Hitting a Homerun on Inspiration by Nicole Asselin

Well, we made it through week 4306586 (does time even matter anymore?) of social distance and isolation. Congrats everyone!

One thing I miss is baseball. Probably not surprising since my debut cozy mystery is titled Murder At First Pitch. It is set in the fictional world of an independent league baseball, located on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Luckily, my second book was completed (and currently in edits) before the quarantine. I’m not going to lie, creativity has been a little lacking for me since we locked down. Usually I have the Red Sox games to keep my creative juices flowing, but now there is nothing.

The first book in the Ballpark Mysteries was written exclusively during the historic Red Sox baseball season in 2018. I used the team as inspiration and found myself loving to write during summer days out on the deck with Joe Castiglione (voice of the Red Sox) on my radio.  This year, with no sports on, I’ve found it harder to get into the headspace of my own fictional baseball team.

A breakthrough came this week when ESPN began airing Korean Baseball League games. It’s a surreal experience to watch baseball when I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, but I found it helping me get new ideas and finding more inspiration to write. For those who don’t know, the Korean league is a little different from the majors. They have a cheerleading dance team, which performs on the dugouts between innings. Even with no fans in the stadium, there are plenty of people watching on the computer, and they love all the pageantry.  It’s something I hope the MLB brings to the season if/when they start.  And I know I will be putting some of the fun things I’ve seen into future books.

For some people, writing is a quiet time of reflection or introspection. For me, writing is a way to put my passions on paper. Baseball has been one of my passions for a long time now, and I can’t wait for it to come back. Until then, I can retreat to the world of the Abington Armadillos to get my baseball fix in.

Stay safe, and keep reading!

Nicole Asselin grew up a Navy brat and spent her formative high school years in the middle of Pennsylvania but always identified with her New England roots. Her grandfather introduced her to Red Sox Nation and her grandmother introduced her to mystery novels.

Nicole graduated from Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, in 2004 with a degree in English/Creative Writing, minoring in Dance. Now working in just outside of Boston as a technical writer, she lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts with her three cats Julia, Jacques, and Madeline. Nicole is a current member of Sisters in Crime (National and New England) and the Mystery Writers of America. She sits on the Board of Directors for the NE branches of both groups as Social Media Liaison.

Uneasy in Kansas City

Uneasy in Kansas City

The Kansas City Royals, the professional baseball team, is currently (as of 8/19/14) in first place in the American League Central Division.  It feels strange.  The team has the current longest active record of not playing in the post-season, — for 28 years.  I will grant that the Chicago Cubs have failed to win the World Series in 105 years. (As Jack Brickhouse said, “Any team can have a bad century.”)  The Texas Rangers had the longest pennant drought ever at 49 years until they won one in 2010.  So the local team has not been the worst of the worst.  They have just been close to it.

Part of the issue is that there are 162 games in a baseball season.  Earlier in the season the Royals fell into third place due to an eight game losing streak.  Like many others here, I thought that was the beginning of the long-expected implosion. I expected the team to crash like a downhill skier going off the course.  In stead they won ten games in a row and kept winning until they reached first place.  They could win the division.  They could also make the playoffs by winning enough games to be a wild-card entry. It has been quite a while since local fans had to do the math assessing that possibility.

There are still roughly 40 games left in the season.  It is not clear what would trigger a swan dive at this point.  Pitching has been good.  Defense has been good.  The team doesn’t have awesome offense, but they haven’t had it all this season.  They’ve been squeaking out wins with excellent late inning relief pitching.  One of the best players is out with broken bones in his hand.  In spite of the injury the Royals have been winning.  Even before the season started, Manager Ned Yost has been preaching taking one game at a time, not getting overly happy or sad about a single game and, as he put it, “grinding out games.”

That’s fine for him.  It may even be fine for the players.  They haven’t gone 28 seasons without a sniff of post-season play, the fans in Kansas City have.  These are supposed to be the, “dog days of August.”  Temperatures have been unseasonably cool this August.  On television the Royals players seem to be enjoying themselves and liking their teammates. 

Surely it can’t last. Can it?