baseball | M Thomas Apple Author Page

High school or college? Regardless…

March 1, 2015
MThomas

One criticism that came early in the workshopping of what turned into Approaching Twi-Night was the fact that several of the players went to college. “Everyone knows that baseball guys go straight from high school,” was a typical comment (not an exact quote, mind you; this was something like 18 years ago). “Athletes wouldn’t use this kind of sophisticated language” was another. (This was in regard to descriptions in some of the alternating chapters that don’t use quotation marks for dialogue and call the main character “John” instead of “Ditch.”) So, uh, athletes are dumb? Pardon me for breaking the (undeserved, insulting) stereotype. Continue Reading

On the romance of baseball

February 23, 2015
MThomas

Over the weekend, I decided to make the ebook version of Approaching Twi-Night free, in celebration of the beginning of spring training. Just for a couple days. The book slowly crept up to number 3, then 2, then late last night hit the top spot in free baseball ebooks….in non-fiction.

Hm.

I guess it’s so realistic a novel that it’s non-fiction, insofar as, yes, there was a baseball strike in 1994 and there are Class A teams in New York.

“Pitchers and catchers report,” and I thought…

February 19, 2015
MThomas

Spring training is here at last! Well, for pitchers and catchers, anyway. The full teams won’t show for another week. But the phrase “pitchers and catchers report” still has a special meaning for baseball players, and fans, too.

I started Approaching Twi-Night in a spring training setting partly because of my personal experience with spring training. I played baseball in high school for four years and only once did I attempt to attend the early spring training session for pitchers and catchers. I say “tried” because, quite obviously, I was not successful. Continue Reading

Batter Up!

February 16, 2015
MThomas

Welcome to my personal author web page! Actually, I have at two additional web sites to this one. One is devoted to my blog, Taking Leave (which is scheduled to be published in late 2015 as a book by the same name. Another is my academic page which includes courses taught at Ritsumeikan University as well as my CV (academic presentations, papers, books, and so forth).

But my passion is and has been baseball. I played baseball as a high school student — not a terribly outstanding player, as my high school classmates will be happy to tell you — and eagerly follow the minute details of any game I come across.

Approaching Twi-Night is my first foray into published fiction, and although I have varied writing interests ranging from historical fiction to science fiction, I thought there was no better way to start than to return to baseball. I’ll be blogging here in the upcoming weeks about where the story of “Ditch” Klein and his teammates came from, what literary and historical debts are owed by certain elements of the story, and, of course, about baseball in general.

Good reading!

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