New This Year!
"Once again, Platt keeps the plot moving, the bases loaded, and the pages turning.
You know they are going to run around the field a few times before all is said and done,
but it all comes out to another home run for us, the readers of these fe-as-kos."
--Mostly Fiction"Only in America: this loopy hybrid of old-time baseball and home on the range,
filled with characters who put the 'fun' back in dysfunctional, and told in a leisurely,
vernacular style that will probably do wonders for your blood pressure."
--Tacoma News Tribune"Hilarious high jinks."
--Baltimore SunAt the turn of the 20th century, baseball out West was still very much a frontier. Barnstorming was the principal way cowboys and farmers discovered the game.
In Randall Beth Platt's seventh novel, The 1898 Base-Ball Fe-As-Ko, all it takes for Leviticus to become obsessed with The Game is watching two boys play catch with a baseball. But having inherited a ranch, Levi can do more than the average newcomer to America's pastime: not only can he join a team, he can be wrangled into buying a team for himself.
The team Leviticus brings back with him to the Four Arrows Ranch, the Bowery Bulldogs, is every bit as down on its luck as its name proclaims. The Bulldogs have come down professionally as far as they've come geographically: from the center of the universe (or so they think) to the middle of nowhere, that is, the northeast corner of Oregon. And they've gotten there through the seductive connivings of one Augusta Gallucci Chumsky Wainwright Carter, the "sister-half-in-law" of Royal Leckner, Four Arrows foreman and charming, word-coining narrator of this and two earlier Fe-As-Kos by Randi Platt.
Fat, drunk, and lacking in self-confidence as the Bulldogs are, Royal and his wife, E.M., believe they can be put back on the road to success. And the team does rise through increasing victories against local yokels to finally taking on, and even beating, city teams.
But the opponents are sometimes the least of their troubles, because there are lots of other obstacles along the steep path the Bulldogs have to climb, principally a past baseball scandal involving the team's coach, the inability of the pitcher (none other than Levi himself) to get the ball over the plate without his wife's presence, and, of course, Augusta. Thank goodness for the unusual statistical-predicting skills of Levi's wife, Lou(ella)!
This baseball fe-as-ko culminates in a confrontation with the pennant-winning Eastern team, the Boston Beaneaters. All the plot lines converge on home plate, and Royal is right there taking the brunt of the collision.
$24 cloth, 300 pages, ISBN 0-945774-47-8, New This Spring!
Click here to read the first two chapters of The 1898 Base-Ball Fe-As-Ko
or just read a short excerpt from the novel, below.
Excerpt from The 1898 Base-Ball Fe-As-Ko
I had just witnessed all five of my folks walk up and get safely onto the train. The train started to move, and I was just commencing to climb aboard. Then outa a window comes E.M.’s head, feathers catching in the window till her war-bonnet falls off, and she hollers. “Stop the train!” And dang if the train didn’t do just that and with quite a jerk, I will tell you. I dang near fell off.
“Leviticus!” E.M. screams at ME, like wasn’t I stupid for not knowing he’d walked on the train, down the aisle, and then got hisself right back off at the end of the car!
She pointed acrost the train yard. I ran around the last car. There in the train yard I saw the big distraction. A stampede? Nope. A showdown? Nope. What I saw was just two young boys playing in the train yard. Each had a puffy leathery glove on, and they had this whitish ball which they was throwing back and forth. ’Course, I knew it was a base-ball and I knew they was just playing catch like all boys do. I hadn’t been living under a rock. Them gloves was a new one for me though, but that ain’t the point. The point is, they was throwing this ball and right smack dab in the middle was Leviticus, about as transfixed on a object as I have ever seen him. His face went back and forth, eyes on the ball, mouth sorta opened. I gotta tell you, I thought maybe he was gonna get hisself hypnotized the way he watched them boys throw the ball.
Now, here’s a good spot to remind you of something about ol’ Leviticus. He spent his boy-years pretty much under lock’n’key. Didn’t have him mucha anything in the way of toys. Maybe it was for that reason that he had become a rock-thrower. Now, all kids’ll pick up bad habits — like biting or lying or forgetting where the outhouse is. But ol’ Levi wasn’t like other kids whatsomever. So by the time he come to us at Four Arrows, his rock-throwing was a habit I couldn’t ever break him of, but to tell you the truth, it was a habit that came in right handy from time to time, onaccounta all his rock-throwing had built him a fine strong arm. He could hit a crow atopt a corn stalk, plug a rabbit outa E.M.’s garden, and even onct stopped a chicken thief right in his tracks. Made a believer outa alla us, especially the chicken thief. ’Course, I had me a time teaching him the difference betwixt just plain annoying critters and using his God-given talents for which they was intended.
So, anytime Levi saw anyone hurl anything, I knew he’d be all for it. Now, before I could get his attention to get him back on the train, one kid missed the ball and it tipped over towards Leviticus. Levi bent over and picked it up. He smiled over at me, then back down at the ball, looking at it like it was a ace-high straight and a cocker spaniel puppy all peeking outa the Holy Grail.
One of the boys called out, “Hey, mister! Toss it back!”
Well, ‘toss it back’ just wasn’t in Levi’s repertoire. Not putting that ball to good use was just a plain damn waste. So instead, Levi picks him out a target. I called to him he better hadn’t oughta. We’d learnt about windows the hard way long ago. He grins back at me, then changes his sight from the row of warehouse windows to the water storage tank above the tracks.
Well, he just loved to watch me watch him site a target. Before I could advise him otherwise and before the two boys could get to him, he’d given the ball all he had and damn if he didn’t hit the pulley that held up the water spout, and damn if that water spout didn’t come swinging down, and damn if that water didn’t start spouting out like Multnomah Falls, and damn if we didn’t alla us go running!
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