Fathers, Sons, & Holy Ghosts: Baseball as a Spiritual Experience is now available in both print and electronic forms! Ordering and download links can be found on the Book Information page, and I am also happy to say that the good folks at the Winchester Book Gallery, on the Old Town Mall in Winchester, have already scheduled a book signing for Saturday, March 18 from 11:00-1:00 p.m.
I am very excited about this book. It’s a love story and a coming of age story and a quest story. It’s my story, or at least it represents a big chunk of my story, and it’s been two and a half years in the making.
The cover, on the other hand, was about an hour and a half in the making, and if you don’t 
believe my passion for baseball has existed since the beginning, note that on the left is the ticket to the first game that I ever attended in 1965 (well, maybe, but that story is in the book). There is also a ticket from a collegiate summer league game out in Indiana in 2015, six days shy of exactly 50 years after I attended my first game. The birthday card in the upper right corner was from my parents who had saved such things, and which I discovered in going through my parents’ effects. In fact, every birthday card from age 7 through about age 12 featured a baseball theme.
The photo of the distinguished looking gentleman is Maynard G. “Mo” Weber. This card was from the early ‘80s when Mo served as the General Manager of the Peninsula Pilots, then an A league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. Mo is now in his early 90s and his eyes still twinkle whenever the conversation turns to baseball. Actually, that isn’t quite accurate because almost always the conversation starts with baseball and doesn’t turn much from that subject. Mo and I speak the same language, again as I explain in the book.
Mo is my baseball father, and of course, I have done my best to pass along my love of the game, and its meaning, to my girls. Sarah once remarked that “Baseball is my second sibling,” which was quite insightful even if spoken with a hint of jealousy. In any case the girls are on the cover as well. Becky, aged 13 in this photo, is on the left while Sarah, 8, is on the right. They are flanking the number of their father’s hero, Brooks Robinson. Every number that the Orioles have retired has been cast in aluminum and placed in a courtyard just outside Camden Yards. These monuments mark the entrance to sacred space. In flipping through the album in which this photo is stored, I see one of Becky and her husband Jesse. At some point, I guess the newly arrived Riley Harper Dice will have to have her photo taken by #5 as well. (For those of you without a scorecard, Riley is Becky and Jesse’s daughter and our first grandchild.)
That’s a quick “tour” of the cover. For a more extensive tour, you’ll just have to buy the book and read it! And a big thank you to everyone who is helping me get out the word about Fathers, Sons, & Holy Ghosts: Baseball as a Spiritual Experience.
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