Fiction. Ray Adams buys his girlfriend, beautiful Ava Belle, a baseball team for her birthday. She loves dogs and baseball. Ray's gift is a broken-down semi-pro team in California's Central Valley, with a 70-year-old Jewish manager who's been in baseball for 50 years and breaks into Yiddish homilies when the going gets tough. He assembles a rag-tag lineup of sheetrockers, farm laborers, wanna-be big leaguers, and a freak submarine pitcher—19-year-old Billy Collins. The only problem is that Billy has a drunken, abusive father who, when he shows up at the ballpark, causes Billy to fall apart. How to get rid of Bucky Collins becomes a primary goal not just for the team's sake, but for Billy's. Rough him up? Pay him off? See that he has an "accident"? With him around, the team and Billy are simply not functional.

Author City: FAIRFAX, CA USA

Russell Hill has published poetry, essays, short stories, and novels. Three times a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe prize from the Mystery Writers of America, he has also written for outdoor magazines, and is the author of The Search for Sheepheaven Trout, The Edge of the Earth and Lucy Boomer. The recipient of a Fulbright Award, he spent a year in England as an English teacher, and taught high school students for more than 50 years. An avid fly fisherman, he is married, with three children. He has lived most of his life in California.

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