met in an epic World Series in baseball. Football moved to the top of the U.S. sports mountain, thanks to Joe Namath and the rise of the old American Football League. And we had the Mexico City Summer Games, which made live TV viewing of the Olympics a must for American households. I follow several top athletes -- Bob Gibson, Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain, Luis Tiant -- through this tumultuous time. What they learned and how they struggled to move ahead, I believe, is as important today as it was then.  

Gazala:    What are books for?
 

Wendel:    To help bring order, or at least a glimpse of it, to a world that often borders upon the insane and bizarre.
 

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?
 

Wendel:    Well, you start with the rules. Those are your flickering lights as you move into the darkness when you begin any new book. And then, too soon, you realize that you have to invent some more rules and techniques to try and carry the day.

Gazala:    Someone let the dogs out. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.
 

Wendel:    Q: What's the future of books? A: I sometimes tell my students at Johns Hopkins that I don't have any idea what format we'll be writing for in a decade or two or three (e-books, iPads, some blend of the internet and movies?), but I believe people will still be hungry for story. For a good story can not only entertain us, it can give us a bit of a clue about who we are and what's really important in the world.

Wendel's Summer of '68 just came out yesterday. You can find it all over, and if you want to order it from Amazon, you do that by clicking here.

Publication day

Today, March 13, is the official publication date for SUMMER OF '68: THE SEASON WHEN BASEBALL, AND AMERICA, CHANGED FOREVER. Strange how most pub dates are a Tuesday.

Library Journal? Great review

Wendel (fiction & nonfiction writing, Johns Hopkins Univ.; High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time) follows the tradition of homing in on a key year in both baseball and U.S. history. America was being torn apart in 1968, and baseball was under stress, too. The pennant-winning St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers had players at loggerheads with one another. Star players like Cardinal ace Bob Gibson were not immune to racial tension and prejudice. And yet, the ultimate story is one of triumph as these teams provided some respite and hope to a beleaguered country suffering from the effects of the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Wendel has interviewed many of the key participants to bring this crucial year to life. Transcending baseball history alone, this is recommended for baseball fans and students of the era.—P.K., Library Journal

Talking Titles

Editing continues on the new book about the 1968 season, which will be out from Da Capo this spring.
Working titles include SUMMER OF '68: WHEN BASEBALL AND AMERICA CHANGED FOREVER.
or
SEASON ON FIRE: SPORTS, AMERICA AND THE SUMMER OF '68.
Let me know what you think.

Manuscript Has Been Delivered

Relieved. Exhausted. Excited.
The pretty much sums up where my head is at after I turned in the manuscript for the new book, working title SIXTY-EIGHT: THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER AND WHEN SPORTS SAVED AMERICA. This will be out in Spring 2012 from Da Capo Books.
Of course, there is still much to do. I have a few remaining interviews to finish (with the space allotted for where that information goes), and there are photos to chase down and the whole editing process to now go through. But I believe this book has a lot going for it.
The whole idea of focusing on one of the major watershed years in our nation's history -- 1968 -- from a sports point of view was a lot of fun. Where else can you bring Denny McLain, Bob Gibson, Mickey Lolich, Bobby Kennedy, Vince Lombardi, Jim Ryun, Nolan Ryan and Tom Hayden into the same story?
I'll keep you posted as we begin the next phase of this project.

Jim Northrup RIP

Sorry to hear about the death of Tiger great Jim Northrup. Ironically, I was finishing up the section on Game Seven in the new book, SIXTY-EIGHT. Of course, that's when Northrup hits a two-run triple of Cardinals great Bob Gibson to give the Motor City the title. Northrup had a lot of nicknames, but my favorite was Sweet Lips because his teammates said he had an opinion about everything.

Rsearch on Sixty-Eight

The two teams that met in the 1968 World Series -- the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals -- were among the most racially diverse institutions in the land at the time. Willie "the Wonder" Horton was among them. The Tigers' outfielder grew up in the Detroit projects and tried to stop the riots in the Motor City in the summer of 1967.
I asked him recently how he was able to play at such a high level despite rioting and assassinations going throughout the country. He replied, "I didn't go away from home."
I said that was impossible. Ballclubs play have of their games on the road, sometimes spending weeks away from home.
Horton smiled and told me about how he went out of his way to make good friends in every American League city the Tigers visited. Good enough friends that he could have dinner with them, even bunk out on the couch in their homes.
"In that way, I was never away from home," he told me.
The year 1968 was a difficult time in our country's history. But how some of the top athletes of that time persevered can still be a lesson today.

New book coming along

I've been on the road a ton, researching SIXTY-EIGHT, a new book about sports in the year 1968. While the nation was being pulled apart back then, the sports world (baseball's Tigers and Cardinals, the rise of the American Football League, the Mexico City Olympics) was certainly memorable to watch and may have helped hold everything together.
I'm writing away -- about half way done with the working draft.