Interview with Howard Camerik

After reading and reviewing of Howard Camerik's book, The Curse of Carl Mays, I had a few questions for the author about his baseball tale. Fortunately, Howard was game to answer and for this Thursday’s off-day special, I present our dialog:

Keep Your Sox On: Especially given your background as a baseball fan (grew up a Mets fan, now rooting for the Marlins), why the Red Sox? Obviously, there's a history there, but why not the Cubs, for example?

Howard Camerik: Hmmm…the Cubs…what if Bartman’s ticket to that game is one row back, and Alou catches that foul ball…sorry about that, just thinking about something …

Why the Red Sox? Why not the Red Sox? Where else would an aspiring sports novelist turn to make his literary bones? It was shortly after Bucky Dent dropped that pitiless, black-hearted bomb when John Cheever famously said, “all literary men are Red Sox fans,” and it was just weeks prior to the infamous Game Six when Martin F. Nolan penned in the Globe, “Fenway is the ultimate protagonist of the lit’ry life, a survivor.” So if I wanted to be one of those men, be part of that life, enter the Forbidden City where the men of letters sip tea and gaze at their navels, it was only natural to look toward the sports franchise long regarded as something of an allegorical tale.

And besides that, there are a lot of publishing houses in Boston, so I thought it would make it easier to sell.

KYSO: Given the number of historic collapses over the years, why 1986 specifically? 2003, for example, seems like a viable candidate.

HC: If I can take the second part first…I first outlined the basic contours of the story, and began researching, back in 2001, before the Aaron Boone atrocity was even remotely foreseeable. Time travel only really works fictionally – I couldn’t actually do it.

But really, if you’re going to use the novel form to re-write Red Sox history, is there a better candidate than what Shaughnessy called “the denouement?” The tenth inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series probably stands out as my sharpest baseball memory, the “where were you when” story [for the record, I was a law student watching in an Ann Arbor, Michigan apartment]. I really thought a story about 1986 would evoke the most emotion, and have the most resonance … and make the best movie.

KYSO: The attention to detail in your book, especially your descriptions of life as a minor leaguer, are absolutely fascinating (and might even make a few people reconsider a pro baseball career, given how difficult the minor leagues sound). Is there some personal history there, or did you dig all this stuff up through research?

HC: Personal history? Would that it were so. [Note on usage: this seems to be a popular phrase these days, so I used it to sound hip and modern. But it is one ponderous collection of words awkwardly cobbled together, isn’t it?]. The baseball career I yearned for stalled after high school, aided and abetted by chronic elbow tendonitis. I did make a triumphant comeback, however, first, in baseball fantasy camp [see book author photo], followed by several seasons in the Men’s Senior Baseball League [which I write about] before being felled again, this time by a torn rotator cuff.

No, the description of life in the minor leagues was purely a product of my imagination, which I suppose was internalized from years of reading, thinking about baseball, and just paying attention. And re-watching Bull Durham on cable. After I had fully drafted the manuscript, I read a book called Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball written by an anthropologist (and former minor leaguer) named George Gmelch, and even I was stunned at how accurate my conjured portrayal was.

KYSO: Where did you come up with the character of Pat McCarvill?

HC: I combined the two starting guards on my junior high basketball team (Pat Badolato and Jimmy McCarvill) who I played behind. But you probably didn’t mean just the name.

I consider Curse to be more plot than character driven, and so the character was really built around the story, his history and personality traits specially designed to snap into the puzzle and facilitate the plot. In addition to baseball, I follow politics very closely, so combining the two in Pat’s character – mayor-turned-ballplayer – came particularly easy to me. At some point, I became so convinced that the role was calling out to Ben Affleck, I think I actually started writing dialogue that I could envision him delivering [Ben, if you’re out there … call me, babe].

KYSO: You've mentioned in other interviews that you got the idea for the book from an accident suffered by a teammate in a softball game, but how much did you know about Carl Mays before you were inspired to write the book? Did your idea for a plot change at all as you did more research?

HC: That’s actually a long-winded discussion that I’ll sharply edit so as not to bore your readers. Truth be told, the original manuscript, entitled A Pitch in Time, had nothing to do with a baseball curse. It was otherwise the same story, built around the Chapman incident (as inspired by my friend’s softball concussion), but with little substantive to do with Mays.
But I had this idea floating around as I was writing about the Mays angle, his Red Sox connection, etc. Ultimately, with the prodding of an editor (I hired the guy who edits the Dune series), I began to research and develop it, and without sounding too corny, I was astonished to learn how interwoven Mays was with Ruth, the 1918 Red Sox, and the Frazee purge. With that, the new “curse” element almost wrote itself. I swear, at times I felt as though I was discovering a story, not creating it, with the almost spooky way the pieces fit together.

I did take some literary license with an aspect of Mays’ career that I was surprised to learn of. It’s commonly assumed that he was denied enshrinement in the Hall of Fame because of the Chapman incident, and Curse plays it up that way. But the Chapman pitch was probably not the real reason. Many believe that Mays actually threw a game in the 1921 World Series (as a member of the Yankees). Common lore teaches that the Black Sox scandal of 1919 put an end to such things, but apparently, the break wasn’t as clean as Hollywood would have us believe. Mays was never charged, but enough sports writers believed it to be so that the taint is likely what cost him the votes he needed. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

KYSO: Howard, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions about your book – we wish you the best of luck with its success.

HC: Thanks for inviting this kid born in Queens to spend some time over here in Brooklyn. As of now, the book is available only on the internet booksellers like Amazon, and, I submit that reading it would be an uplifting thing to do during October while that useless post-season is going on. If any of your readers have follow-up questions, they should feel free to contact me at Howard.Camerik@yahoo.com. See ya.