Twenty-Two and Counting

More than a few people have asked me why the cover image of CRIME SCENES, my recently published collection of stories from Level Best Books, is a picture of baseballs, with a bloody thumbprint on one. I can't take credit for the image; that goes to Shawn Reilly Simmons, Level Best's cover design guru. I do quite like it, though. I've written before--in my very first SleuthSayers column, in fact--about the connections I see between baseball, my favorite sport, and my approach to writing. So the picture is appropriate in that way. Beyond that, I like the griminess of it, the black-and-white broken up by the shocking red fingerprint, the dirty, used baseballs. It speaks, I think, to the generally noirish nature of my stories. These are not fresh-from-the-factory baseballs. These baseballs have been places. These baseballs have seen things.

Two of the stories in the book do directly concern baseball. In "Give or Take a Quarter Inch," a retired pitcher must deal with a bizarre ransom demand when his wife is kidnapped. In "Chasing Diamonds," an aging pickpocket and his young apprentice have to pull off a job in the crowd during a Houston Astros home game (at Minute Maid Stadium when I wrote the story, though it's now called Daikin Park).

The pickpocket is on a quest: he wants to attend a game in every major league stadium. As it happens, this is a quest he and I share, though he's a bit ahead of me. He only needs Seattle and Miami to complete his set of thirty. Last week, I was in Kansas City, where I watched the Royals defeat the Mariners five-zip behind a complete-game shutout thrown by Stephen Kolek. Scratching Kauffman Field off my list brought me to twenty-two current MLB parks where I've seen games. Eight to go: Seattle, Miami, Philadelphia, Yankee Stadium, Texas, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Oakland (though I guess, now, that's actually Las Vegas, or will be).

Because of the way my brain works, I'm compelled to add that I've also seen games in five stadiums no longer in use: the original Yankee Stadium, Turner Field in Atlanta, Olympic Stadium in Montreal back when the Expos were a team, the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and Milwaukee County Stadium.

What's interesting (at least to me) is that I still feel compelled to complete this checklist, despite the fact that my actual interest in professional baseball, as it's played today, has waned. I still love the basic game itself, but the many rule changes over recent years, mostly aimed at speeding the game up, leave me cold. They also seem a bit pointless. I have yet to meet the person who won't watch a game that lasts three hours, but will watch one that lasts two hours and fifty minutes.

I hate that instant replay is now part of the game (and I say this as a lifelong Cardinals fan who watched my team lose the 1985 World Series due to an indisputably blown call in game 6, not that I hold a grudge). The fact that, as of this year, even ball and strike calls can be challenged is, in my opinion, inane, yet another intrusion of AI into a field where it isn't needed. I was recently at a White Sox game that went into extra innings, using the new rule that extra innings begin with a runner on second, an innovation that only disrupts the structure of the game and dissipates any tension that's been created. In Bull Durham (the best film about baseball ever made), Kevin Costner's Crash Davis says there should be a constitutional amendment banning AstroTurf and the designated hitter. AstroTurf has, thankfully, become a thing of the past, but the designated hitter is now used throughout MLB, rendering much of the strategy and subtlety of previous generations moot.

Kauffman Stadium

I miss the days when pretty much every team had franchise players who spent their careers in one town, their abilities and personality shaping the entire team and the way they played: Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Ozzie Smith, Willie Stargell. No doubt the players are better off now, but it's hard to generate much affection for a team when the players get reshuffled every year. My heart broke a little when Albert Pujols left St. Louis, and has never fully healed.

All that said, actually being at a game is still exciting, and many of today's parks are beautiful. You still get the big, soulless concrete donuts--Toronto, Tampa--but there are a lot of parks that have been thoughtfully integrated into their neighborhoods and built with character and history in mind, as in San Diego or Baltimore. And of course there's always a special thrill in seeing someplace like Fenway or Wrigley, where decades of ghosts are almost visible on the basepaths. Plus, there are still players and moments that can thrill. I was at the Nationals game in 2018 when Max Scherzer notched his 300th strikeout of the year, and I'll never forget the game in Anaheim with a crowd--many of whom had come from Japan--absolutely rabid to see the unbelievable pitcher/slugger Shohei Ohtani. My favorite memory may be from a 2001 game in Atlanta when Cal Ripken, playing in his final year, hit two homers, earning a standing ovation from the Braves fans.

To bring this all back to writing, my wife suggested a while ago that I commemorate my quest by writing stories set at every ballpark I actually see. It's a good idea, but one I've been slow to act on. There's Houston in "Chasing Diamonds," of course, but the only other park I've worked into a story so far is San Diego's Petco Park, where an obsessed cop trails a suspect in my "Taking the Hit," published a few years back in Guilty Crime Magazine. I'm working on a story set in Dodger Stadium now, though, and who knows? Maybe in a few years I'll come out with Rounding the Bases, a collection of thirty stories set in thirty parks.

Rate Field, home of the White Sox

Anybody got a better idea for a title?

AND NOW, THE NEWS

Speaking of publications . . . 

Aside from Crime Scenes, I've gone the first five months of 2026 with no stories published, which is a long dry spell for me. It's about to end, though, as I have two very different stories scheduled to come out on June 2, just a couple of days after this column goes up. I try to limit the self-promotion here, but I'm so happy to finally be putting something on the "2026 Fiction" section of my website that I can't help but call them to your attention.

First up, Level Best Books brings us WISH UPON A CRIME:CRIME FICTION INSPIRED BY FAIRY TALES, edited by my fellow SleuthSayers Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson and featuring a host of today's best short crime fiction writers. Is that a terrific idea for an anthology, or what? My story is "Hansel and Gretel," and has a former cop trying to track down the titular missing siblings after his arrest of their father results in them being turned out into the streets. I don't like playing favorites, and I've never published anything I'm not proud to have my name on, but if forced to name a story from recent years that I'm most pleased with, this might well be it. The anthology as a whole is dynamite, and I urge you not to miss it.

And now for something completely different: in a column a couple months back, I mentioned in passing a call for submissions from a publication called Antifa Lit Journal. Their third issue, subtitled Diversity of Tactics, will also be released on June 2, with a range of poetry, fiction, and essays addressing the current political situation. My contribution, "Blue," is a story I originally wrote in the summer of 2020, at a moment when protests against law enforcement abuses were becoming a regular occurrence, even as the pandemic and lockdown continued to make every part of life feel uncertain and dangerous. It's about a cop trying to decide where he stands at one such protest, and it was written out of anger and fear and anxiety, the result being something quite unlike anything else I've produced. I never found a home for it until now, and it's a little depressing to realize that it is, if anything, more relevant today than it was then. I can't exactly say I think you'll enjoy it--but if you seek it out, I hope you'll find it has something meaningful to say. What more can a writer hope for?